Jail & Death

Well, yesterday at 11:00 PST, Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by a firing squad, the death penalty inflicted upon him. There needs to be more of this.

Harsh penalties, that is. As I see it, jail currently doesn't provide enough weight to be used as punishment. Sure, you're taken out of the workplace for however long you're in the slammer, but you're given work there, and chances are that you were unemployed before you entered. I mean, the facilities provided in jail are just overboard.

Really, it's like, "Oh, no! I just shot a man and now I'm going somewhere where I will have Wifi, 3 hot meals, a bed, and a job! For five years? How will I ever survive?" Jail is supposed to be a punishment, not a better life. For those homeless folks who commit some crime, they're living better in jail, not worse. And they're living at our expense. That's what really pisses me off. No! I do not want to pay an extra $50 (Okay, fine, it's my parents, not me, paying taxes) to give every inmate at the county jail access to cable TV. It may be inhumane to make inmates eat off the floor, but it sure as hell isn't necessary to give them everything you are.

Let me reiterate. Jail is supposed to be a bad place to be. Not a place where you get paid for the labor you do and get room and board for free. Honestly, if I'm paying some inmate to do manual labor, I'd rather that labor not get done, and not pay him. No, they should not have a new basketball court installed, why are you putting that as higher priority than the city court? Which will make you more money? Which will conform more to what jail is supposed to be?

I'm not asking for anything inhumane done to the inmates. Just stop feeding so much money into the jails, and take away the unnecessary amenities. Simple enough. Maybe that will help you get some more budget for other things, hm?

Now, I'm betting some of you are asking, "What about labor laws?", and "If the people getting out of jail have no money and no job, how will they not end up in jail again?"
For the first question, for a majority of those landed in jail for the long run - I'm talking five, ten, twenty-five years here, not a month - they did something pretty goddamn bad. Murder, rape, arson, fraud. You know what? You think I want to pay someone who could have killed my niece? Let's take Christopher Monfort into account. For those of you not in Seattle, he was responsible for the murder of a cop. If you were the brother or sister of the cop, would you want to be paying for Christopher's job in jail? Would you want him to enjoy a swimming pool, internet access, and fresh meals (All for free) at your expense? I think not.

Going to the second question, I honestly have no full answer for that. Part of me wants to say, "Screw them, they made that decision, they have to live with the results., but the other part of me knows that some things were unintentional, and people should be able to redeem themselves. But then that other part rebuts with, "If they want to become a working member of society again, they'll pull themselves up."
But honestly, the chances of you being employed after a prolonged stay in jail are next to nil.
This presents a pretty large dilemma that I'll avoid for now. I'll give it some thought, and get back to all of you later on.

This is getting pretty long already, so I'll make a few last points, then wrap it up. And by a few last points, I mean another 1,000 words. (Exactly 1,111, believe it or not.)

In Washington State, there is no "guilty by means of insanity" ruling. Yes, people cannot control their actions while insane. But they can control if they go nutters. What I mean is, people who have some sort of mental disease have drugs to suppress it. If they purposefully go off those drugs, anything they do after should be pinned on them. My reasoning is, if they took one course of action (Not taking your pills) all directly resulting consequences (Something which lands you in the grey-bar hotel) are your fault. You can't blame it on some astral entity who told you to do it, or that you didn't know what you were doing. Please, someone pass a "guilty by means of insanity" bill...

And finally, lawyers, this one is on you. Stop making getting the death penalty so dammed expensive. I don't give a rip that you could make two million by saving this guy. He's raped fifteen women. He should have died after the first. (Or the third, if you're going off the three strikes rule) Check this place out for the exorbitant prices states pay for the death penalty. I mean, wow. What. The. Hell. It should not cost that much to remove someone from the realm of the living. And the amounts of political correctness injected into how we kill them makes me want to vomit. The only way we can kill them is by injecting them with lethal chemicals, and they can't take longer than X minutes, or it's too much pain and inhumane? Don't you think they were put a little less than human when they killed five members of society? Or when they nearly starved a fifteen year old girl to death? Or when they beat and raped over thirty women? (The last two have definitely occurred; I don't remember the exact cases. The first probably has, though I don't know any exact event for it.) Yeah, I'm thinking they can take a little pain given how much they caused. While I'm at it, good on you Utah, for the firing squad. Cost-effective, and quick.

As a parting thought, remember. Jail is supposed to be a penance. You're supposed to atone for your crimes, or at least, pay for them by giving back to society. You're hardly giving back to society if you're playing basketball and reclining using a computer to surf the web on the taxpayer dime. Jail is way too lenient, at least in the USA. Think about a world without rape, murder, or fraud. Is that achievable when it costs so much to sentence someone to death, and jails are so posh? No.

NOTE: I realize I may sound like an Uber-Conservative/heartless person at parts. That's my opinion on the subject. Take it up with me if you like.