Dashcam recording of Castile's shooting released.

[Sparko]

I don't consider life imprisonment for murder to be an "absurdly long length of time".

I guess when you think of a murdered human being as just another animal, worth slightly more than a cow...

[Mountain Man]

3. Most countries believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, and put a great deal of effort into restorative justice.

And yet by your own admission, New Zealand has a higher rate of reported crime than the US by a nearly 2 to 1 margin ("NZ has about 777 crimes reported to police per 10,000 people per year, where the US has about 371 crimes reported per 10,000 people per year"), so assuming your statistics are accurate, what does that say about your country's success at "rehabilitation"? It would be interesting to find out what percentage of those reported crimes are repeat offenders.

[Sparko]

we don't just put people in prison to punish them or to rehabilitate them. We also put them there to keep them out of civil society where they do harm. quarantine.

[Mountain Man]

we don't just put people in prison to punish them or to rehabilitate them. We also put them there to keep them out of civil society where they do harm. quarantine.

So a guy goes to prison for murder and is released after 7-years. He goes on to live a long life and never commits another murder. Was he rehabilitated? Or did he literally get away with murder?

[Teallaura]

Isn't attacking the source instead of the content, y'know... a fallacy?

Yes, but it is not in this case. The actual source isn't in question - the secondary is.

Also, it is not fallacious to question a source's veracity - it's only fallacious to reject an argument because you don't like the source. It is perfectly fair to reject the debate, just not the argument.

[Teallaura]

Nixon started cracking down on drugs because in the late 60's and 70's drugs became a major problem for the country. It was not just pot. It was cocaine, heroin, LSD, all of that. Pretty much started with the liberals, called "hippies" back then. Turn on Tune out. Kids were dropping dead from overdoses left and right. Criminals were moving in to the drug trade as it became profitable. I remember personally. You just think you know what you are talking about because you read some liberal blogs about a country you know nothing about and a time you never lived through.

Yeah, while I don't doubt Nixon would have exacerbated the matter for political gain, the 'war' started well before his administration.

[Starlight]

It would be interesting to find out what percentage of those reported crimes are repeat offenders.

Government data suggests that ~52% of people in NZ that are released from prison eventually return to prison, usually within 3 years of being released if they do. I found this guy who is up to his 491st offence (for stealing and using a credit card) and has been to jail 19 times.

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics your recidivism rate works out to a ~60% chance of being re-imprisoned, again usually within 3 years if it's going to happen. I also note the US study found the recidivism rate for murder to be zero, with the worst recidivism rates being for property crimes.

We also put them there to keep them out of civil society where they do harm. quarantine.

So do we, however it's important to let judges distinguish between people who are a danger to society and people who are not. That is why high mandatory minimums are problematic because they don't allow the judges to the power to distinguish the two cases. If someone has a 20-year long grudge against a relative and eventually murders them, it's not like that person is a general danger to society and likely to wander down the street killing random people or rob a bank.

[Starlight]

Nixon started cracking down on drugs because in the late 60's and 70's drugs became a major problem for the country. It was not just pot. It was cocaine, heroin, LSD, all of that. Pretty much started with the liberals, called "hippies" back then. Turn on Tune out. Kids were dropping dead from overdoses left and right. Criminals were moving in to the drug trade as it became profitable.

The Prohibition on alcohol historically empowered the mafia who thrived on the illegal trade. That is a major motivation for making these drugs legal because then it removes the criminal element from the scene. And the drug cartels that are a major problem in central america would disappear as well if there was a across the board legalization.

I also have to wonder if legalization wouldn't solve the death-from-overdoses problem. Obviously standard pharmaceutical drugs can be deadly in overdoses, but people virtually never die from that because they are manufactured to regulated standards and come with labels of exactly how much it is safe to take. If the currently illegal drugs were issued the same way, and thus not 'cut' with dodgy chemicals and manufactured with random degrees of strength etc, and had clear instructions on how much was safe to take etc, could our societies thus remove the problem of drug overdosing?

[Mountain Man]

Government data suggests that ~52% of people in NZ that are released from prison eventually return to prison, usually within 3 years of being released if they do. I found this guy who is up to his 491st offence (for stealing and using a credit card) and has been to jail 19 times.

So on what basis do you tout the superiority of the New Zealand justice system?

[Meh Gerbil]

The Prohibition on alcohol historically empowered the mafia who thrived on the illegal trade. That is a major motivation for making these drugs legal because then it removes the criminal element from the scene. And the drug cartels that are a major problem in central america would disappear as well if there was a across the board legalization.

I also have to wonder if legalization wouldn't solve the death-from-overdoses problem. Obviously standard pharmaceutical drugs can be deadly in overdoses, but people virtually never die from that because they are manufactured to regulated standards and come with labels of exactly how much it is safe to take. If the currently illegal drugs were issued the same way, and thus not 'cut' with dodgy chemicals and manufactured with random degrees of strength etc, and had clear instructions on how much was safe to take etc, could our societies thus remove the problem of drug overdosing?

This is a tempting thought; however, there is a theory out there that the cartels would simply turn to some other illegal and lucrative trade.
For them the goal isn't the drugs but the money.

[Starlight]

So on what basis do you tout the superiority of the New Zealand justice system?

Your justice system is giving punishments an order of magnitude harsher while not achieving substantially better results. And those absurdly harsh punishments have a huge financial and social cost.

Other Western countries give penalties of a similar length to NZ. The US is unusual in the harshness of its penalties.

[Darth Executor]

Your justice system is giving punishments an order of magnitude harsher while not achieving substantially better results. And those absurdly harsh punishments have a huge financial and social cost.

Longer sentences = less time criminals have to do even more damage. There's no evidence reducing the punishments would in any way improve the situation (no, comparing it with a completely different country with completely different demographics is not evidence of anything).

Other Western countries give penalties of a similar length to NZ. The US is unusual in the harshness of its penalties.

Other Western countries aid and abet the pimping of 13 year old girls by the third world savages they imported while arresting the fathers when they try to rescue them.

[Mountain Man]

Your justice system is giving punishments an order of magnitude harsher while not achieving substantially better results. And those absurdly harsh punishments have a huge financial and social cost.

Other Western countries give penalties of a similar length to NZ. The US is unusual in the harshness of its penalties.

That's nothing more than your opinion based on liberal navel gazing. According to your own arguments, New Zealand has twice as many reported crimes per 10,000 people as the US, and at least 50% of those are repeat offenders. How many repeat offenders never see a second jail sentence because of your country's lax response to crime?

In short, you don't have a leg to stand on.

[Starlight]

comparing it with a completely different country with completely different demographics is not evidence of anything

The demographics are very similar which is why they are comparable. The US and NZ are two of the 6 predominantly English-speaking countries with mainly people of British decent (the others being Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia), and NZ and the US have a similar proportion of their populations who are of a particular dark-skinned people-group who are of a lower socio-economic level for historical reasons and are disproportionately prone to crime and imprisonment. The demographics of the situation make for pretty much as good a comparison as you could ever get.

How many repeat offenders never see a second jail sentence because of your country's lax response to crime?

If you want to waste between $20,000 and $128,000 per person per year on black people to house and feed and guard them in prisons, then I guess I can't stop you. But perhaps you shouldn't get so uptight on providing social services to them when they aren't in prison? It's a lot cheaper to help them live good lives and get a job outside prison - even if they're supported by government subsidies their entire life - than it is to pay all the costs of looking after them in prison.

You can hardly pretend to be fiscally conservative if you want to burn billions housing, feeding, guarding, and providing healthcare for all those people you've chosen to put in prison (or for that matter, if you want an absurdly large sized military budget). How about spending an order of magnitude less money on them by letting them live rent-free in a cheap government owned house, and ensuring they have a good education and the healthcare and support they need to succeed in life? And then they can work and even pay taxes.

[Darth Executor]

The demographics are very similar which is why they are comparable.

No they are not.

The US and NZ are two of the 6 predominantly English-speaking countries with mainly people of British decent (the others being Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia),

American whites are considerably less anglo than NZ ones given the large waves of european immigration. I'd be surprised if more than a third of white americans have any british descent at all. According to wikipedia about 48 million americans claimed some or only british descent. They all speak english because they learned it but otherwise the two countries are not similar at all.

and NZ and the US have a similar proportion of their populations who are of a particular dark-skinned people-group who are of a lower socio-economic level for historical reasons and are disproportionately prone to crime and imprisonment. The demographics of the situation make for pretty much as good a comparison as you could ever get.

Unless you can prove that maori and us blacks have similar crime rates in the same environemnt then you are comparing apples to oranges. In general, southeast asia doesn't have the same violent crime problems as west africa, and in the us south-east asians are not as prone to crime as blacks. So no, the comparison is not good at all, no matter how you look at it. I mean, if you make extremely shallow comparisons like "they're both dark skinned" even though they are from different continents with relatively vast differences in culture and biology, sure, they're pretty much the same thing.