re: Louisiana Supreme Court Will Not Review Life Sentence For Man Who Stole Hedge Clippers

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A phony arse drug "war" has almost single handedly destroyed families in the black community.

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I guess we can just toss out any notion of personal responsibility now

I addressed that if you continued reading.

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Having to do drug court for weed? You can't be fricking serious dude. You trolling me here?

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Who is in prison for weed? Drug court is for all manner of drugs. Why do you keep reducing it to weed?

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You don't have a clue. Closer than someone who used to run those streets and who actually knows some of the real fricked up shite that's done? Or, do you just mean you're a lawyer and so you're "close" that way? 

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I have more of a clue than some former user who is bitter about the system. I know that there are systems set up to assist the defender with drug issues rather than send them to prison. I also know that those defenders get several opportunities to get it right. I also know that defendants are afforded surprising leeway in the ability to plea down their charges, even violent ones.

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It’s not the state’s responsibility to rehabilitate offenders. It’s the state’s responsibility to enforce the laws.

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That attitude is why we have such a high rate of repeat offenders.

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They all cost taxpayers money

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In college, I worked at a local courthouse. The jail nurse used to have to come into our office to put in requisitions. When she would leave out, we would look through them to see how much money was spent on what.

For some reason she didn't do just medical expenses, she did transportation, etc, etc. And some of the cost made no sense. There was one parish that charged the parish I was in over $200k to transport a prisoner (there had to be something else going on there).

If a parish had to do anything medical related to a prisoner before transporting them, they would charge $2k - $3k because they had to give a prisoner a few stitches. We didn't have smartphones back then, but I wish I could have taken pictures just to show people how much fricking tax dollars are spent on bullshite.

The sheriff's department is funded by property tax knowing the shite that money is spent on, everyone should be pissed by the amount of property tax they have to pay..

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Who is in prison for weed? Drug court m is for all manmer of drugs. Why do you keep reducing it to weed

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Because that's what we originally were talking about. Our prison system being overpopulated because of bullshite like weed.

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have more of a clue than some former user who is bitter about the system.

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Who are you speaking of?

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know that there are systems set up to assist the defender with drug issues rather than send them to prison

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Like drug court or a place like Cenikor. But, again, why are we putting people who need drug rehabilitation into the prison system? It should be separated. I understand drugs are illegal, therefore by law, you can be sentenced to jail. How about instead of jail, the first couple of times we send them to rehab? As long as it's nonviolent and a drug crime.

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also know that those defenders get several opportunities to get it right. 

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Some do. I wasn't afforded that, but I was ok with it.

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also know that defendants are afforded surprising leeway in the ability to plea down their charges, even violent ones.

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I can agree with that on most cases. I think sometimes even too much. Get a judge like Trudy White and you can plead a murder into an accidental death, sadly.

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We don't have money for drug rehabilitation because we're pouring so much money into imprisoning people for being addicted to drugs. We also don't have the money to properly care for the number of people we put in prisons, which is why we have two private prisons in a state of 4.5 million people.

Louisiana's rise in incarceration rate is directly tied to the dumbass "war on drugs." Prior to the war on drugs, Louisiana was 13th in the country for incarceration rate, we're now number 1...

What happens when you put a drug addict in prison? You make him a criminal and a drug addict because he's never been rehabilitated. Louisiana's politicians have failed the state at every level and the proof of that is in our prisons. We have high rates of poverty, poor education systems, high drug use, high crime rates -- all of those things are directly related.

You believe that people in Louisiana are just bad and were always meant to be criminals?

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It’s not the state’s responsibility to rehabilitate offenders. It’s the state’s responsibility to enforce the laws.

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That's the problem. In the long run, rehabilitation would cost less.

Look what is done in Germany & the Netherlands.

LINK

That chart is for suckers.

NATO founding members? Really?

Come on dude! Talk turkey.

We have an incarceration problem because we have a crime problem.

Why do we have a crime problem? Many factors.

1) Historic culture that tolerates/celebrates excessive alcohol (and drugs?)

2) Cultural norms (perhaps environmentally influenced) that does not promote industriousness.

3) Reverberations of slavery/Jim Crow that leaves the state with a large population of black people who are taught that they are perpetual victims, with all of the emotional and psychological baggage that brings with it, preventing them from fully achieving self-actualization and full participation in society, often choosing instead to participate in a counter-cultural society with largely violent and criminal elements.

Drug offenders make up 46.2% of our federal prison population, 68,685 people. I could not quickly find the state statistics.

From the Federal Bureau of Prisons