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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: The Dotson Case
Message-ID: <11217@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 14:58:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11217
Posted: Tue Jun  4 14:58:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 20:44:50 EDT
References: <2220@decwrl.UUCP> <429@ttidcc.UUCP> <509@ihlpg.UUCP> <778@mtgzz.UUCP> <5359@tekecs.UUCP>
Reply-To: wmartin@brl-bmd.UUCP
Distribution: net
Organization: USAMC ALMSA
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In article <5359@tekecs.UUCP> jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>Yeah, we all want murderers, rapists, armed robbers, pickpockets, etc.
>locked up for life. (Pardon me, just indulging in the spirit of
>exaggeration that seems to be the vogue in net.women these days.)
>
>Well, people, put your money where your mouth is. It costs a hell of a lot
>of money to do all that. Taxes and bond issues for new prisons get voted
>down regularly (at least in this part of the country). What's wrong with
>this picture?
>				  Jeff Winslow

I don't recall EVER having a voice in how my tax dollars are spent by the
legal and correctional system(s). It does NOT matter how you vote, or who
you vote for -- these organizations do just what they want, by acts such
as Federal judges unilaterally ordering the expenditures of government funds,
regardless of the wishes of those who provide those funds.

No, I don't want the people you mentioned "locked up for life"; this is an
asinine waste of funds and resources. I want them exterminated. I am willing
to take the risk that I, myself, will be wrongly arrested and executed for
a crime I did not commit, in return for swift and economic elimination of
individuals who choose to behave in the manner mentioned. I think the odds
are worth it. ("Economic" would mean that we fix the existing legal
system so that it costs no more in trial and appeal expenses to execute
a convicted criminal than it did in, say, 1935. Right now, it probably
costs MORE to execute someone than to put them up for life in a luxury
hotel suite!)

I don't expect this to happen without a severe (read "violent") change of
government. Given that it is unlikely that those that should be exterminated
will be, it IS possible to change the existing prison system to BOTH keep
larger numbers of subhuman vermin off the streets AND save the expenses
of housing and guarding them. What we now do in prisons is completely
idiotic. They are schools for crime, corrupting societies of the physically
strong or criminally powerful dominating the weaker, not only reinforcing
the criminal frame of mind and attitudes, but also dragging in those that
are in contact with them (corruption of guards & wardens, etc.). We even
do such abysmally stupid things as permit prisoners to engage in body-building
and exercising to keep them physically strong, so they can use that very
strength to attack us after they get out!!!!!

Therefore, the solution is to change the prison system from the current
mockery of efforts at "rehabilitation" (what for? we already have more
people on the outside needing employment than there are jobs!) to an open
and honest system of "warehousing bodies". When one goes into prison, one 
should get a bunk space in many-tiered bunks in vast wards, where one is
put into drug-induced unconsciousness for the entire period of the sentence.

Don't argue that this requires hospital-quality care and attention, and
consequent high cost -- if this was done on a mass scale, there would be
robotic intravenous-feeding and brain-state monitoring, along with
details such as vibrating or moving support surfaces to prevent bedsores.
It could be done with minimal human intervention and VERY economically.
(Those recently-begun private-enterprise prison systems might be
ideally suited to this.) 

Will it happen? Of course not! It eliminates practically all the
current opportunities for graft and corruption that permeate the 
correctional system, so the "powers-that-be" will never let come to pass.
There will also be the idiots who will howl about "rights", neglecting
that convicted criminals have ceased to be definable as human beings.

(You've seen those netter's signature lines that say something like,
"First, we kill all the lawyers"? THAT is that "violent" governmental
change I mentioned above. As long as lawyers are our legislators, and
comprise so much of the power structure, AND lawyers live off the 
existing legal and correctional system, we will be forced to continue
to endure the mess we are in...)

(I'd say something humorous here to lighten this misery, but  I can't
bring myself to... :-(, definitely...)