This is another great idea that I had: how to handle drunken drivers. Coming on the heels of my proposal regarding prison overcrowding, you may at first think that I'm proposing capital punishment for drunks.
I have considered it, from time to time. In a posting to an online community a few years ago, I asserted that more people are killed every year by drunk drivers than by terrorists. I had the numbers to support that assertion, too. Even though I have many friends who drive when they've had too much to drink, I think that drunken drivers should be apprehended immediately and handled severely. I've known of too many lives that were ruined by drunken drivers to feel sympathy for anybody who drives while drunk -- even my friends.
Okay, now that I got that off my chest, here's my proposal:
1) First, give every police officer the authority -- no, the mandate -- to pass immediate judgement on a person suspected of drunk driving. The laws on the books today allow an officer to cite someone based on their failure to pass a sobriety test, their failure to pass a breathalyzer test, or their refusal to take a breathalyzer test. Let's keep those three criteria -- they'll do just fine for what I have in mind.
2) Second, when a police officer determines that a driver is drunk, using the three criteria currently on the books, the police officer is to get on the radio and call in The Crusher (dun dun dunnnnn...).
The Crusher is just what its name implies: a giant hydraulic ram, mounted on the back of a flatbed semi trailer, big enough to hold a Dodge Ram 4WD or a Ford F99950 with oversized tires, a lift kit, and a roll bar with an array of fog lamps, plus a crew cab and an extended bed. The Crusher is also strong enough to convert said oversized excuse for male anatomical deficiency into an 8-inch-thick steel pancake. The Crusher is accompanied by another truck, a flatbed semi with a crane at one end, the kind you see hauling bricks or roofing supplies or sod.
The number of Crushers required for a given state will depend in large part on the estimated number of drunks on the road on a representative Friday night. It'll vary from state to state, and from legislature to legislature.
3) When the police call it in, The Crusher arrives with its traveling companion. The drunk is given five minutes to remove incidental personal items from the vehicle (but nothing semi-permanently attached, like radio or wheels). Then, while the drunk watches from a safe distance, in the custody of the arresting officer, the crane picks up the vehicle and deposits it in The Crusher. In five minutes or less, The Crusher has reduced the vehicle to scrap metal. The crane then picks up the crushed car and deposits it on the second flatbed, where the operator secures it in place and eventually hauls it away to a smelter.
4) The operator of The Crusher gives the drunk two pieces of paper: one is a receipt for the scrap metal, complete with the former vehicle's VIN and license number; the other is a bill for the cost of crushing the car and transporting it to the smelter. If, after the numbers are crunched, the state owes the drunk money, he has 30 days to show up at the courthouse to collect. On the other hand, if the drunk owes the state money, he has 30 days to show up at the courthouse to pay up.
Either way, it soon becomes too expensive for the drunk to continue driving drunk. If that was his own car, then he has to go buy another one. His insurance won't cover it -- and if his insurance does cover it, then you can bet his premiums will go way, way up, and quickly. If that was a car he'd borrowed from a friend, his friend will take it out of his hide, because the same state law that authorizes The Crusher will indemnify the state from claims in cases where the drunk was driving someone else's car. If the car was stolen, then fine: the owner's insurance will handle the case much as it does today.
But if the car was stolen from, um, let's say, someone who belongs to a fraternal organization whose members take acts like this very personally and act swiftly and unitedly to serve up their own brand of justice upon the offender, well, let's hope that drunk can run really fast.
Either way (as I said), it soon becomes too expensive for the drunk to continue driving drunk. And that solves one of the biggest problems with today's drunk-driving laws: they're ineffective as a deterrent to driving drunk. The statistics vary, but even the most conservative statistic says that 1 out of 10 drivers on the road on a Friday or Saturday night is legally intoxicated. Maybe the prospect of punishment that is a swift (say "immediate"), certain, and tangible blow to the pocketbook will do a better job as a deterrent.
Showing posts with label capital punishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capital punishment. Show all posts
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A Modest Proposal: Solving the Twin Problems of Capital Punishment and Prison Overcrowding
This is an idea that has bouncing around in my mind for several years. I am certain that it will not be palatable to either political conservatives or political liberals. Both sides would lose too many friends (not to mention constituents) should this idea become reality. It's just too far-fetched for anybody to take it seriously.
Having said that, let me beg your indulgence for a few minutes - for as long as it takes you to read this entry, scratch your head and say "Whaaat?", and then reread it to make sure you weren't mistaken.
For decades now, the individual states that make up the United States of America have been struggling with the issue of capital punishment. The debate will continue for decades more. I do not wish to discuss its merits or drawbacks here, nor the rationale for its continuation or its abolition. Wiser people than I have written entire books about the issue. For now, I want to carve out a little, tiny piece of the argument in favor, the part that says that execution of criminals allows us to rid society of these dangerous and damaging elements. (Reword that any way you like, and be happy with it. Then let's move on.)
Other nations have also struggled with this issue. Period. Let's not step into those waters, okay?
The U.S. and other countries have also struggled with the issue of prison overcrowding. The local county sheriff has at times had to free some of the more lightweight criminals who have been tried and convicted by the courts in order to make room for the ones who really do need to be removed from society, for society's own safety. The fact is that this nation's courts are putting people behind bars faster than the nation can build prison beds to accommodate them. The nation's taxpayers and their representatives are demanding tougher sentences for criminal offenders, but somebody forgot to make a place for them all.
According to the monthly report available at our state Department of Corrections website (find your own!), our state prisons had almost 15,000 beds in November 2009, with a total state population of around 5,000,000 residents. That's 3 beds (or inmates, if you prefer) for every 1000 residents.
But the state Dept. of C. was in charge of 22,000 convicted criminals in that same month, meaning that 7000 of them had to go elsewhere or go free.
Here's how my proposal works.
1) First, you set a maximum inmate-to-resident ratio. That ratio of 3 to 1000 sounds like a good place to start. Ignore the question of "legal" vs. "illegal" residents. Just use whatever number the U.S. Census gives you.
2) Second, you only build the number of prison beds allowed by the inmate ratio. If your state population grows, then you can expand the prison capacity -- and if your state shrinks (Hello Michigan, anybody home? Helloooooooo...), then you demolish or inactivate some prison capacity.
3) Now, you have a panel of judges review the sentences of all the existing prisoners and rank them in order, from who deserves the most to live (litterbugs and parking-ticket scofflaws, for example ) to who deserves the least to live (serial killers, abusers of the innocent, people who drive less than 65 mi/hr in the fast lane on I-25 and won't move over, people who never use their turn signals, and people who talk too loudly on their cellphones in inappropriate places, for example -- okay, maybe only the first two).
Everybody gets a rank number. Currently, according to our state Department of Corrections website, there are currently over 22,000 offenders in a system designed to handle just under 15,000.
4) Once everybody gets a rank number, you take everybody with a number greater than 15,000 and you execute them.
Congratulations! This takes care of today's overcrowding problem, and it reduces the question of capital punishment to one of space utilization, nothing more. I'll leave the details and the logistics of the body disposal for the bureaucrats to figure out.
5) Now you have 15,000 beds and 15,000 inmates with numbers of merit, or rank numbers, from 1 to 15,000. The next time somebody is convicted of a crime, the judge has to decide where to put the convicted criminal in the list of 15,000. Say it's someone who ran a chop shop in Aurora and was convicted on 178 counts of grand theft auto and interstate transportation of stolen property. That's pretty serious, so the judge assigns him the number 12,000. That means that everybody with a number of 12,000 or more has a new number, one number higher. What do you do with the poor guy who's now 15,001? Bang! Bye-bye!
The beauty of this system is it always gets rid of the ones who have done the least to merit society's forgiveness, or who would do the most damage to society if they were released to walk the streets again. Eventually you've killed off all the really bad guys, and your 15,000 beds are full of petty thieves and crooked politicians. Whenever a new really bad guy hits the court system, he's almost automatically guaranteed the 15,001st slot, and so out the door he goes. So in the end, society has rid itself of all the terribly bad guys, and all that's left are 15,000 beds full of jaywalkers and pencil embezzlers.
I dunno; I think it's a good idea. But it will never fly.
Note to would-be commenters: all comments on this blog are moderated. If you are a raving loon, forget about it and move along.
Note to would-be plagiarizers and copycats: everybody knows they read it here first. If you insist on copying this without attribution, or representing it as your own work, you're well on your way to occupying bed #15,000.
Having said that, let me beg your indulgence for a few minutes - for as long as it takes you to read this entry, scratch your head and say "Whaaat?", and then reread it to make sure you weren't mistaken.
For decades now, the individual states that make up the United States of America have been struggling with the issue of capital punishment. The debate will continue for decades more. I do not wish to discuss its merits or drawbacks here, nor the rationale for its continuation or its abolition. Wiser people than I have written entire books about the issue. For now, I want to carve out a little, tiny piece of the argument in favor, the part that says that execution of criminals allows us to rid society of these dangerous and damaging elements. (Reword that any way you like, and be happy with it. Then let's move on.)
Other nations have also struggled with this issue. Period. Let's not step into those waters, okay?
The U.S. and other countries have also struggled with the issue of prison overcrowding. The local county sheriff has at times had to free some of the more lightweight criminals who have been tried and convicted by the courts in order to make room for the ones who really do need to be removed from society, for society's own safety. The fact is that this nation's courts are putting people behind bars faster than the nation can build prison beds to accommodate them. The nation's taxpayers and their representatives are demanding tougher sentences for criminal offenders, but somebody forgot to make a place for them all.
According to the monthly report available at our state Department of Corrections website (find your own!), our state prisons had almost 15,000 beds in November 2009, with a total state population of around 5,000,000 residents. That's 3 beds (or inmates, if you prefer) for every 1000 residents.
But the state Dept. of C. was in charge of 22,000 convicted criminals in that same month, meaning that 7000 of them had to go elsewhere or go free.
Here's how my proposal works.
1) First, you set a maximum inmate-to-resident ratio. That ratio of 3 to 1000 sounds like a good place to start. Ignore the question of "legal" vs. "illegal" residents. Just use whatever number the U.S. Census gives you.
2) Second, you only build the number of prison beds allowed by the inmate ratio. If your state population grows, then you can expand the prison capacity -- and if your state shrinks (Hello Michigan, anybody home? Helloooooooo...), then you demolish or inactivate some prison capacity.
3) Now, you have a panel of judges review the sentences of all the existing prisoners and rank them in order, from who deserves the most to live (litterbugs and parking-ticket scofflaws, for example ) to who deserves the least to live (serial killers, abusers of the innocent, people who drive less than 65 mi/hr in the fast lane on I-25 and won't move over, people who never use their turn signals, and people who talk too loudly on their cellphones in inappropriate places, for example -- okay, maybe only the first two).
Everybody gets a rank number. Currently, according to our state Department of Corrections website, there are currently over 22,000 offenders in a system designed to handle just under 15,000.
4) Once everybody gets a rank number, you take everybody with a number greater than 15,000 and you execute them.
Congratulations! This takes care of today's overcrowding problem, and it reduces the question of capital punishment to one of space utilization, nothing more. I'll leave the details and the logistics of the body disposal for the bureaucrats to figure out.
5) Now you have 15,000 beds and 15,000 inmates with numbers of merit, or rank numbers, from 1 to 15,000. The next time somebody is convicted of a crime, the judge has to decide where to put the convicted criminal in the list of 15,000. Say it's someone who ran a chop shop in Aurora and was convicted on 178 counts of grand theft auto and interstate transportation of stolen property. That's pretty serious, so the judge assigns him the number 12,000. That means that everybody with a number of 12,000 or more has a new number, one number higher. What do you do with the poor guy who's now 15,001? Bang! Bye-bye!
The beauty of this system is it always gets rid of the ones who have done the least to merit society's forgiveness, or who would do the most damage to society if they were released to walk the streets again. Eventually you've killed off all the really bad guys, and your 15,000 beds are full of petty thieves and crooked politicians. Whenever a new really bad guy hits the court system, he's almost automatically guaranteed the 15,001st slot, and so out the door he goes. So in the end, society has rid itself of all the terribly bad guys, and all that's left are 15,000 beds full of jaywalkers and pencil embezzlers.
I dunno; I think it's a good idea. But it will never fly.
Note to would-be commenters: all comments on this blog are moderated. If you are a raving loon, forget about it and move along.
Note to would-be plagiarizers and copycats: everybody knows they read it here first. If you insist on copying this without attribution, or representing it as your own work, you're well on your way to occupying bed #15,000.
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