Marcus Aurelius: Look, the prison industry can't grow their business year on year if we let people out of prison early. Sure, we lock up more people that the rest of the world combined, but it's only profitable so long as the industry grows. And since we can't outsource prison guard jobs, it stimulates employment too.

It's a win-win all around. We just need to keep locking up more people for longer amounts of time.

Well to be fair, this country has a long history of slavery and old habits are hard to kick.

Walker: DYN-O-MITE!

Done in one; beat me to it! :)

They don't want to encourage good behavior by prisoners, is that the idea or do they just want to increase the size of the prison bureaucracy?

kingoomieiii: The proposed legislation followed the news that convicted child murderer Michael Woodmansee was scheduled for release this fall, after accumulating enough good time to cut 12 years off a 40-year sentence he received for the murder of Jason Foreman.

Yeah, I thought that might have been the cause.

That murder took place not a quarter mile from where I'm sitting right now, actually. I could walk to that house. God what an awful neighborhood that is.

Yeah, makes you not mind the ones that don't mow their lawns so much.

Well it's about time someone did away with this "positive reinforcement" rubbish. People should obey the law because they are afraid, dammit.

NewportBarGuy: Chris Craig Price

oryx: They don't want to encourage good behavior by prisoners, is that the idea or do they just want to increase the size of the prison bureaucracy?

Neither, Atty. Gen. Peter F. Kilmartin wants to be Governor.

America is #1!

USA!
USA!
USA!

The proposed legislation followed the news that convicted child murderer Michael Woodmansee was scheduled for release this fall, after accumulating enough good time to cut 12 years off a 40-year sentence he received for the murder of Jason Foreman.

I'm fine with keeping this POS in for his whole sentence (and then perhaps shanking him on his eventual way out of the front gate) but it is stupid to deny non violent/first time offenders time off for good behavior.

Ohio eliminated good time a number of years ago under a "truth in sentencing" law. However, it only affected those prisoners sentenced after the effective date. The only real difference is that now judges don't have to calculate good time into their sentencing decisions. Before, if you wanted a guy to serve 12 months you sentenced him to 18 figuring he would get 1/3 off for good behavior.

7wolf: Well it's about time someone did away with this "positive reinforcement" rubbish. People should obey the law because they are afraid, dammit.

Ideally, you want people to obey the law based on conscience: because it's the right thing to do. As a backup, you want people to obey the law based on rationality: because it's advantageous. Between these two, you can get a lot of people functioning in society.

But there will always be people who cannot or will not obey the law based on these things, and so there is room for another level of backup, to capture at least some of them. Once the first two have failed, the most effective backup yet found is people who obey the law based on fear: because they get into trouble if they don't. It's a sad case, but people who are far enough gone to fall into this third net aren't going to be able to function in society without it. By itself that might be tolerable, but they invariably drag others down as they go, thus causing harm beyond their immediate actions.

Or, to put it another way, what is your third line? When dealing with people for whom appeals to conscience and then rationality have already failed, how would you convince them? Would you not even try, instead turning them loose to do their harm? Would you continue making doomed efforts to use methods that have already shown they don't work on them? Would you lower the bar, basing the law instead on the urges of degenerates so that they can obey based on whim, with all the consequences that entails? What would you do?

Happy birthday JJ!

The proposed legislation followed the news that convicted child murderer Michael Woodmansee was scheduled for release this fall, after accumulating enough good time to cut 12 years off a 40-year sentence he received for the murder of Jason Foreman.

Can anyone say...kneejerk?

If there had only been legislation in place to foresee a problem like this.

/AG is an ass
//new legislation won't do shiat to guy in question
///PMITA industry asshattery

I'm sure the taxpayers are looking forward to providing geriatric care to prisoners.

Without even RTFA I'm going to guess the proponent of this legislation has a financial interest in getting more prisons built. I'm gonna go read and check back in a few.

In Indiana, Gov. Daniels (for Pres in 2012 - at least he isn't bat-shiat crazy like the other Republicans), tried to get the legislature to reform the sentencing guidelines to reduce or eliminate prison time for non-violent and drug users and put them into alternative programs because the state can't afford to build the prisons to house them. Indiana has even tougher sentencing laws than TEXAS!

Sadly the state prosecutors association had a hemorrhage over that. I hope they take the money to build these prisons and house the prisoners out of the prosecutor's budgets and salaries.

Good time credit can be a big incentive for prisoners.

ghare: I'm sure the taxpayers are looking forward to providing geriatric care to prisoners.

That's why Prisons for Profit just makes sense!

Harry Freakstorm Quote 2011-04-21 10:20:54 AM

Or fed to the boars with a couple of meds that keep him from going in to shock as the piggies chew his feet off.

Never trust a judge that keeps a pig farm. District Attorney Bricktop approves.

I would have expected it to be used to put people who say "good times" at the end of their crappy little stories in prison. One can dream.

kingoomieiii: The proposed legislation followed the news that convicted child murderer Michael Woodmansee was scheduled for release this fall, after accumulating enough good time to cut 12 years off a 40-year sentence he received for the murder of Jason Foreman.

Yeah, I thought that might have been the cause.

That murder took place not a quarter mile from where I'm sitting right now, actually. I could walk to that house. God what an awful neighborhood that is.

In Wakefield?

Anderson's Pooper: Ohio eliminated good time a number of years ago under a "truth in sentencing" law. However, it only affected those prisoners sentenced after the effective date. The only real difference is that now judges don't have to calculate good time into their sentencing decisions. Before, if you wanted a guy to serve 12 months you sentenced him to 18 figuring he would get 1/3 off for good behavior.

Based on that theory, didn't the judge of that Michael W. case sentence him to 40 years on the basis that he really wanted to sentence him to only 28 (figuring he'd get 12 yrs off for good behavior)?

If so, why all the outrage that this schmuck is getting off after "only" 28 years?

kingoomieiii:
That murder took place not a quarter mile from where I'm sitting right now, actually. I could walk to that house. God what an awful neighborhood that is.

1. A high school student at the time of the murder
Woodmansee was a 16-year-old junior at Rhode Island's South Kingstown High School when he killed Jason Foreman.

2. A loner
According to The Providence Journal, Woodmansee was a loner and had been experiencing violent thoughts for some time before he committed the crime. "Years later, he would tell police and a psychiatrist that he had been thinking about 'what it would be like' to kill someone. He thought it would be easy, easy to get away with it, and some form of fun," the Journal's Tom Mooney recently reported.

3. The son of a police reservist
Jason Foreman was killed in 1975, but his body wasn't discovered until 1982. When the town of South Kingstown, R.I., was searching for Jason, Woodmansee's father, a police reservist, was told to search his own home for the missing boy. But he did not uncover his son's crime.

4. Caught when he attempted another crime
In 1982, Woodmansee was accused of luring a 14-year-old paperboy into his home, plying him with alcohol and attempting to strangle him. The teen escaped and reported the crime. When police were questioning him about the incident with the teen, they also asked about Jason Foreman, and Woodmansee confessed his crime.

5. Kept a mysterious journal and souvenirs
When police searched Woodmansee's home, they made a grisly discovery: Woodmansee kept Jason's skull and some other bones on a dresser. They also found a journal, which Woodmansee had warned them about. He claimed it was fiction, but the journal allegedly contained information about the boy's murder.

The journal was destroyed after Woodmansee was sentenced, because the judge said it would be too upsetting for Jason's family to read. But John Foreman has said that the journal led him to believe that Woodmansee cannibalized his son.

I used to live there, too.
*shudders*
But hey, we got Moonstone beach, so there's that.

I'm trying to come up with something witty about trying to convince the criminals that they want to stay in Cranston... but I'm failing miserably.

/coffee, I needs it.

Good time credit exists for a reason, which is an incentive for prisoners to keep their act together in prison.

It works.

kingoomieiii: Grables'Daughter: Good time credit exists for a reason, which is an incentive for prisoners to keep their act together in prison.

It works.

Well, the system could be changed to negative reinforcement (all infractions add a certain amount of days to your sentence), but it'd be less effective. People (and dogs, actually) respond better to positive reinforcement with regard to behavior alteration.

It worked for me.

: )

Millennium: 7wolf: Well it's about time someone did away with this "positive reinforcement" rubbish. People should obey the law because they are afraid, dammit.

Ideally, you want people to obey the law based on conscience: because it's the right thing to do. As a backup, you want people to obey the law based on rationality: because it's advantageous. Between these two, you can get a lot of people functioning in society.

But there will always be people who cannot or will not obey the law based on these things, and so there is room for another level of backup, to capture at least some of them. Once the first two have failed, the most effective backup yet found is people who obey the law based on fear: because they get into trouble if they don't. It's a sad case, but people who are far enough gone to fall into this third net aren't going to be able to function in society without it. By itself that might be tolerable, but they invariably drag others down as they go, thus causing harm beyond their immediate actions.

Or, to put it another way, what is your third line? When dealing with people for whom appeals to conscience and then rationality have already failed, how would you convince them? Would you not even try, instead turning them loose to do their harm? Would you continue making doomed efforts to use methods that have already shown they don't work on them? Would you lower the bar, basing the law instead on the urges of degenerates so that they can obey based on whim, with all the consequences that entails? What would you do?

Well put. Still waiting for an answer to this one.

Millennium: 7wolf: Well it's about time someone did away with this "positive reinforcement" rubbish. People should obey the law because they are afraid, dammit.

Ideally, you want people to obey the law based on conscience: because it's the right thing to do. As a backup, you want people to obey the law based on rationality: because it's advantageous. Between these two, you can get a lot of people functioning in society.

But there will always be people who cannot or will not obey the law based on these things, and so there is room for another level of backup, to capture at least some of them. Once the first two have failed, the most effective backup yet found is people who obey the law based on fear: because they get into trouble if they don't. It's a sad case, but people who are far enough gone to fall into this third net aren't going to be able to function in society without it. By itself that might be tolerable, but they invariably drag others down as they go, thus causing harm beyond their immediate actions.

Or, to put it another way, what is your third line? When dealing with people for whom appeals to conscience and then rationality have already failed, how would you convince them? Would you not even try, instead turning them loose to do their harm? Would you continue making doomed efforts to use methods that have already shown they don't work on them? Would you lower the bar, basing the law instead on the urges of degenerates so that they can obey based on whim, with all the consequences that entails? What would you do?



I don't know why we decided to take this seriously but if we must... I highly doubt many of those people actually respond to fear that way. Making it scary to get caught won't work unless you believe (realistically or not) that you're likely to get caught, and even then only if you stop to consider the potential consequences at all - because it's not a matter of do x and suffer y, it's a matter of get caught doing x and (probably) suffer y. People who aren't rational to begin with probably aren't the best target for that kind of deterrent. People who are, if they really want to do something, will try to work their way to it without getting caught.

And if I had to deal with that for some reason, I would just keep the ones who prove unable to return to society without harming people imprisoned until/unless they are assessed to have changed. Not in particularly harsh or unpleasant conditions (at least, as far as lacking freedom goes), and not out of any sense of revenge or punishment, but to keep them from doing any more harm as they live out whatever remains of their lives.

/If this seems fragmented it's likely because I'm also cooking bacon right now.

Wodan11 - I doubt the judge or anyone in the legal profession is outraged. The outrage comes from the general public who don't understand the system and don't realize that this was already taken into account.

So one instances ruins it for the rest of the humans in prison. I wonder if the prison industry is behind this.

Stupid idea... good behavior release is probably a huge motivating factor in keeping some prisoners in line.

I just want to point out that a collapse of industry is more important to the govt. than individual rights. If the prison industry is a desperate attempt to keep jobs then..well you can only imagine.

kingoomieiii: Grables'Daughter: Good time credit exists for a reason, which is an incentive for prisoners to keep their act together in prison.

It works.

Well, the system could be changed to negative reinforcement (all infractions add a certain amount of days to your sentence), but it'd be less effective. People (and dogs, actually) respond better to positive reinforcement with regard to behavior alteration.

Or maybe just bring back the strap and electrodes.