Another false headline. This guy is being locked up because he thinks he’s entitled to other peoples’ property.
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That’s one heck of a sweet tooth. Imagine if he’d stolen a loaf of bread! Where’s Inspector Javert when we needed him?
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Peeps aren’t actually edible, are they?
Arizona’s the same, correct?
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Some the state is going to spend several hundred times the amount of his theft to try him, and then a thousand times that every year to hold him?
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Good thing he didn’t do this next door in Texas. He’d be looking at execution, 'cuz they’re tough on crime there.
That’s why the Lone Star State is a crime-free utopia.
I dunno. I think LA is “worst” and has the largest prison population of any state, but I could be wrong. I’d have to look up AZ, but something sounds familiar about it also having major private prison influence in its politics. I seem to remember something about Jan Brewer’s coffers being filled with private prison industry money.
Someone recently said that we should lock people up if they present a genuine danger to the rest of us, not because they just happen to piss us off.
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Imprisoning a person 20 yrs to life for shoplifting seems like it would be definitional of cruel and unusual punishment. It is also a huge waste of societal resources. There are myriad less expensive ways that this man’s situation could be dealt with.
$31 worth of candy ----> $18,800 per year to house inmate x 20 years = $376,000 cost to the tax payer? Seems like a good plan.
Obviously no way he’ll get that much time, but even a year is vastly too much time. Sentencing guidelines and habitual offender statutes are absurd relics of a ‘tough on crime’ period that has lead to the U.S. being the world leader in incarcerated citizens (overall, not even as a percent of population!).
If we spent half the amount of money we do on locking people up and diverted it to job/skills training and basic education, we’d cut down the cost of our criminal justice system by a huge amount in the long term.
Well, why should we spend money to give them free programming that law abiding, struggling citizens don’t get? Good point, and one which I think deserves consideration. But we are spending the money on incarcerated individuals anyway just to have them sit around and be unproductive, shadow members of society that just keep getting stuck in a cycle of criminality and poor life choices.
I can remember when the states were pushing for the 3 strikes legislation. All they talked about was getting the worst offenders off the streets and never letting them out of jail after the 3rd strike and everyone was for this. However, what they failed to tell the voters is that even if the three strikes weren’t violent crimes the states were throwing not only the worst of the worst away for life but the felons that weren’t violent. So it has ended up with a felon who has committed 3 non-violent crimes in jail longer than someone that has committed murder, manslaughter, rapes, etc.
Perhaps they should have tried rehab in the first place. My guess would be that there was not much in terms of getting an education, learning something useful, or becoming a good citizen during his time in jail.
The advice “just stop stealing stuff” would certainly solve the problem, if followed. But in practical terms it is a bit like “just say no”. Good idea, but it needs some help and reinforcement through structural measures. And this is where the American justice system fails in a gigantic and disgusting way.
BTW, in most European countries the prison sentence for murder, while nominally life, is in reality closer to 15 years. 5 years less than the possible sentence for the candy theft. AND the murder rate in Europe is much, much lower than in the US.
They also have much nicer prisons and an actual focus on rehabilitation, rather than simple incarceration…
This is what you get when prisons are privatized, and the pressure is on to keep them full. Petty theft should be treated as such and never reach this level of insanity. Prosecutors have to prove they are tough on crime in order to get reelected so they can then move up to governor.
Realize the cost to taxpayers is more than $50,000 a year. Seems like a poor use of the peoples money. Save some money by firing the prosecuter.
Forget the moral aspect, it’s just dumb-ass economics: the people of Louisiana are going to spend $18,000 a year to keep this dude locked up so a shoplifter is off the streets?
There really needs to be a federal standard for 3rd strike-type laws which stipulates that only violent crimes can count as strikes. Any strike.