Tough on Crime

 As I write this I do not know what will be the outcome of my meeting with my sex offender counselor. I do not know if she will persist in her demand I have no internet access. I could easily go back to prison for failing to comply with counseling.

How could this be? This is a topic buried in my notes from ten years back which I have yet to post here. The federal criminal justice system imposes a long prison and then supervised release:

...Supervised release "is a unique method of post-confinement supervision invented by the Congress for a series of sentencing reforms" included in the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Gozlon-Peretz v. United States, 498 U.S. 395, 407 (1991). By creating supervised release, Congress sought to give district courts broad authority to "protect the public and `to facilitate the reintegration of the defendant into the community.'" See United States v. Vallejo, 69 F.3d 992, 994 (quoting U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 5D1.1 comment n.2 (1995))....

United States v. Wing 

 The counselor could say I was not complying with court ordered treatment and there I go back to Fort Dix. This is your tax dollars at work.

I post today due to reading an interview here on the ineffectiveness of long prison sentences. My judge said my sentence of 151 months in prison was to deter me and others. Frankly, I was quite deterred by the time of my sentencing as I had acquired a greater degree of lucidity than I had for a while and never been as enamored of my crime as presumed by the government. My time in prison did give me time to write and read which did lead me away from my self-destructive ideas. As for my sentencing deterring others - did my sentence deter you from viewing child pornography? The reason for long sentences gives the politicians the ability to hoodwink the public that action has been taken that will protect them. Do follow the above link.

Another inspiration was a book review from the Loos Angeles Review of Books on how the United States Supreme Court does not protect our civil rights from the police. Politicians create a bogeyman and offer up only force as the problem's solution. That may be through upholding brutal police tactics or relaxing requirements for search warrants or imposing long prison sentences for the sake only of punishment, not reform. Again, your tax dollars at work.

I hope you follow both links.

sch