The news has become a confessional of the growing depravity that is humanity. Mass shootings on an almost weekly basis, babies being shot in their strollers, old men beaten to death and random bystanders killed because some punks were "bored". Then, when these people are arrested it takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get through the legal procedures before justice is finally served (and many times it simply isn't). But how would a highly trained authoritative figure like Judge Dredd change things? Would real justice be served or will freedoms be lost in the pursuit of hard but (hopefully) fair sentencing?
While I applaud the idea of super-judges, I doubt their ability to remain fair for long time. Who would keep them in line? Who would guarantee they would not stray from path of justice? Not to mention that they could work fine in obvious cases, but would single individual become super detective as well, capable of learning all the required criminology skills?
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The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.
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No...because I don't want to live in a despotic police state with death squads.
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The news has become a confessional of the growing depravity that is humanity. Mass shootings on an almost weekly basis, babies being shot in their strollers, old men beaten to death and random bystanders killed because some punks were "bored". Then, when these people are arrested it takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get through the legal procedures before justice is finally served (and many times it simply isn't). But how would a highly trained authoritative figure like Judge Dredd change things? Would real justice be served or will freedoms be lost in the pursuit of hard but (hopefully) fair sentencing?
actually this is a false image because of the media believes violence is what sells os that is what they tell their audiance that the world is a scary place and a what not. and because that is what they are telling we cultivate a world view that it is more dangerous then it really is; the so called cultivation theory or the mean world syndrome.
But No, I do not believe in a system like judge dredd. Surely our system can be reformed, but the concept of checks and balances does help to make things more fair IMO
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As long as law is very clear about the action and the consequences, i don't see why not. But judges would have to be people of impeccable character. That is enormous personal power there.
All ready got it.
Section 1 Treason: any act deemed an assault on the State is an act of Treason - so any crime is potentially an act of treason. Life in prison without release or Death for resisting arrest.
This means you can be gunned down only if you resist arrest under charge of Treason. Killing you for any reason less would in itself be Treason. So the Judge's 'lawgiver' would need to act as the recorder of how events went down...
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Not to mention that violent crime has been dropping steadily since 1995 in the old US and A.
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The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.
+1
Concentrating that much power is all but a guarantee of corruption and brutality on a massive scale.
In the real world, I believe the formula for improvement is to get rid of victim-less crimes and focus a much smaller enforcement, security, and prison-industrial apparatus on criminality with actual victims on a more localized level.
We have wasted literally trillions on stupidity that is supposed to make us look or feel safer while making the situation worse.
What BT said.
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But hey, after the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, people do not do drugs, and they aren't afraid either. Surely, that's good?
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[bubble bubble bubble]
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Is anybody else hungry all of a sudden? Because I wasn't before but I am now...
Time to bacon this thread too?
The news has become a confessional of the growing depravity that is humanity. Mass shootings on an almost weekly basis, babies being shot in their strollers, old men beaten to death and random bystanders killed because some punks were "bored". Then, when these people are arrested it takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get through the legal procedures before justice is finally served (and many times it simply isn't). But how would a highly trained authoritative figure like Judge Dredd change things? Would real justice be served or will freedoms be lost in the pursuit of hard but (hopefully) fair sentencing?
No.
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Not to mention that violent crime has been dropping steadily since 1995 in the old US and A.
This.
The idea that we are on an ever steeper decline into sin, depravity, and lawlessness just isn't borne out by any sort of empirical evidence.
And yet allowed to justify a plethora of utterly bugf+$# crazy laws and policies.
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And yet allowed to justify a plethora of utterly bugf+!$ crazy laws and policies.
There are those who are attempting to rein in the madness.
I fear that it is likely too little, too late.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, the US has taken to imprisoning those who try to improve things by shedding light on what IS happening for hundreds of years.
The reason for this topic was to see what people are willing to give up for the sake of security. Judge Dredd is an extreme example of society allowing an absolutist approach for the sake of stability. On the other hand, the very thing that most people seem to shrug off is happening little by little. Who knows how many baby steps will take place before we as a people are conditioned to accept this level of authority. As the population grows and the gap between the haves and the have-nots continue to widen, extreme measures of control will continue to be accepted. Probably not by this generation but given time things will fall into place for this to happen.
One could argue that the reasons for the falling crime rate is because law enforcement has been given more power. Every time a terrorist attack happens the first thing we want to do is pass more laws, give various branches more authority to keep us safe. Remember, our children will grow up with these laws and they will simply be a part of their world. And during their life time more measures will be enacted in order to combat the supposed dangers of their time. The world of Judge Dredd did not "just happen". Many tiny steps led that society to that extreme level of law enforcement.
A final note: even if the number of crimes have indeed decreased, I do feel that the viciousness of violent crime has become more evident. My mother once told me, when she was a teenager in a small Texas town, almost every boy came to school with a gun resting in the gun rack of their trucks. There would be fists fights like any other school, but the main difference that my mother pointed out, was that at no time did any of those boys think to run to their trucks and grab their guns. Is this proof of a difference in the mind set of generations? Considering that we hear about school shootings on an almost monthly basis and such a thing was almost unheard of back in the day, it at least makes a valid argument.
Overall, the falling levels of violence have been around since at LEAST the middle ages. Pinker makes the argument that this is due to increasing levels of tolerance to others. He calls the phenomenon the expanding circle, meaning that more and more people are included as WE. Anecdotally, you can also see that isolated, primitive tribes have a violence level far beyond what most cultures today could imagine.
As to changes for the worse: One part is the media playing it up. More seriously, some crimes are more a signal that someone is feeling powerless, controlled. Note that in your example, there WERE fisticuffs... Which worked as an outlet. Harsher attitudes toward that won't resolve the issues that used to lead to fisticuffs, and so they find another outlet.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself... And there are very good reasons to fear it.
IIRC, those changes from the 60s and 70s were accompanied by quite a few violent rebellions.
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You can't do it if everyone who tries is disappeared into prison somewhere due to surveillance.
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The reason for this topic was to see what people are willing to give up for the sake of security.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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They were accompanied by some riots, some basically terrorist action and some fear of civil unrest. They did not involve actual violent overthrow of the government nor any serious threat of it. There was no civil war.
Reforms in that era were the result of the democratic process.
Some of the changes may have been driven by fear at the top of open rebellion if they didn't change, but I'd say that drove FDRs changes in the Great Depression much more than later on.
A violent rebellion is a far cry from a violent overthrow of the government or a civil war.
For example, from my non-fantasy reading of the moment:
"An explosion was inevitable. It came on Tuesday, July 24, [1962] as an enraged response to the savage assault, the preceding day, upon Mrs. Slater King by a sheriff's deputy in Camilla, Georgia. Mrs. King who was pregnant, was kicked into unconsciousness when she attempted to carry food to friends being held in the Camilla prison camp [for violating segregation laws]. An integrated group of forty persons attempted to protest the Camilla outrage at city hall and, of course, were arrested. The black population was no longer able to contain its emotions. By nightfall, nearly two thousand people, most of them teenagers, were battling the police with bricks and bottles."
--David L. Lewis, King: A Critical Biography
Sounds like a violent rebellion to me.
[Slightly edited]
I figured the topic of violence during the civil rights movement would come up (which is fine and does lend its self to the general discussion). But I believe there is a difference in the type of violence back then when compared to today.
As strange as it sounds, violence during those times had a purpose. One group wanted equal rights while the other saw said group as some sort of threat to their society and lashed out. So, yes, even the lynch mobs (as horrible as they were) and the heavy handed cops, saw their acts of violence through a lens of preserving their version of order.
But today's violence seems to be the result of simply lashing back out at society because of personal perceived ills. Their anger comes from a more self centered outlook. No one is fighting for a "cause" any more (at least not in the US). It always comes down to "being victimized by society" as being the excuse for their violence. Maybe this "self centered violence" has something to do with the increased isolationism that's creeping in. More and more, Facebook and texting is becoming the preferred means of communication. The idea of the individual is becoming more important that the concept of community, which I believe makes us more and more self centered. We're anonymous entities on the web with freedom to vent, yet we are easily able to ignore anything that we find distasteful. So to use a Seinfeld term "we are becoming a master of our "imaginary" domains". We no longer have to deal with people if we choose not to. And we can attack as viciously as we like because we hide behind computer screens. It's a strange situation that I think society has yet to fully understand. And I believe that this growing trend has at least contributed to the more "self centered" violence of today.
The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.+1
Concentrating that much power is all but a guarantee of corruption and brutality on a massive scale.
In the real world, I believe the formula for improvement is to get rid of victim-less crimes and focus a much smaller enforcement, security, and prison-industrial apparatus on criminality with actual victims on a more localized level.
We have wasted literally trillions on stupidity that is supposed to make us look or feel safer while making the situation worse.
I am kinda of curious...what are these victimless crimes?
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Now is different because we now have ubiquitous surveillance. In the UK, lawmakers are pushing to get the right to put cameras in the homes of "the worst families", and the recordings are to be used for things like "making sure children go to bed at reasonable hours". The latest round of riots had the rioters more or less all tracked down and imprisoned, with new laws pushed through parliament that allowed punishing their families by denying them welfare money or having them evicted. The latest round of computer consoles is coming, and will all have cameras. Will we know if the cameras record, or if sound is recorded? Most likely not. Stolen laptops are being recovered by remote access to the mike and camera today. Will we know what the company uses the data for? They claim publicly they will use the stuff they find out about us "to improve the gaming experience". Will the companies refuse to give access to their databases when the NSA demands it? Not according to the data Snowden published. Same thing with gesture-controlled TVs, our mobile phones, and so on and so forth.
So... if the police has real-time position data and facial recognition software in every mid-sized public venue or bigger, with cameras that function well in very little light, with multidirectional microphones that can track what every single person in a sports stadium is saying down to whisper level, will be able to listen in on every household discussion... and the violent outbreaks in the 60s and 70s were necessary for the reforms that did happen... how will that be possible to do again?
I just can't see it.
I am kinda of curious...what are these victimless crimes?The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.+1
Concentrating that much power is all but a guarantee of corruption and brutality on a massive scale.
In the real world, I believe the formula for improvement is to get rid of victim-less crimes and focus a much smaller enforcement, security, and prison-industrial apparatus on criminality with actual victims on a more localized level.
We have wasted literally trillions on stupidity that is supposed to make us look or feel safer while making the situation worse.
I hesitate to speak for Citizen Thorn, but "victimless crimes" are usually considered to be: drug use, prostitution, gambling, until relatively recently, sodomy, stuff like that.
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Very well. I think we're arguing semantics here. We agree that there were outbreaks of violence, whether you call them riots, rebellions or whatever. These may have contributed to the political climate that allowed the change, but the change happened within and through the existing democratic system.
Maybe more semantics, but I don't see how one can argue, for example, that the CRM happened "within and through the existing democratic system."
It did until 1955 until the adoption of massive civil disobedience and direct action strategies. While they were, by design, non-violent (although as the 1962 Albany riot shows, not always), they certainly were not within the existing democratic system or a) MLK wouldn't have had to go to India to study them; b) they wouldn't have caused crisis after crisis throughout the South.
Nor were the labor battles that kicked off the thirties within the existing democractic system. Neither, I suspect, were most of the struggles that advanced progress, freedom, or whatever you want to call it, in American history. Imho.
I hesitate to speak for Citizen Thorn, but "victimless crimes" are usually considered to be: drug use, prostitution, gambling, until relatively recently, sodomy, stuff like that.I am kinda of curious...what are these victimless crimes?The comic shows insane, power mad judges on a regular basis.+1
Concentrating that much power is all but a guarantee of corruption and brutality on a massive scale.
In the real world, I believe the formula for improvement is to get rid of victim-less crimes and focus a much smaller enforcement, security, and prison-industrial apparatus on criminality with actual victims on a more localized level.
We have wasted literally trillions on stupidity that is supposed to make us look or feel safer while making the situation worse.
Yes, you would. =)
Say that again in the Imperium of Man... or rather, don't. =)
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I don't trust a lot of cops with the power they have NOW.
Maybe more semantics, but I don't see how one can argue, for example, that the CRM happened within and through the existing democratic system.
It's very easy to argue that. How did the actual change get effected? Tell me again about how MLK and his junta seized control of the U.S. Senate and imposed a new constitution by force upon the United States of America. Tell me again about how General Taylor occupied the White House and had President Johnson shot in "in the name of the people." Tell me about how newly-appointed President Robert Kennedy abolished racial segregation by decree, bypassing Congress, and relying on General Taylor's thugs to make sure that the surviving members of the Supreme Court supported his actions.
The reason you can't tell me about those incidents is because, well, that's not how it happened. The actual history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is actually pretty vanilla:
Introduced in the House as H.R. 7152 by Emanuel Celler (D–NY) on June 20, 1963
Committee consideration by: Judiciary
Passed the House on February 10, 1964 (290–130)
Passed the Senate on June 19, 1964 (73–27) with amendment
House agreed to Senate amendment on June 30, 1964 (289–126)
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964
The elected representatives of the people did their job, introducing and passing a bill that was later signed by the democratically elected president of the United States. That's precisely how the democratic system is supposed to work.
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Maybe more semantics, but I don't see how one can argue, for example, that the CRM happened within and through the existing democratic system.
It's very easy to argue that. How did the actual change get effected? Tell me again about how MLK and his junta seized control of the U.S. Senate and imposed a new constitution by force upon the United States of America. Tell me again about how General Taylor occupied the White House and had President Johnson shot in "in the name of the people." Tell me about how newly-appointed President Robert Kennedy abolished racial segregation by decree, bypassing Congress, and relying on General Taylor's thugs to make sure that the surviving members of the Supreme Court supported his actions.
The reason you can't tell me about those incidents is because, well, that's not how it happened. .
I don't need to tell you any of those things because that's not what I claimed, as any good faith reading of my post would indicate.
You provided a list of civil rights legislation. That's not exactly what the Civil Rights Movement was. The Civil Rights Movement, after the torch was passed from the NAACP to the SCLC, was a movement of civil disobedience, which is a nice way of saying law-breaking for a cause.
Please explain to me how a mass movement of law-breaking is working "within and through the existing democratic system" which, btw, in the 1960s South, included Jim Crow segregation.