I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and was curious about other people's thoughts on the issue. I call it the Criminal Justice Industrial Complex because that's what it's become. The entire thing from the passage of laws and who lobbies for what in exchange for what, the court systems, court appointed attorneys vs expensive private attorneys and plea bargaining, the nickel and diming costs of being on probation or having a vehicular alcohol tester or your phone monitored or ankle monitors, court mandated counseling, all of which the suspect or perpetrator has to pay for. Combine that with some people being entirely let off the hook for serious violent crimes while others get 18 months in prison for something that hurt no one and deprived no one of property. The whole thing is a monstrous house of cards built on graft, shady contracts, money making schemes, votes for bribes, keeping hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats and low tier government employees in a paying job and having to justify budgets, and on and on. We don't have a 'justice' system. We have a leviathan with several million moving parts that all need to get paid, designed to suck people in, grind them up, drain them for everything they're worth, and spit them out......but only if they're not "special" in some way. Be the right race, gender, religion, know the right people, have enough favors or clout and you can side step all of that. Clearly it doesn't work. We have people rotting in gulags for years for standing outside a building while others set buildings with people in them on fire and had their cases dropped entirely. What we have isn't working, and it sure as shit isn't justice.
For me, I would consider three things. And I'm more than willing to be convinced otherwise, I was just musing on it.
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All crimes must have an injured party. That is not to say a victim per se, just an actual injured party. Shoplifting might not have a victim, but someone is losing because of the theft. They are the injured party. A crime that has no injured party should not be a crime. And that does not include orders of deviation from the victim. No more of this "well if you commit A, that means it becomes more likely that other people might do B, which means that it could also become more likely that C could happen, therefore A is illegal". If you commit an act, and no person was harmed, no property was stolen or damaged, there is no injured party.
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You must have actually committed the crime, not just thought about it, intended to, wanted to, etc. Buying oregano from someone thinking it's weed shouldn't be a crime because the fact is, you bought oregano, not weed.
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You must have mens rea. The criminal must be aware, or should reasonably have been aware that what they were doing is a crime. No more having 300,000 statutes on the books and then saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse". If a guy meets a girl who tells him she's 21, they meet at a bar, the doorman checks her ID, the bartender checks her ID and asks if she's really 21, and the guy also unobtrusively checks her ID and all see that it looks real and says she's 21, if it turns out she's 17 the guy should not be guilty of anything. There are a ton of other examples of shit that could fall into this like catching the wrong kind of fish that happens to be 1.5cm shorter than the law 2 days out of season being a federal felony.
I understand that this means a ton of people who are probably bad people would not get locked up for small shit. But the flip side is that I would also increase the penalty for committing the few remaining crimes drastically. I would have life in prison or the death penalty for a lot more things. Much longer prison time for things like assault and battery or robbery. I'm a big proponent of letting people do more or less what they want, but come down like an ocean-going cargo ship full of bricks on the people who really do evil shit on purpose.
This board has, or at least had, a pretty wild mix of viewpoints from hard libertarians to natsocs and in between, so I'm curious what people's thoughts are on a total revamp of law, crime, and punishment in the US.
how I would do it
Actually enforce the fucking law. Public intoxication, public indecency, shoplifting, and littering should all have immediate consequences all the time, not just when they are convenient. have a task force dedicated to hunting down people who participate in flash mobs, rioting, or political violence.
Remove laws that are arbitrarily enforced because everyone breaks them. For instance, literally everyone speeds when there isn't traffic. nobody should face consequences so long as they are going the speed of the traffic around them. tickets should instead be issued to people who significantly deviate from the traffic pattern, which is far more dangerous than speeding ever is.
Life sentences are instead executions, but executions are only carried out once the case is closed and the charged is definitively guilty. No more babysitting career criminals, murderers, or child predators.
I agree with number 1 of OP, a victimless crime should not be a crime. bear in mind the definition of victimless is very narrow. people who were put in danger from your criminal acts would be considered victims in this case, even if they never actually got hurt. this would ensure things like reckless driving, firing guns in crowded places for any reason other than self-defense, reckless use of fireworks during a fire danger season, etc would still have consequences.
while in the prison system, prisoners still get free food and shelter courtesy of the prison, but they can voluntarily work to reduce their sentence. things like community service, labor work, etc. this option would only be available to prisoners who are not at risk of making an escape attempt. the reason this is voluntary is to prevent slavery via the prison industrial complex.
prison food is edible and healthy, but there's no effort put into taste. thieves and rioters get to enjoy MREs for the duration of their sentence.
reduce the penalty for first offenses of low severity crimes, but heavily increase the penalty of second offenses. for instance, if you steal something less than $50 in value, the sentence should be that you have to repay that $50 with a significant interest. however, if you are caught stealing again, 5 years in jail instantly. no plea bargains, no weaseling if you get an expensive lawyer. this makes the iron fist of the law apparent, while allowing leeway for people who make honest mistakes.
politicians who abuse their station, embezzle money, or otherwise blatantly break the law, go to jail.
Proper MREs are fucking dope dude.
The 'humanitarian MREs' are super shitty and should be along the lines of what they get: rice, beans, lentils.