Strydar
OG
Naturaltalnt said:From a reliable source
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Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.
* The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.
* Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.
* Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
* Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.
I am leaving work now - but I wanted to get this out - first: felonies and serious misdemeanors could be breaking and entering, assault, sexual assault (which could be grab-assing), etc. The above statistics are not fair representations of Capital Punishment Crimes. Do you really believe a man should be put to death for punching a guy in the face in a bar fight? By using the above statistics, you certainly represent the problem in overcrowding in prisons, but you do not fairly illustrate that 50% of murderers are committing murders again - nor are a significant percentage of the above represented in those statistics.
Violent criminals that fit the criteria of a person to be considered for a Capital Punishment Crime are not commonly released unless believed to be rehabilitated. Further, you're throwing away the 40-50% that never commit another crime.
Sure - injustice in law systems has been corrupt earlier than the turn of the 20th century. We hung men for stealing horses. We whipped a man for talking to a woman that didn't share her ethnicity. The difference is that by the time we reached the 20th Century, we strived to be better than most societies - and our politicians claimed us to be a shining beacon of fairness for all - an equal place for all. That's the standard to live up to - by acknowledging legal systems that get off the rich and white, we fail to live up to that standard. To not offer the same opportunity to the poor and minorities makes us nothing more than a Fundamentalist nation with process behind our unfair practices - instead of one that simply acts out.
IMO...