How to catch a thief

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I'm not trying to win any debate, I'm just stating an opinion. My post wasn't directed at you directly[I/], but seeing as you want to go toe-to-toe, I'll play:

Of course, if I witnessed someone committing a crime, I would consider them guilty of that crime, as long as I believed my own eyes and thought myself of sound mind (which I do, mostly). That much is common sense. I consider myself a pacifist, so, I would walk away from somebody beating me, but I wouldn't stand there taking it.

But, to be guilty, in the eyes of the law, of an offence, criteria need to be met. It doesn't matter to society if you consider someone guilty of a crime, whether you saw it with your own eyes or not, what matters if if they are guilty in law, if they are, they deserve to be punished to the full extent that the law allows.

And this is where I see the problem with citizens, be it all or just most, carrying guns. Take your friends example.

So, they are now not just Judge and Jury, they are potential executioner. Did they ask his side of the story? Do they know that he was about to steal stuff. Of course they don't, they can only assume. Maybe he was a homeless guy looking for shelter for the night. Maybe he made a mistake and thought it was his own vehicle. Maybe a hundred other scenarios, all of which might seem unlikely. Doesn't make him guilty of theft, does it (or even attempted theft)? Where is the justice? What if they had shot him and later found out he was mentally ill, and had a fondness for sleeping in other people pickups? Would they be justified? I would say a big NO!

But that clearly isn't the case, is it? If that was so, we wouldn't have crime, except in a few case of people who like being in prison, being fined, being executed, whatever. Unfortunately, prison/corporal punishment/arming the public doesn't work, not as a deterrent. True, it keeps undesirable people out of free society, but that is merely treating the symptoms. Effective policy, in my opinion, should treat the causes of the social problem that we call crime.



Oh, and BTW, there's no offence meant in anything I've said here, I'm happy to debate all day, I'm not into arguing though

 

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I'll have to answer you later. I'll be gone most of the day. It was a good answer, but I think filled with misconceptions.

 

Look forward to it!

 

Ok. I don't have a personal problem with someone not wanting to fight. I don't look for fights either. I'll try to get out of them but if someone is attacking me, trying to physically harm me or someone else, then I'll fight. There have been a couple of bullies who were very surprised by my actions. They didn't pick on someone around me again.

The question this brings up in my mind is this: Will a bully, which is what most hooligans really are, be influenced to stop bullying other people by someone who gives them a response such as yours? You have every right to be a pacifist, but what is the resulting influence upon the bully from your actions? Will he be more or less likely to continue in his behavior based upon the conditioning that occured by your response? Did you teach them that there is more risk or less risk associated with their behavior?

Really? That's all society cares about? So, if you walked in on a man raping your wife society would want you to just sit and watch, document what he is doing, and then turn him into the police? He shouldn't be punished right then and there by a very angry husband, and then be given the punishment that society deems fit for his crime?

Really? How were they judge, jury, and executioner? When someone tells you, yes, I was trying to steal from you, and tells the cops the same things are you going to believe them? If your vehicle is parked in your own driveway, and you see someone you don't know breaking into it is it a reasonable assumption that the person doing the breaking and entering knows that it isn't his vehicle because it isn't his driveway or in front of his home?

What gives anyone the right to go snooping through other people's possessions just because they are homeless? Does the fact that I'm a poor guy give me the right to go see what my neighbor has that I can take for my own use without his permission? Breaking and entering is breaking and entering. A person's situation has nothing to do with whether what they are doing is right or wrong. If it did then terrorists would be justified in killing innocent people. It's ironic how you've adopted their line of reasoning without knowing it, or is it that they have adopted using your line of logic to excuse themselves because it creates sympathy in the minds of so many people and so they use it to manipulate you?

It's also funny how someone who I'll assume has never handled a gun very much from his standpoint of being a pacifist can make assumptions about what might happen when two people experienced in the usage and handling of firearms are involved. The only way that guy would have gotten shot is if he had attacked them, and if he had then that's on his head. He was clearly where he had no business being.

To tell the truth I'm amazed that you think that just because a person might be mentally ill it gives him the right to do whatever he wants and people should just leave him alone. It's as if you value him or her more than you do the rights of those whom his behavior is affecting. This whole discussion seems to me that people place more emphasis upon the rights of criminals than the rights of law abiding citizens. No one has the right to engage in wrongful behavior and when they do they forfeit a certain portion of their rights.

What a huge misconception. First I must say you've obviously never lived around or among many criminals. I, unfortunately, knew quite a few in my younger years. I myself wasn't a criminal but I knew some murderers, theives, burglars, drug dealers, etc.... I ran aound with them, associated with them on a daily basis. I know their mindsets, how they think and reason.

Have you ever heard of Pavlov's dogs? Most people have. He found that if you give intermittent rewards it increased whatever behavior was being studied. It's also been shown in studies of human beings that only giving intermittent punishments actually increases the will to participate in negative behaviors. Thus, with the justice system that is now in vogue, and the family history of most criminals, most criminals are not punished on a regular basis for their behavior from a very young age, and when they are punished it's an intermittent punishment. IOW's they are not punished every time they indulge in negative behavior. Thus it continually increases the will to continue in criminal behavior. Society, by leniency, actually increases the will to offend because the criminals live with the mindset that they aren't going to be caught, and if they do, they're going to get off.

This is one reason punishing the victims of crimes for defending themselves and their property is such a stupid thing to do. It actually increases the will to commit crime in the minds of criminals. They must be taught that there will always be risk associated with their criminal behavior. That is the only to stop it. Intermittent punishment only increases criminal behavior and that is exactly what the criminal justice system has done for decades, and society has done by teaching that criminals aren't really responsible for their own behavior.

As far as education or whatever changing criminal behavior it's never going to happen. Take a look at white collar crime. These are highly educated people and yet here they are criminals. Crime is a character issue, nothing more and nothing less. Trying to treat it as anything differently than that is never going to solve it.

Honest people don't steal. Caring people don't go around beating up other people. This has to do with what's inside the individual, not how he is educated or how much money he is given. I know honest poor people and dishonest rich people. I know non-criminal poor people who have every every excuse society has thought up for excusing crime, and yet these people wouldn't even begin to think of turning to crime. Yet I also know some people who have been given every advantage that some wealthy parents could give them and they were criminals. Character matters. It's character that determines an individuals behavior.

 

A criminal should be punished by the authorities. A criminal should be punished once. It's really that simple. Who are we, as citizens, to act as Judge, Jury and executioner? How do you know that your wife isn't having an affair with the guy, and that her screams are screams of pleasure?

Assuming it was a rape, what purpose does giving him a beating have? Retribution? I bet it'd make you feel better about what you saw. But how far do you go? Would you feel justified in putting the guy into hospital for a few days? Maybe a couple of broken ribs so that it hurts everytime he breathes. Or maybe you'd like to torture him for a few hours before you call the cops. right. Or maybe you think that any reaction would be justified, so much so that if you just happen to kill the guy because he dares to fight back. Having a gun in the house makes a killing in this scenario pretty likely, I'd say.

I would argue that the reaction from an angry husband is never going to be justifiable when it steps beyond what is regarded as reasonable. I know what you're thinking, "was it reasonable for him to rape her", "apologist" etc. Thats nonsense. Do two wrongs make a right? Obviously, my answer is NO!

I hate to point this out, but by bringing personal circumstances into the argument, you are changing it from an intelligent debate into something else. What my reaction would be to being the victim of a crime is totally irrelevant to the argument. You can stand there all day saying "ah, well you wouldn't say that if it was your wife/sister/mother", but it doesn't have anything to do with rational thought and intelligent debate. This line of argument is frowned upon by academics. How do I know this? Well, when I was being taught about it, as a class, we were told that using this line of argument would result in us doing pretty badly in our exams.

I value the rights of individuals a lot more than I value the rights of private property. Whether those people are innocent victims of crime, or mass murderers (which is obviously an extreme example), peoples rights are there for a reason. If you erode the rights of those accused of criminal acts, you erode your own rights. I accept that you may never have committed a crime, and that you may never commit one, but it doesn't stop you being accused wrongly by the police. Like I said, it is better to let 100 guilty men walk free than it is to let 1 innocent man be convicted, IMHO of course.

(and I have handled guns actually, including a .44 Magnum and a pump action shotgun!) when I was in Czechoslovakia a couple of years ago; gave me a real buzz, even as a pacifist. We were only shooting paper targets, but it was easy to get carried away with all the testosterone that fuelled that place. My experience there only makes it more clear in my mind that public ownership of guns can only be a bad thing.

I grew up in and around Peckham, South East London, which is a ghetto, in effect. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1558820,00.html This is what happened there over the weekend. Friends of mine, members of my family, have all been not only victims of crime, but in some cases, the perpetrators of crimes. Also, I have worked in criminal law firms as a clerk for about 6 years in total, my last title in that job was "Accredited Police Station Advisor", in effect, I had been trained to deal with people who had just been arrested, my role was to advance their rights.

I'll add to your list of criminals you have known, I've dealt with all those that you mention, plus: rapists, paedophiles, corrupt solicitors and accountants (white collar criminals), and 1 war criminal (killed Jews during WW2).

I hadn't heard of Pavlovs dogs before, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and I'm a bit baffled now. I don't really see what this has to do with our discussion
I think that maybe you're using this example in an attempt to back up what you say after, which to me seems not to be based in fact, but in what you beleive to be fact. Unless you can back it up some more than It's also been shown in studies...

Am I hearing you right? You honestly think that criminals want to commit more crime because they think that they are unlikely to get caught, and that if they do, the victim of that crime is going to be punished? The thieves/counterfeiters/smugglers/drug-dealers I've known don't think like that, they go thieving/doing crime because they can earn money from it. For some people, its the only career choice they see themselves as having. They know that they run the risk of being caught and imprisoned, and most accept it as an occupational hazard. In some cases, prison is a deterrent, and it will make certain individuals think twice.

However, there are SO many other things that influence recidivism, as well as first time criminals. Drugs are one of the main causes of crime. Addiction is what makes a lot of people turn into criminals


Maybe I don't know anything about America, but in this country, we don't punish people for defending their property. Maybe you're talking about the cases like Tony Martin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer) who shot a teenage burglar in the back, killing him. What he did was clearly disproportionate, and was not reasonable, in the eyes of the law. But this case is the exception, rather than the rule, there are very few people who are serving prison sentences for defending their property. It has been suggested in certain parts of the media that, like you alluded to, that people do not have a right to defend their own home. Complete rubbish, lazy journalism if you ask me. What the law states, and has done for many years, is that you are entitled to do so, as long as your actions fall within the boundaries of "reasonable force". Without having studied it in great depth, I would suggest that there is a similar clause in the relevent American law.

Prison is not the only way to deal with offenders, and you really beleive that its the only thing that can work, I ask you to look at the rates of recidivism here, which is the first result for a Google of the word "recidivism". As you see, an average of over 70% of convicted criminals are rearrested and usually convicted of similar offences soon after being released from prison. If the purpose of prison is to make people see the error of their ways and to make them change their behaviour, it clearly doesn't work in over 70% of cases.

Yes, white collar criminals, like the ones I dealt with, were, unlike the other criminals I worked with, usually educated to at least A-Level, and more often than not, to degree or higher level. What they had in common with the other criminals, is that they got stuck into a pattern of offending. In these cases, simply owning up to a small wrongdoing years before would have lead to nothing worse than them losing respect from their employer, and a paying back of the money. What happened in most cases though was that they got caught up in their lies and deception, and ended up in prison, many years after their first offence.

Which, I would say, is almost exactly the same with criminals from the lower social classes.


Its not academic education that is going to make a big difference for those criminals who are already convicted. Proper education for certain groups would make a difference, for example, young black boys. Giving groups like these a chance in life might put them onto paths that would not be open to them if they lack a basic education. Locking them away does nothing but allow them to mix with thousands of other criminals, swapping notes, exchanging ideas, and making excellent new contacts in the underworld.

My point is this, prison doesn't work! It keeps people out of society, but its not a big deterrent. What does work? Well, nothing really works, not properly, unless you want to go down the route that the Govt took in "A Clockwork Orange". I'm sure you'll disagree with me, but giving people a second chance, allowing them to put right the wrongs they have committed if that is in anyway possible, and teaching them how they can change their behaviour, can work, in some cases. And we will always have to have prisons, that much I accept. I think though, that prison is used as an easy way out of a problem that successive governments do not want to touch upon, for political reasons more than anything else.