re: We see the results of our revolving door of “justice” every day. Meanwhile…

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OK. I'm not advocating for these programs. I'm arguing that the system is primarily focused on rehab for criminals rather than justice for their victims.

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But that's objectively not true when only 4% of the budget is spent on rehabilitation and the other 96% is spent on incarceration (which I can only assume is what you mean by "justice for the victims").

It's not true to the tune of it being exactly quantitatively expressed in numbers.

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You asked for an example of a specific program that is focused on rehab and I have you several examples.

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You did; I'm not saying you didn't answer the question. But your answer motivated me to look into it further to see how it answers the bigger question we're debating.

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That's nice, but I'm not talking about crime prevention at all. I'm talking about justice for crimes already committed.

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Yes, I wasn't really talking to you when I posted that (sorry, I thought I was clear in exempting you from that charge of hypocrisy), I was talking to at least two other posters who have been answering my posts on this thread who claim that more incarceration would prevent more crimes. The data says it would, but it also says that rehabilitation would prevent somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 times more crimes. But I'll bet neither of them will suddenly become advocates of rehabilitation, which will mean it's not really about preventing crimes for them...they just said it was.

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I'm not completely against rehab efforts, but I'm against the notion that criminals merely need rehabilitation rather than justice.

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You say that, but how can someone be rehabilitated when they are dead? Remember, what started this whole conversation was you advocating for more executions for those who committed violent crimes.

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It's about committing to justice, which includes the death penalty, according to God's word.

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We consistently rank at or near the top of the world in incarcerated citizens and executions per capita. The notion that we are somehow lax in dispensing "justice" is objectively false.

And God's word is not that simple, and you know it. You remind me of the Pharisees admonishing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. And I'm sure you remember what He told them about going and learning what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

Going just by the letter of the Law, it did require sacrifice—it specifically says so, just like the texts you are quoting, and they were as committed to it as you are to executing people. But the Spirit of the Law valued mercy more.

That is why I am surprised by you on this. I don't sense any sort of mercy or compassion or any of the things that Jesus demonstrated in the Gospels in your posts. No spirit of, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Just cold, robotic legalism, like the Pharisees. I didn't think that was you.

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Perhaps you missed my prior post about that

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I absolutely did, and I apologize for accusing you of not answering it.

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Pharaoh was going to put him to death for his crime, so Moses fled Egypt to escape the death penalty (Ex. 2:15).

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Right. Not only did Moses murder, but he also deliberately avoided what you said was God's mandated punishment for murder. How does that not defy God's justice even more?

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David was certainly was a murderer, but as the king, there was no higher civil authority to hold him accountable. God held him accountable, though, by killing his son and create strife in his household after him.

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Then the death of the murderer is demonstrably not the only way that God's justice can be satisfied in the case of murder, right? That's what I get out of that analysis. But you said that God's commandment was specifically that whoever sheds blood, HIS blood must be shed. Not his son's. And there was no mention of strife, just blood for blood.

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Paul was complicit in the killing of Christians, and from the Roman standpoint, that may have been considered unlawful killing and even murder, but they were inconsistent in how they prosecuted such crimes. However, if he was convicted of murder, he would have been judged as a murderer under the Roman civil law. It should be noted that even Paul argued at trial that he was innocent of the charges laid against him, but that if he had done anything worthy of the death penalty, he wouldn't fight it: "If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.”

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So now you're arguing in the context of Man's law, not God's commandment for justice, as you cited previously.

Man's law is easy to answer. We can do anything we want, and there is no mandate apart from God.

But appealing to Roman authorities doesn't address God commanding that anyone who sheds blood must have his own blood shed.

God's justice is still unsatisfied in that scenario if the Roman authorities decide not to kill him, right?

Plus, his murders were not what Paul was even standing trial for.

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Many women have avoided an assault because that dangerous person was behind bars

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Link?

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Yes if we become a totalitarian regime that ignores our basic rights, we can make our low crime rate even lower.

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A broken criminal justice system only serves the financial interests of a corrupted legal institution and you obfuscate the rights of criminals over those of our good citizens. You are the problem.

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Since when is it the job of the criminal justice system to rehabilitate repeat offenders?

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Since when is it not their job?

Who decides what their job is? You?

There are at least five different universally recognized theories of incarceration, rehabilitation being one of them.

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But that's objectively not true when only 4% of the budget is spent on rehabilitation and the other 96% is spent on incarceration (which I can only assume is what you mean by "justice for the victims").

It's not true to the tune of it being exactly quantitatively expressed in numbers.

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I'm going to have to concede that the system hasn't caught up to society, at least not fully. While 80% or so of society sees the main purpose of our justice system as rehabilitation rather than punishment, certainly not enough budget goes into that to be consistent. There are many programs, as I said, but not every prison has all of them, and not all of them are available for every inmate. If our society has any say over that, it will continue to change, though.

One of the biggest issues I see in terms of injustice is mandatory minimums for non-violent offenses, where some non-violent crimes have longer sentences than violent offenses. That is probably one of the biggest issues I have with our justice system, and what I was referring to in an early post. That, in combination with the lack of death sentences for violent crimes such as murder and rape leave a very bad taste in my mouth, especially when we see judges using their discretion to let some criminals walk with a slap on the wrist for violent crimes, or if the criminal has a long sheet of offenses.

But with all that said, I'm way off course from where I started. You want to talk about rehab, but I want to talk about justice.

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You say that, but how can someone be rehabilitated when they are dead?

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They can't. Like I've been saying, my primary concern on this topic is justice, not rehabilitation. If a person murders someone else, I'm not concerned with their rehabilitation to make them a better citizen for for walking the streets again.

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Remember, what started this whole conversation was you advocating for more executions for those who committed violent crimes.

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Exactly, and I stand by that.

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We consistently rank at or near the top of the world in incarcerated citizens and executions per capita. The notion that we are somehow lax in dispensing "justice" is objectively false.

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If other nations aren't incarcerating people and aren't putting people to death, we're going to be near the top by default. Where we rank against the rest of the world is not relevant to me.

We have 8-10,000 murder convictions per year and only about 50 or so executions per year. There are thousands more murders that are plead down to manslaughter charges or others that reduce the penalties, so there are thousands upon thousands of people who are murdered every year without justice being served, as I see it.

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And God's word is not that simple, and you know it.

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On this topic, it seems pretty simple to me. All of the data from the Old and New Testaments show that not only is God just, but He either explicitly commands or allows for the death penalty by the civil magistrate for the sake of justice in governance.

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You remind me of the Pharisees admonishing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. And I'm sure you remember what He told them about going and learning what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

Going just by the letter of the Law, it did require sacrifice—it specifically says so, just like the texts you are quoting, and they were as committed to it as you are to executing people. But the Spirit of the Law valued mercy more.

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Is it merciful to the victim to let the murderer go free? If your child was raped, tortured, and slowly and painfully killed, how would you feel if the judge let them walk in the name of "mercy"?

God condemned the rulers of Israel many times for their lack of justice, where they took advantage of the poor, the widows, and the orphans, and took bribes.

When Jesus said that, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice", it was in context of the religious leaders showing mercy to the hungry, not civil leaders showing mercy to convicted murderers.

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That is why I am surprised by you on this. I don't sense any sort of mercy or compassion or any of the things that Jesus demonstrated in the Gospels in your posts. No spirit of, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Just cold, robotic legalism, like the Pharisees. I didn't think that was you.

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In other contexts, that's exactly what I do. I'm all about showing the mercy of Christ to sinners, but when I do that, it's spiritual mercy, calling sinners to repentance and faith for forgiveness of their sins.

The topic of this discussion was about justice, so my emphasis is going to be different on this topic.

God is a God of love, but He is also a just God. You cannot sacrifice one attribute for another, and while I love to emphasize God's loving kindness and mercy, on this topic, I am emphasizing His holiness and justice, and how that plays out in society.

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I absolutely did, and I apologize for accusing you of not answering it.

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Forgiven! It was an easy mistake, and I miss things all the time.

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Right. Not only did Moses murder, but he also deliberately avoided what you said was God's mandated punishment for murder. How does that not defy God's justice even more?

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It's God's prerogative to use evil for good. The civil death penalty is a civil punishment for a civil crime. While every person deserves the eternal death penalty from God for each sin against Him, that is different from earthly, civil justice. According to the laws of Egypt, Moses deserved to die for his crime, and it wouldn't have been immoral for Pharaoh to put him to death if God didn't have other plans for him.

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Then the death of the murderer is demonstrably not the only way that God's justice can be satisfied in the case of murder, right? That's what I get out of that analysis. But you said that God's commandment was specifically that whoever sheds blood, HIS blood must be shed. Not his son's. And there was no mention of strife, just blood for blood.

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The issue isn't whether God's justice is satisfied, because that can only be done by the death of Christ. The issue is whether or not God sets the standard for human justice, and what that looks like. Before God even gave the law to Moses, He said that shedding man's blood deserves bloodshed in response.

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So now you're arguing in the context of Man's law, not God's commandment for justice, as you cited previously.

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Yes, civil justice is what I'm talking about. God sets the standard for it in Gen. 9:6.

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Man's law is easy to answer. We can do anything we want, and there is no mandate apart from God.

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Man's laws must be just according to God's character and command.

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But appealing to Roman authorities doesn't address God commanding that anyone who sheds blood must have his own blood shed.

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It does. God sets the standard for justice for murder, and it was typical for civil governments to abide by the standard.

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God's justice is still unsatisfied in that scenario if the Roman authorities decide not to kill him, right?

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Correct. God's justice is eternal, and it can only be satisfied either in the sinner being punished for eternity, or the eternal Son of God taking our penalty for us on the cross.

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Plus, his murders were not what Paul was even standing trial for.

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Correct. I wasn't implying that it was. I was merely pointing out that Paul acknowledge the death penalty was legimate.

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Because it looks 100% like you were full of it.

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Nah, I posted lots of data.

Read the thread if you want to see it, that's not my job.

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Call me crazy... but executing a repeat offender will certainly keep them from repeating, would it not? I mean... if you are a repeat offender, you've quite clearly shown you lack the ability to function among society. So remove the chance of them ever being among society again.

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Yep

You see those posts of “suspect had been arrested 32 times” or whatever and it’s like hey.. 30 arrests, maybe you should be removed from the planet entirely. It’s clear you have no good Intensions and are a rotten apple . Call a spade a spade

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That is probably one of the biggest issues I have with our justice system, and what I was referring to in an early post.

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I see.

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especially when we see judges using their discretion to let some criminals walk with a slap on the wrist for violent crimes, or if the criminal has a long sheet of offenses.

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Except that the only data I can find pretty much proves that those things are not happening. Not with any significant frequency, anyway.

You keep claiming that they are, I keep asking for your data on it, you keep ignoring the request for the data and just repeating it again.

Judges are not letting people off "with a slap on the wrist for violent crimes." I posted the average sentences for violent crimes. It's not happening.

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You want to talk about rehab, but I want to talk about justice.

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Ah...no. What we have argued over and are continuing to argue over are YOUR (multiple) claims that the system prioritizes rehabilitation over justice.

That's not true at an exactly quantifiable ratio of 96 to 4.

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If a person murders someone else, I'm not concerned with their rehabilitation to make them a better citizen for for walking the streets again.

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O.k., thanks for finally admitting that. But you know what's coming next. Might as well throw this one in there first:

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On this topic, it seems pretty simple to me.

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But it doesn't. You claimed that God's word said that a person who murdered HAD to be killed themselves to satisfy God's justice, but when you had to explain why God's justice was still satisfied even though Moses, David, and Paul lived, you couldn't. You tried, but you ended up making more points for my point of view than you did for what you've claimed.

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Is it merciful to the victim to let the murderer go free?

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I'll answer that when you copy and paste anything I have said in this or any other thread about allowing a murderer to go free. That's a straw man, and not even a good one.

You're constantly pivoting here. Is this about God's justice and His commands, as you have sometimes appealed to, or is this about Man's law (re: Paul and the Romans) being allowed to utilize capital punishment, as you have appealed to in other places, or is this about owing some sort of spiritual/moral debt to the victim, as you are claiming now?

What is this mandate of eye for eye and blood for blood ultimately grounded in?

It has to be God, right? Nothing else makes any sense. I can't benefit the victim of my murder because he or she is dead. So what happens to me as the killer is really irrelevant to the victim. They can't experience justice no matter what happens to me on Earth.

Man's law is groundless and purely relative unless it's grounded in God, so Man's law is just an unnecessary (in logical terms) middle cog in this formula. It provides no moral grounding apart from God, so the real grounding is in God.

Only God's character and the morality that flows naturally from it make any sense for grounding this moral mandate you have claimed.

But that is a problem for you if you're going to stand on verses like the ones you have quoted without interpreting them in the context of Jesus.

Because Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment."

What do you think the point of that was? Not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, right? So to me He seems to be telling everyone that God's law extends beyond the physical confines of this Earthly world into our hearts.

It's not enough to refrain from physically killing someone. If we are angry at them in our hearts—according to God's standards—we are guilty of murder just as much as someone who physically murders them.

By God's standards, you are a murderer. So am I. So is everyone. That's what he was saying.

So how does the passage you read about blood for blood apply in that context? Remember now, Jesus didn't say there was one standard and one type of judgement for physical murder and another for the non-physical version of the same violation of God's law. In fact, He did the opposite. His message is that they are to be regarded the same way.

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If your child was raped, tortured, and slowly and painfully killed, how would you feel if the judge let them walk in the name of "mercy"?

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And there we go! First we have the strawman repeated. Next we have the appeal to feelings, and I am here to tell you that this never fails.

Discuss it long enough with someone who announces that they want people be executed and it always comes out, sooner or later.

The truth is that this is about feelings. Wanting revenge. Emotional satisfaction at the thought of someone getting comeuppance.

We've all been hurt and we've all wanted to be able to punish those who hurt us, and nameless, faceless criminals are a great place to channel those emotions.

I get it. You don't think that's what you're doing. But you let it slip there.

To answer your question, how I would feel is pretty irrelevant to what should happen to the person who made me feel that way.

First of all, people's feelings shouldn't dictate public policy...that's how we end up with legal abortion and crazy stuff like that (and speaking of which, I assume you believe that every woman who aborts her child should also be executed under the same blood for blood rule, right?)

Second of all, there's nothing that magically happens when you kill someone for killing someone else that actually balances out the scales of "justice." If it did, the killer would go to the afterlife with a clean slate, at least in so far as that sin goes. His karma would have been squared; he would have paid his debt to the house, as Stephen King likes to say.

But I don't believe that's what happens, and I'll bet you don't either. I think he's still morally guilty of murder even if he's been killed for having committed the murder. So again, we're not looking for actual "justice" here...we're incapable of creating that circumstance. Just revenge. That's it.

Oh yeah, SFP is conservative....because he says so.

What a morally bereft retard.

GFY

I’ve actually spent a couple of years locked up.
It is relatively comfortable and safe compared to what I’ve read and heard about the old days.
Every person in CCC in Caddo parish gets an IPad. They lay in their bunks all day and watch movies. And I can assure you that it is COLD. Inmates complain nonstop about how cold they keep it in there.
Now head over to Plain dealing to the Bossier Parish pea farm and you don’t get the luxury of A/C. When it’s hot, they put a giant fan in front of the dorm. It takes very little time to adjust to the heat.
My home didn’t have air-conditioning when I was growing up. As a matter of fact, no a/c in elementary school and my high school didn’t get air-conditioning until my sophomore year. I’m 55 years old to put that in perspective.
Red River Parish jail was probably my favorite. You had more freedom than most jails and they fed you a lot better.
CCC you’re locked down about 22 hours a day with two other guys in a small Cell. Unless you get in programs dorm, which is considered a privilege. That’s the one for people who say they’re trying to sober up. Then you get out of your cell a lot more.
Pea farm in Plain Dealing you’re in a big wide open dorm with 50 other men so there’s a lot more to do. You can play cards and dominoes and watch TV and work out all day.
Red River Parish, They let you go out and work on the farm and you actually get to wear a T-shirt and blue jeans instead of a jumpsuit you can have tobacco products, watch TV and a use microwave oven
Sure it all sucked and I would’ve rather been free. But I did the crime so I did the time.
You did see a fight every couple of weeks or so.
I learned that if you mind your own business, don’t gamble, and don’t touch the TV. You are relatively safe in there.
Probably the worst part was just listening to all the low IQ people ramble on and on and on. It seemed like they would never shut up.
Oh, and all the budding rappers beating on their lockers for hours on the end was annoying AF
You’d be amazed, how much a person can read. That was my favorite escape.

I have rambled quite a bit here. One of the more shocking things to me was listening to guys talk and they would start a story and use the phrase “when I come back”. They knew they were coming back to jail some day.
Or I would listen to them talk about how they were going to be better criminals