Punishing people for pre- or thought-crime for what might happen is absurd.

Appending extra charges for driving drunk when an accident actually does occur seems reasonable. (After all, the goal is deterrence, right?)

Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need.

--I am all for social justice as long as I get the office work and have 4 hour workdays where I get to show up late and leave early and do nothing in between.

#Sklanskyisright

Agreed. It's why I like the pulling the trigger of a half loaded gun analogy (which proph nicely ignored).

The punishment should reflect the expected danger of the activity and not the actual result.

Proph, driving drunk is an action that increases the risk to others. Its not a 'pre-crime' because the dangerous action is already taken. You'd have an argument if we were just talking about someone walking to their car drunk.

As for your enforcement stuff, you're probably right in that they can be abused by police. But that doesn't make DUI any less of a crime.

Texting while driving is supposedly just as bad -- if not worse -- than drunk driving.*

They deserve life in prison, too!

#Sklanskyiswrong

That analogy is ridiculous. Russian roulette with 3 bullets is 50% chance of death. Drunk driving is less than 1%.

If someone decides to sleep off their drunkenness in their car -- but leave the keys in the ignition to keep warm or listen to music -- the same, harsh penalties for driving drunk can apply if an officer ("Awful Sir") happens upon them.

You should expect repercussions for your actions, true. If someone is pointing a weapon at others, bystanders have every right to incapacitate him or her. Punishing them afterwards -- especially when no incident occurs -- for the same crime as the worst case scenario, murder -- as Sklansky advocates, #Sklanskyiswrong -- is ultimately counterproductive and, frankly, uncivilized.

In the USSA, however, mere disobedience has become crime. Adam Kokesh's home was raided after he loaded a gun on "Freedom" -- the irony! -- Plaza. No one was hurt. He didn't intend to hurt anyone. But that doesn't matter to authoritarian cultists.

IMO, if someone is truly drunk and an officer truly suspects them of being a danger to others, by all means detain them, TEMPORARILY. But when they sober up, inform them of the danger they posed to others and themselves, then let them go. Revoking licenses, issuing exorbitant fines, impounding the offender's vehicle, and incarcerating them extensively for a stupid mistake is too much. (And may even lead to more drinking...and, coincidentally, driving!)

Rehabilitation is preferable to punishment, but politicians and TPTB can't further expand the Police State -- and inherently, their control -- by fixing society's problems. Their self-interest lies in perpetuating a broken system.

So drunk drivers who kill people should receive significantly shorter sentences than they actually do?

Yeah well I appreciate the input Proph but your idea that more government isn't the answer relies on government functioning well leaving drunk driving punishment aside. That seems that you want to have it both ways, government is too far reaching but at that same time functions well when it isn't too far reaching.

Besides that lawsuits by their very nature actually do take a long time to play out. A lot of the legal process happens outside the court room. So in my view anyway, overloaded court dockets won't change that. Still justice delayed is justice denied.

or the punishment for getting caught drunk driving should be much higher.

probably both.

Proph single-handedly (and unintentionally) ruining adios' concern troll thread has to be the PU highlight of the week.

I actually do think that in many cases we are overly hard on drunk drivers that kill someone. And we're not hard enough on most cases where none gets hurt.

Last thing we want is any political discussion.

If you're ok with detaining someone, then clearly you agree that drunk driving isn't ok and needs to be punished. Taking away someone's freedom is pretty significant.

So it's just a matter of how the activity is punished and how that punishment is enforced. But stop saying that DUI is ok, because clearly you think it isn't.

The biggest problem I see with the US justice system is that it's a major part of the problem when it comes to disadvantage groups.

Recording what they do leads to most of what we want. Social pressure works but it doesn't work very well when the system can just deny stuff.

So why did you, in no uncertain terms, say you'd be justified to RPG DUIers on your ACist block when your kids are outside playing?

If you want discussion you should tell Proph to STFU and address the OP. And yet for some odd reason here you are again, complaining about my posts.

I think I understand the argument and I'll explain why I disagree.

Simply put the argument goes there is no moral difference between the drunk who drives home and doesn't hit anyone and the drunk who drives home and does. Hence the drunk who hits someone is in some respects being penalised because they got unlucky?

My problems with this are numerous, firstly it ignores the reparative principle in sentencing, those who are harmed have some entitlement to have their injuries addressed. In the case that the driver hits no one who receives this reparation. Secondly if we really want to be fair to drivers and sentence on the probability they hit someone we need to account for their mileage when drunk. The expected danger of an activity is going to be related to how much of that activity the person engages in. If you go down this route you start accounting for the number of injuries per drunken mile driven. But then you have to sentence the person who drives 10 miles home and hits no one more harshly than the person who drives 1 mile home and does. You also probably have to account for the level of blood alcohol given that this will also increase the risk of accident. You'd probably want to extend this to cases of criminal negligence because again if you don't the agent that is criminally negligent whose negligence results in a death is just unluckier than the criminally negligent who doesn't. You'd also presumably want attempted murder to carry the same tariffs as murder.

We can distinguish between acts and actors and we don't just sentence based on the intent or responsibility of the actor but also on the consequences of the act. It's why I don't find David's argument compelling at all.

The great fair minded ziggy expected to be treated with the same respect.



Thread should be in P really and be moderated

I actually think the justice system generally over emphasizes the feelings of the victims at the cost of society in general. Putting someone in jail for long periods of time may make victims feel better - but can have significant social costs.

Putting that aside, the civil system can be used for reparations for victims. If a driver hits no one, then they'll have no one suing them.

I've never felt the "You can't do X, because if you do X you should do more X" is a compelling argument. Its practical to charge people based on making the one decision to get in the car and drive. It's not practical to figure out how far they've driven and how far they're planning on driving. So we do whats practical because its better than not doing it.

Although I see nothing wrong with escalating charges based on BAC. Someone driving 0.005 over the limit is nowhere near as dangerous as someone driving 0.1 over the limit - and it seems easy enough to know the BAC of a person being charged.


Where practical, yes.

I do. And I think it can carry the same penalty.



I'll go back to my analogy of the 3 bullets in the 6 shooter. If someone spins the barrel and pulls the trigger at someone's head they should be punished because they know there's a 50% chance that someone is going to die. I don't care if the victim got lucky or not - either way that person should be penalized the same way (harshly).

Editing out some stuff for clarity but to say that I don't have a complaint with you in the case of criminal negligence or attempted murder, we disagree but you're consistent.

I also tend to agree with you on over emphasis on the feelings of the victim, I think victim impacts should be permissible but not influential with regard to sentencing though I do think victims families that oppose the death penalty should have their views considered.

Would you sentence the person who puts 1 bullet in the 6 shooter the same as the person that puts 3? or 5? Because ignoring the miles driven seems to amount to the same thing, in wanting to reduce the distinction between those whose actions harm someone and those whose actions don't you have to ignore the chance that their actions harm someone. This seems counter productive given it is the element of luck that this approach to sentencing is designed to do.

I know extreme cases make bad law but in Ky a drunk driver crashed into a school bus killing 27 people. I don't think there's a sentence appropriate for the driver and the drunk driver who drives a mile home without incident. I don't know why we are trying to eliminate luck from the concept of criminal responsibility especially if we reintroduce it in to civil legislation.

1 final point given that I think we'd both prefer a consistent sentencing framework either the guy that killed 27 people driving drunk gets a less harsh sentence than a person who attempted to kill someone but fails or the drunk driver who doesn't kill anyone gets a harsher sentence than a murderer.

jj- if you're going to ignore my points on this i dont think you should be allowed to post in this thread. Thanks.

I suspect we're not going anywhere on the rest, but want to point out that the criminal and civil systems serve two different purposes which is why the role of 'luck' can be more important.

The civil system (obviously very simplified) exists to make people whole and get them compensation when they've been wronged. That has to deal with real life consequences.

But the criminal system should be about protecting society in general and should take the big picture view and try to maximize societyies 'well being'.

Letting off 'lucky' drunk drivers doesn't do much to discourage them for trying again. Severely punishing the 'unlucky' drunk drivers is often overly unnecessary. The guy that killed 27 kids should obviously be punished - but in the vast majority of cases, do we believe that its only an extreme punishment that's going to keep him from doing it again? I imagine permanently removing driving privileges, long community service dealing with the repercussions of his actions, and living with his own demons would be enough to keep him from ever doing it again. (That's not to say that that's all that should necessarily be done to him).

I want anybody caught drunk driving to be heavily incentivized to stop - regardless of if they happened to get lucky or not.

Your response completely missed the point of the analogy. I'm not saying that drunk driving should carry the same absolute penalty as my russian roulette example.

Also, this is stupid.