Veteran Status is Not a Mitigating Factor in Sentencing for Crime

Here.

Of course, veteran status is an aggravating factor.

1) Veterans were screened. They were superior to the general population. They endured training requiring great discipline and self control, to go forward in the face of live fire, not to run away, to coordinate attacks, to plan ahead, to judge great uncertainty, and to obey inscrutable orders. PTSD makes people try to avoid conflict, not hurt others.

2) What makes them hurt others are traditional reasons. Alcohol and caffeine addiction. Antisocial personality. Paranoid and mood disorders with onset after discharge, the average age being in the 30's and 40's.

3) Because being veteran implies training to hurt people, veterans are more dangerous than matched non-veterans. They should be incapacitated more than non-veterans.

4) The above reports, 1 in 12 prisoners are veterans. That validates veteran status as a protective factor against criminality. 1 in 4 adult males in the United States are veterans. Because of the screening, training, treatment, being a vet makes one more likely to be a moral, upstanding, productive person, and drops the chance of committing a crime by 2/3.

5) Making this a mitigating factor, is similar in logic to the Leona Helmsley defense. Juries did not buy it. She evaded $4 million in taxes, after claiming work on her private home as a business deduction. She claimed to have paid $400 million in taxes. What is $4 million after paying 100 times more? Large, past tax payments should mitigate her culpability and sentencing. Jury did not accept that argument.

6) The idea of veteran status as a mitigating factor is an insult to the sacrifices, and high level of performance of our service members.

My Algorithm for Sentencing Algorithms

1) Algorithms should be written and owned by the legislature.

2) They should change yearly, based on continual feedback from real world experience.

3) They should be subject to continual and unlimited public comment.

4) They should carry tort liability for any deviation from professional standards of due care, although
they totally qualify for strict liability.

5) They should be farmed out to experienced data mining businesses, such as Amazon.

6) They should be validated by household surveys of crime victimization, the gold standard of crime measurement. The surveys should include other crimes than the 8 common law crimes, such as identity theft.

7) All biases, such a left wing values, should be mercilessly excluded, in compliance with Equal Protection rights. End all false mitigation factors, which are really, aggravating factors. Those advocating for groups being privileged by the Democratic Party, the party of lawyer employment, should be forced to accept released felons in the houses surrounding theirs.

8) Machines are 100 times better than living beings. Try communing to work in a car or on a horse, on a snow day. All judges and prosecutors should be replaced by robots running algorithms. Equal treatment and less extreme stupidity of decisions would be the benefits.

Punishment in the Management of Addiction

Punishment is a major factor in the treatment of addiction. Addiction is defined by continued use, in the face of punishment (loss of freedom, health, family, money). Therefore a greater dose of punishment is needed to help addicts.

1) People with something to lose have a higher chance of recovery, doctors, admirals, CEO's vs janitors, convicted felons, prostitutes;

2) the punishment of alcohol use and the forbearance of opiate use in Vietnam resulted in the 15% addiction rate to opiate among soldiers, and less alcohol use. Upon return to the US, with no punishment of alcohol use, and punishment of opiate use, the rate of opiate addiction in the returning vets dropped to the expected 1%. The remaining US addicts had features similar to the addict population of the US, and were more deviant than the addicts who stopped;

3) Prohibition of alcohol dropped alcohol use only 50%, its having no popular support. Yet, the benefits were great if under reported, drops in crime (except, of course, for bootlegging), drops in crashes, economic boom times, drops in the rates of death from cirrhosis, which is a reliable indicator of the rates of alcoholism (only 10% of alcoholics die of it, but it is a statistical indicator);

4) severe punishments end all addiction, in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the old Communist China. Zero addiction. These have extreme cost benefit ratios. Yes, shoot an addict, but save the lives of a hundred who do not become addicted;

5) the threat of punishment after death also is effective, from religion. Drink, go to hell, if Muslim, Mormon, Methodist. Low rates of alcoholism, and the prevention of all its consequences.

So harsh sentencing is effective, contrary to the false propaganda of the lawyer. I am going to translate here, "evidence based." That means rent seeking, make work jobs for registered members of the Democratic Party. "Evidence based" is a form of quackery.

A review elsewhere.

Judge Changes Sentencing to Life from the Death Penalty, to Punish Prosecutorial Misconduct

Here.

Brazen display of shocking lawyer profession stupidity. This incredible stupidity is well known. More shocking is the stupidity of the people here whose intellect has not been decimated by a legal education.

1) A listening device is placed in a cell. It records the voluntary statements of a mass murderer. These statements are made under circumstances promoting candor, rather than the really stupid lawyer procedure that promotes the cover up. Not only is this really stupid lawyer procedure inducing a cover up, it implants false memories. So, 25% of exonerated people confessed to murders they had not committed by the incredibly stupid agents of the incredibly stupid prosecutor, the pigs. So, obtaining the reliable statement of the truth is a form of unethical misconduct;

2)there is no mention that the information skewed, or distorted any aspect of the verdict or of the sentencing process. So, this is misconduct that caused no harm, no reversible error, no effect on validity of any outcome;

3) what is the remedy by this incredibly stupid judge? He privileges a mass murderer, to punish a prosecutor who is completely unaffected, personally. But, the future victims of this mass murderers will pay the price instead. The judge fails to understand the Prince and the Pauper Effect that is the exclusionary rule. The Prince has been a bad boy. The Pauper is spanked. How does that improve the conduct of the Prince? I do not understand this incredibly stupid rule. If the evidence was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, punish the police, and the prosecutor, who is their master. Charge legal costs to their personal assets. Throw the police and the prosecutor in jail. Have them lashed and caned. But do not punish the future victims of the criminal they are loosing on the public, or in the general population of the state penitentiary;

4) as to the exclusionary rule, it embraces the Prince and the Pauper Effect. Prince is a bad boy, so spank the pauper, to teach the Prince a lesson, and to improve the Prince's future behavior. The whipping boy doctrine does not just violate the Fifth Amendment procedural (real) due process, behavioral principles, all common sense, but also the Establishment Clause. It was based on the idea that the monarch spoke with the voice of God (a delusional and psychotic doctrine), and had immunity based on his Divine Right. Students in Life Skills would disagree. If asked, who should get spanked, they would point with their spoons at the Prince if it were he that had been a bad boy.

This incredibly stupid judge must be impeached. Statutes should reverse all use of the exclusionary laws, and replace them with direct punishment of the offending police and prosecutors.

 Probation or Parole Sharking, Now Registry Sharking

 The officials practicing it might see the same penalties as loan sharks.

This is a game several parolees and probationers have told me about. A remedy should be included in any reforms.

Three months before release, the authorities find a violation. Example? Mother's vacuum cleaner is in the trunk of the car. It is not stolen. It is borrowed, with permission, to clean the house. This violation results in a $3500 fine, an extension of 5 years, and impounding of the car and of the vacuum cleaner. The latter is not returned to the mother. There is no legal recourse. The penalties are without any hearing.

Update (4-17-17). Registry Sharking. Article here.