A former chairman of the right-wing Proud Boys group was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump trying to overturn the former president's election defeat.
27 year minimum sentences are already insanity. If the justice system is supposed to be corrective rather than vengeful, there’s nothing to be gained from these overly long sentences. No one’s willingness to commit a crime is going to change with a 22 year sentence vs. a 33 year sentence, and the offender is no more likely to reform in years 23-33 than they were in years 12-22.
22 years is A LONG TIME. So long that they’re almost certainly going to have fully adapted to prison life as “normal” long before it ends, and long enough that no one would ever consider it a reasonable cost for potential reward. Someone getting a two-decade sentence was entirely counting on not getting caught/charged.
The American system is built for punishment and profit. Most Americans don’t seem to be interested in justice or rehabilitation, they just want blood. Good example is the 50 or so prisoners who have died in Texas from the heat, most weren’t there for violent crimes or life imprisonment, yet the response to their death is mostly “whatever, they’re bad people” as people show no interest in fixing anything.
… using Texas as an example about the entire USA is probably not a great choice.
Should we use the conditions of California prisons, which were so crowded that they were considered an unconstitutional human rights violation and prisoners were released by court order?
Profit prisons are just slavery with extra steps.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/10/11/governor-newsom-signs-ab-32-to-halt-private-for-profit-prisons-and-immigration-detention-facilities-in-california/
And then it was blocked:
https://californiaglobe.com/fl/another-blow-to-ag-bontas-attempt-to-end-for-profit-prisons-in-california/
I’m all for keeping him in there for longer, simply for the purpose of keeping him out of circulation. Doesn’t hurt my feelings that he’s going to be in his 60’s before he gets out.
This. In ordinary cases, I might be for leniency / shorter sentences. However, these people are very dangerous. They are home-grown terrorists and a message has to be sent others who have similar ideas about civil war and/or insurrection in support of fascists like donnie. Keeping people like this out of civilization for a very long timeout is critical.
Yeah but if we were trying we could rehab this dude in like two years. Probation conditions and monitoring could keep him in check, not just him pretty much any convict.
I wonder if we could rehab the entire GOP in two years.
When it a group I think it’s called reeducation, which is arguably needed.
These people’s entire ideology is based on the lies of trickle down economics, rage culture, sexism, and racism. Whatever education they got, it wasn’t enough to make them realize how stupid and incorrect their ideas are.
It’s so neat seeing how sentences suddenly become too long when a rightwing bigoted piece of shit gets something approaching the guidelines.
I think most people who object to long sentences on here aren’t doing it out of sympathy for these guys’ political views.
People have been saying sentences are too long forever.
Being arrested and being held a few weeks changed my perspective on just how long jail/prison time is vs time being free. Those weeks felt like an eternity.
It’s both corrective, and preventative. Animals like that piece of shit shouldn’t be trusted to walk amongst the public.
22 years ago was 2001. So the equivalent time from 9/11 to now in prison.
Doesn’t seem like enough to me. I mean I went from 30 something to 50 something, I still have life in front of me.
If your desire is for him to not have any life in front of him, then your goal for the prison system is neither to prevent crime nor to rehabilitate criminals. Just admit it’s bloodthirstiness and execute the wrongdoers.
Attempting to overthrow the government should be a life term or near enough to it.
It helps that he can’t vote for the next 5 presidential elections and on release will no longer be allowed to own guns, but 22 years doesn’t seem like enough.
How long should he go in for?
A common maximum sentence in other countries is ~20 years (with exceptions for those who remain a threat to public safety after the standard period).
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/12/18184070/maximum-prison-sentence-cap-mass-incarceration
I just wonder what the rehabilitation plan is for someone like this. How do you bring a leader of a group like this back to being a normal citizen? And what will the alt right call it even if it were attempted? Liberal/Communist indoctrination?
That’s pretty much in line with US stats
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_sentences.jsp
… but some people do deserve more, of course
17% being >20 isn’t really in-line. That’s 1 in 6 prisoners.
…and 5 in 6 being < 20
I’m not saying it’s perfectly in line but it’s not one everyone in prison is doing life
You would expect most inmates, even in a retributive system, to not have done anything worthy of a max-length sentence. That most sentences are not two decades long doesn’t really mean much. You’d expect that in any system short of North Korea.
The US is way out of the norm for its prison lengths and number of people imprisoned, because people like the retributive feel of long sentences. The >20 year sentences are entirely pointless, but the sentences below that are frequently for crimes that would never warrant such a long sentence elsewhere. Norway, which has a maximum sentence of 21 years, has an average incarceration length of 8 months. In the United States, the average incarceration is 63 months (5 years).
What I don’t get is who does he click up with? Are the whites going to take him? Is he white? Do they and will they break rules because of who he is? I ask these questions but in the end don’t give a shit I guess. Good riddance to this loser but yeah our prison system is quite fucked.
This would carry more weight if you cited sources for your statements. ;)
https://www.businessinsider.com/report-says-long-sentences-dont-deter-crime-2014-5?op=1
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/25/16340782/study-mass-incarceration
Science has known harsher sentencing is not a deterrent since the 80’s. Breaking up families and communities causes intergenerational poverty and trauma, and as a result causes more crime. That’s what they teach in criminology because that’s what’s proven by the science.
People who want harsher sentencing instantly reveal themselves as unserious about criminal justice or in any way reducing crime.