WOW! (name edited due to wording: Trey)

[Travis In Austin]

The inability of a system to rid itself of it's worst parts is constipation. No argument there, but the key element of this is who decides what are its worst parts, and how it makes this decision.

Of course no one has the guts to consider this as a serious system - crime still pays well.

Pauln, Pauln, Pauln,

I am aPauled. I agree with the vast majority of your posts, but this one . . . well the only thing I can think of is you were brainstorming, thinking outside the box, or thinking out loud but just haven't had the time to think the thing through.

"The inability of a system to rid itself of it's worst parts is constipation." No argument there, but the key element of this is who decides what are its worst parts, and how it makes this decision.

There are societies in the world that have no tolerance for crime, and virtually no crime. That is true, they are dictatorships, or they are run by religious zelots where women are beaten in public for things like exposing too much of their face. Other countrys that have low crime rates, like the Netherlands, have legalized drugs to the point where people to not have to commit crime in order to get their drugs. I am not aware of any country, that has the freedoms as we do, that has "virtually no crime."

When I was a child I thought all criminals that did what we call misdemeanors went to prison and all that did what we call felonys were executed. That is because you had good parents.

Apparently this is not the case. Come on now, you know the real deal.

Compare the number of convictions meriting the death penalty with the number of executions. Shouldn't these rates be about equal? You lost me here. Are you saying that there are executions where the person did not merit the death penalty? Or are you saying that the death penalty is not used enough? In Texas the only capital offense if murder with special circumstances. Under your system, if I understand it, everyone in prision is on death row because your ranking could get to 10,001. So a felony shoplifter is on death row with a habitual drug user, a child molester, a rapist, a murder, etc.

Maybe there is a way to address all these problems: prevention of horrible crimes, what to do with extremely offensive criminals, prison over crowding, prisoner misbehavior, and the behavior of ex-cons after release.

How do we decide, or who decides what is "extreamely offensive"? There is not a single state that makes first offense child molestation a capital offense. Texas, for the first time this session, is considering making a repeat offender subject to the death penalty.

How about this?

1] Each state decides what capacity of prison population they want to hold as a fixed amont. For example, 10,000 inmates.

2] Each inmate in each state is ranked for how bad he is. The lower the number, the worse. Ranks are updated as needed.

3] As new bad guys are sent to prison they are ranked as well.

4] At the point that the 10,001st bad guy goes to prison, the one ranked #1 is executed - like a first in first out (FIFO) inventory system, except here it is worst in, first out (WIFO).

Benefits:

Prison population is stable. You got me there. Except who picks the number, does it every go up at the population grows? What if the current prison population is 500,000 and we need more money for a new freeway so some politican says, the number will be 100,000 so we can save money, do the rankings and then get rid of 400,000. Or another says, I don't want any executions, make the number 1,000,000

Prisoners have a strong incentive to behave themselves and keep high up in the rank away from the threat of execution. Would need to see data on this, but I doubt it.

The worse ones dissappear regularly based on the quantity of misbehavior and incarceration of new bad guys from the outside. Yep, that is true. Again, who determines who is "worse."

Bad guys on the outside will think twice before commiting crimes that put them on the inside where their presence threatens those below them in the rank who all get pushed closer to the #1 spot. That is the whole falicy of your system, the death penalty does not deter crime. Mass does not have it and their incidence of capital murder is no higher or lower then states such as Texas that implement all the time. Likewise, Texas' capital murder rate isn't any lower then any other state.

For repeat offenders, this counts against them and lowers them in the rank, more so each time. Who does the ranking, who decides it, what if you are ranked wrong by mistake, is there an appeal, a review? Or do they have to trust a goverment clerk? Can the ranking system be changed midstream such that if you had a low number when you went in but because of a change in the way the rankings were done can you shoot up to 10,000?

Those inmates in the bottom of the rank (close to execution) have a strong incentive to prevent more outsiders from coming in to the system - their influence on those outside might work to prevent crime. Their life depends on the overall population getting down well below the highwater mark of 10,000. Wouldn't it work just the opposite, wouldn't their foes be trying to frame innocent people so that they could push their foes to 10,001?

.

Of course no one has the guts to consider this as a serious system - crime still pays well. No I think there are plenty of people with the guts, Sadam comes to mind, Hitler, all sorts of folks. Oh you mean has the guts here in the U.S.? Well I thnk before you can work on this system they would have their work cut out for them. First they would have to repeal the constitution, and that would require an act of congress and then ratified by 2/3 of the states.

You are correct, there are a lot of places that have little or no crime. I have been to several as part of legal exchanges with countries like Cuba, the former Soviet Union, etc. I can tell you there is not one that I would want to live in.

Travis

[Islander]

What a scary and depressing thread. If the leaders set the example, then for a government to kill residents, even evil and nasty ones, makes killing seem legitimate. This results in a type of death culture, with concepts like "That man needed killing!" becoming commonplace in the public mind and making murder seem less abhorrent than it is. Then violent people see it a logical option to get their way. Deterrent? They don't think they'll get caught, or don't care...