It doesn’t really add anything to the discussion to wave your hands around, say “it’s more complicated than that” if you’re not prepared to seriously explore the consequences of the complications you’re bringing up. For instance, you raised the complication that prison term length will have certain effects on the amount of prison capacity required for a class of crime. Fair enough, but once we actually explore that complication in depth, the conclusion is that lengthening prison terms for rape will consume significantly more prison capacity than you can free up by completely eliminating prison terms that are already relatively short. Likewise, unless you have some sort of data-backed argument as to how and why eliminating drug prohibition will change the conclusion that we will need more prison capacity to incarcerate all sex offenders for life, you’re not actually making any useful point.
There is no way to have a real discussion about this without actually being informed. Pointing out that your feelings about how rapists should be sentenced should not depend on whether or not drug prohibition is just because of 'room in the prisons' is perfectly valid. Statistics that mean nothing without broader context and analysis are pointless and misleading.
> There is no way to have a real discussion about this without actually being informed.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have this problem.
> Pointing out that your feelings about how rapists should be sentenced should not depend on whether or not drug prohibition is just because of 'room in the prisons' is perfectly valid.
It’s completely beside the point here. I’m making the argument that if we want to incarcerate rapists for life, we will need the prison capacity to do so. Which means, keeping everything else equal, building more prison capacity and increasing the degree of “mass incarceration” in the country. Something that is a very controversial suggestion to say the least.
AnthonyMouse responded with the claim, “Let out the non-violent drug offenders and there will be plenty of cells for the rapists and pedophiles.” I could have backtracked and tried to make the argument that one has nothing to do with the other. But there was no need because I could, and did, simply refute AnthonyMouse’s claim directly.
> Statistics that mean nothing without broader context and analysis are pointless and misleading.
You’re clearly implying this is a mistake that I’ve made. I don’t think that it is. While you’ve pointed out a specific complication that I didn’t explicitly mention (the relationship between length of prison term and share of prison population), this complication doesn’t undermine my point but rather strengthens it. You made a further suggestion that maybe we should consider the violent crime that’s caused by drug prohibition. That would be a fine counterargument for you to make! Bring your own data and analysis and maybe we can both learn something.
The problem is that it’s a lot easier for you to sit there and criticize me for not bringing enough “context and analysis” when you’re not bringing any of your own. If you have a point to make, make it. Don’t complain that my arguments are “simplistic” when you’re just going to make lazy sniping comments and expect me to do the work of making your counterarguments for you.
My point is that you have a solution which, correct me if I am wrong, is 'let them out because we can't jail them forever because we don't have room, so then we have to put them on a registry'. You act as if this claim is practical (or even sensical), and then defend it by using statistics. I shouldn't have bothered pointing out your statistics are pointless and should have pointed out that your claim is based on a false premise.
Sex offender recidivism is a complicated topic that is very difficult to study, and 'sex offenses' are not something that are standardized between societies or systems, and acting like your solution is a decent one means that you think that a simple solution can solve a complex problem.
Thus any conversation you are going to have on the topic is going to be fruitless unless you are trying to push an agenda with no regard for a real path forward.
> I don’t know about you but I don’t have this problem.
One can be intelligent and intuitive but without the proper background and without the awareness to know when out of depth then a lot of damage can be done.
> My point is that you have a solution which, correct me if I am wrong, is 'let them out because we can't jail them forever because we don't have room, so then we have to put them on a registry'.
You’re wrong, so let me correct you. As per my previous comments, I’d be perfectly happy executing the lot of them. I don’t think that’s politically feasible, so as a compromise, I would be satisfied building as many prisons as are necessary to incarcerate them for life. But even that is politically infeasible, largely due to widespread misconceptions about the bogeyman of “mass incarceration”—including the misperception that mass incarceration is primarily a consequence of drug prohibition. So now that we’re backed into the corner where rapists and child molesters are eventually released from prison anyway, I much prefer them to be registered as sex offenders than for them not to be registered as sex offenders.
Since Anthony has some sort of problem with sex offender registration and was the one to suggest life imprisonment in the first case, I pointed out that the natural consequence of such a policy would be the expansion of “mass incarceration”. I wanted to see if Anthony was serious enough about life imprisonment to accept the necessary tradeoffs of such a policy. He replied by claiming that mass incarceration is the consequence of drug prohibition and that the required prison capacity could be freed up by releasing nonviolent drug offenders. This claim is false and I refuted it.
> I shouldn't have bothered pointing out your statistics are pointless
No, you shouldn’t have, because they aren’t. The point was to refute Anthony’s claims that mass incarceration is the consequence of drug prohibition and that the required prison capacity could be freed up by releasing nonviolent drug offenders. If you would like to refute my refutation, please feel welcome to introduce whatever data and analysis you have toward that end. I only ask that you put forth the effort yourself instead of gesturing vaguely in the direction of a refutation and then scolding me for not doing the work of presenting your side of the argument.
> Sex offender recidivism is a complicated topic that is very difficult to study, and 'sex offenses' are not something that are standardized between societies or systems, and acting like your solution is a decent one means that you think that a simple solution can solve a complex problem.
The rate of recidivism among dead men is zero, and while lifelong prisoners do engage in recidivism against other prisoners, at least they aren’t committing crimes against the rest of society. So there actually are relatively simple solutions available to us. If we are all in agreement that we are willing to bite the bullet and increase the scale of either the death penalty of mass incarceration, I would be satisfied.
When people object to sex offender registration by asking “why are we releasing them from prison in the first place?”, I am not actually convinced that they are serious about lifelong incarceration. I worry that they are using this point as a rhetorical cudgel and have no intention of actually accepting a policy of lifetime incarceration for sex offenders, especially when such a policy would likely conflict with what I reasonably presume to be their attitudes about “mass incarceration”. Now, maybe my presumption was wrong and Anthony is actually totally fine with mass incarceration, but if that were the case he would have said so. Instead, he introduced the canard that mass incarceration was the consequence of drug prohibition. He provided zero data to back up this claim and the data I provided refutes it. Anthony had no response and your responses have been little more than pointless bromides about how these issues are “complicated” with next to no data or analysis on your part about what these complications might be or why they would change our conclusions.
> Thus any conversation you are going to have on the topic is going to be fruitless unless you are trying to push an agenda with no regard for a real path forward.
Between the two of us, you’re the one who is struggling to contribute anything that could make this conversation fruitful. I hope I’ve clarified my position well enough for you to add something of substance. For one, I’m not actually clear on what specific position you’re taking here, other than “against Phil”. Perhaps this is another presumption on my part, but I assume that when people argue with me, it’s because there’s some point they disagree with me on. So what is it?
