Citizens arrest but to no avail.

Hmmmm.
As tempting as it sounds (I wouldn't shed a tear for many of them) I don't think this would be a good move. For one thing getting shot isn't nearly as unpleasant as a year in some jails around the world.

The death penalty to quote Bill Hicks is "cruel and unimaginative". Think of how much fun we could have if we really put our minds to it. How about forcing them to collect rubbish on O'Connell St on Saturday nights wearing Mini-Skirts, high heels and make-up?

-Rd

daltonr said:

How about forcing them to collect rubbish on O'Connell St on Saturday nights wearing Mini-Skirts, high heels and make-up?

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There are those who would be prepared to pay a fairly high hourly rate for this domination service.

But seriously folks, I'm somewhat saddened to se that the hang 'em & flog 'em brigade is alive and well. I recall a long drawn out debate back on ezboard where the h.e.a.f.e. brigade couldn't produce any evidence that harsh prison treatment is effective as a deterrent. Even the raving mad Sherrif Joe in Arizona (iirc) whe spend more on feeding his prison dogs than his inmates has a recidivist rate just the same as the standard prison. So lets not kid ourselves that the harsh regime is going to do anything to reduce crime. It might give some people as satisfying sense of revenge, but it won't reduce crime.

Isn't it about time we started looking at root causes?

Rainyday, I too remember the discussion about crime and punishment. Isn't there a direct corelation between the two? Crime and punishment goes in cycles:

High crime leads to calls for harsher punishment. This in turn reduces crime. Punishments become more relaxed and crime rises again.

However, I do agree with you - it is time to look for root causes, and they aren't always based on financial poverty.

umop3p!sdn said:

harsher punishment [...] in turn reduces crime. Punishments become more relaxed and crime rises again.
.

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I haven't seen any evidence to support either of these contentions.

Amazing how popular this website is ...

& yet, how seldom if ever, a politican or snr member of the Gardai etc would ever be seen contributing here, accepting blame, asking for people to consider their "official" line etc

Cheers

G>

Rainyday, I hope you don't class me as a member of the hang'em and flog'em brigade, although quite frankly it's a brigade I'm getting a growing sympathy for.

No it isn't time we started looking at the root causes of crime. That time was years ago. Successive governments have failed to do it, continue to fail to do it, and the new Rainbow government if its ever elected won't do it either.

We know that we are throwing good money after bad on prisons instead of investing in early intervention and better more intelligent policing. We also know that we squander money on all sorts of projects, but there's a difference between knowing something and getting a government that will act.

A few points,

1. When I started this thread I was not complaining that those involved weren't convicted and punished. I was complaining that the crimes WEREN'T EVEN INVESTIGATED. Let's talk about the root causes of that.

2. When people call for tougher (or indeed any prison sentences) they are not necessarily looking for either a deterrant or revenge. The just want the peace of
mind of knowing that regular offenders are off the streets.

3. You are right harsh sentances up to and including the death penalty have questionable value as a deterrant. My suggestion to buy foreign prison space is only partly facetious. If there is a problem with funding or with prison spaces then purchasing cheaper prison space abroad for repeat offenders is surely a sensible proposal. I can't think of a negative aspect to it. Quite frankly If a scumbag wants to be able to see his mammy regularly then he should endeavour to not amass 50 convictions.

4. Would you care to offer something constructive that can be done for communities that are routinely harrassed by out of control youths while we are waiting for a government that will tackle the root causes of crime? Even if a bolt of lightning hit the dail and someone actually decided to do something productive, it would be years before we see results.

We are getting dangerously close to a situation where the government fails to tackle the root causes of crime. Fails to provide resources to protect the community from crime, and fails to provide a means of isolating criminals and taking them off the street, and finally and worst of all..fails to even investigate crime.

If you expect in those circumstances that people will sit by and watch windscreens getting smashed on a weekly basis then you have another thing coming.

If you think Tax payers will continue to pay the social welfare of thugs and also pay to fix the damage caused by those thugs then you are sadly deluded.

I detest vigilante activity. But I wonder if we are being backed into a corner. I have learned that calling the Gardai is pointless. Unless you are actually in a confrontation with the criminals the Gardai won't even arrive. When they do arrive they won't even investigate.

Let me ask you, If I visit your house tonight and smash your windscreen. How many times would you allow the Gardai to let me go free before you deal with me yourself?

-Rd

Hi Rd,
The politician in question was Tom Kitt but I would bet the farm that he doesn't remember the conversation (not because he is an FF politician and they seem to have bad memories but because it was a short conversation and he doesn't know me from Adam).
I would also not like to be lumped in with the hang'em and flog'em brigade and don't think that American style sentences would solve the problem. I think that education is the solution as it enables people to have a stake in society. Not more money for universities or teachers wages but more money for children under the age of 10 and a proper state run kindergarten for children of 3-5 years of age. There is some merit in the Labour parties plans in this area. Basically anything that reduces the influence of the scumbag parents of these children when they are very small is a good thing.
I also think that if the older children in a family are serial offenders any younger children in that family should be taken into care as the parents lack the ability or inclination (or both) to raise their children properly.
Basically the scumbags that damaged your car are a lost cause but any younger children in their families should be removed from their malign influence or that of their parents.
As for buying prison spaces in the north I really don't see the problem with that as long as the prison offers real educational opportunities the young offenders and doesn't turn into another training ground for prisoners like Mountjoy seems to be.

As long as the Gardai do not do their job properly and have a “so what” attitude to petty crime there will be a disregard for law and order amongst large portions of the population. As angry as you feel about this incident imagine if you lived in a west Finglas and you got the same attitude from the Gardai but had to put up with the same sort of scumbags on a nightly basis. It's no wonder that Sinn Fein and their murdering friends get so much support in poor suburban areas.

My experience of these sort of incidents was when I woke up to hear two nice young men moving around in my living room having broken in through a back window. My first instinct was to go down stairs and smash their heads in (and I had a 2’ bar of mahogany in hand for the job). On my way down the stairs I realised that one of two things would happen;
1) I would get the c**p knocked out of me, if not worse or
2) I would kill one or both of them as I have quite a temper and the last time I lost it (at 16 years of age) I put someone in hospital for two weeks.
Not a proud moment and not one I wishes to repeat so I opted to make some noise and the uninvited young men vacated my living room the same was they entered it.

It took two days for the police to arrive.

God bless them.

Sunday Times last week had an article which ( it was comparing Britain with US) stated that crime in the us of a was down 55% since 19?? and among younger people was down 71% over the same period. More or less stated this was due in no small part to Bill Clinton bringing in some legislation which stopped social welfare after 2 years and made people work for it. when they worked for it they had more respect for it etc etc. always puzzles me how we fork out so much in dole each week and yet 50,000 eu nationals find work no problem each year. though I know I shouldnt be puzzled because as we all know unemployment runs in families. and unemployment does gettoise families. and older deliquent children do influence younger children. and the circle goes round and round. 4 years ago my daughter was assaulted ( by a female gang) coming home for a summer job in tesco. I reported it to the garda. two weeks later I was talking to another parent who had a daughter assaulted by the same gang. Basically he advised me to go back to the garda station and find out what they were doing about it. when I went back to the garda station, there was no record of my complaint. So this time I made the young garda write it down into a (big) book and took his name. Heard later that this gang were only stopped when another group of females took exception to them attacking one of their gang.

I haven't seen any evidence to support either of these contentions.

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You posted that in the last discussion too.
If you want to see evidence, do a search on the internet.

Sunday Times last week had an article which ( it was comparing Britain with US) stated that crime in the us of a was down 55% since 19?? and among younger people was down 71% over the same period. More or less stated this was due in no small part to Bill Clinton bringing in some legislation which stopped social welfare after 2 years and made people work for it. when they worked for it they had more respect for it etc etc.

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Stephen Levitt in Freakonomics (Book) or you may be able to find some of his papers on-line, makes a pretty compelling case that a lot of the reasons why people think crime dropped in the US don't stand up to scrutiny.

The crime rate in the US did drop remarkably in the 1990's. It peaked right as the 80's were ending. Within a few years Crime dropped had from it's highest ever rate to levels that had not been seen since the 1950's

Levitt attributes about 10% of the drop to the fact that additional police were hired. The other 90% of the drop is the interesting bit.

He rules out the Booming Economy. He rules out Capital Punishment, Tougher Gun Control Laws, Innovative Policing.

He attributes the drop to a pretty controversial idea. The impact of Roe V's Wade legalising abortion. The children who weren't born thanks to Row vs Wade would have been hitting the age where they would have been getting involved in crime.

"Before Roe Vs Wade, it was predominantly the daughters of middle or upper class families who could arrange and afford a safe illegal abortion."

"What sort of women was most likely to take advantage of Roe vs Wade? Very often she was unmarried or in her teens or poor, and sometimes all three".

"One study has shown that the typical child who went unborn in the earliest years of legalised abortion would have been 50% more likely than average to live in poverty; he would have been 60% more likely to grow up with just one parent. These two factors, childhood poverty and a single-parent household are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future. Growing up in a single-parent home roughly doubles a child's propensity to commit crime. So does having a teenage mother. Another study has shown that low maternal education is the single most powerful factor leading to criminality."

If you are strongly pro life then this isn't pleasant reading. If you are strongly pro-life and also strongly in favour of thougher punishments for criminals then it's even harder.

Freakonomics is a great book. The chapter on crime is drawn from
"Understanding why crime fell in the 1990's: Four Factor's that explain the decline and six that do not" Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2004) pp 163-190

(I know how people around here love evidence).

I've always been slap bang on the fence when it comes to abortion. I'll usually argue against extremists on either side. It's just too damn complicated an issue. But this is the first time that I've ever seen an argument either for or against that wasn't based on emotion.

I can't do justice to his papers here. If you're interested please buy the book. You won't regret it.

-Rd

daltonr said:

Levitt attributes about 10% of the drop to the fact that additional police were hired. The other 90% of the drop is the interesting bit.

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On what basis does he arrive at the 90:10 split?

This theory could be controversial because it seems to be based on correlation which is not necessarily the same thing as causation.

He goes to extraordinary lengths to point out the difference between correlation and cause. If fact much of his book is about claims by experts and politicians that their theories or policies show cause, when in fact there's correlation.

One way he shows cause is that he show's how crime dropped in some states before others, and these happened to be the states that had moved to legalise abortion before Roe Vs Wade.

I can't answer your question about the 90:10 split becasue I don't have the book in front of me right now. I had it earlier when I wrote the other post.

I should say he doesn't attribute the full 90% to abortion, in case I gave that impression. Longer prison sentances are also given credit, along with changes in the Drugs Market. E.g. A simple example, the murder rate dropped when grug gangs began shooting each other in the ass rather than killing each other.

The site you linked to links to this piece by Levitt.
http://slate.msn.com/id/33569/entry/33571/

-Rd

umop3p!sdn said:

You posted that in the last discussion too.
If you want to see evidence, do a search on the internet.

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Thanks for confirming my suspicions that you don't really know what you're talking about here.