Why put people in jail for non-voilent crimes?

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Instead of going to jail in most circumstances that are non-violent, why not make the criminals work to pay off the dept of a crime?

By putting people in jail it presents more of a fear based impression, although not in all circumstances is fear unjust, simply the cost of it and the moral of paying someone back. So for a crime that is non-violent that is also not determined to be a danger to society, why further enslave society in the cost burden of jailing them. In some respects it is furthering the harm of society with the cost burden resulting from the non-violent crime.


Why not make people pay off the cost of there crimes through for instance mandatory IRS tax additions. This would be to the victim(s) and also the cost of the specific services of cost burden to tax payers.

There's a lot of crime that isn't in itself violent, but either directly contributes/cause violence (drugs), or destroys the lives of many people (white collar crime). It seems obvious to me that these people should be doing time.

Are there minor offences that for instance.

Are not complex and organized, rather more simple then let's say fraud. Is it that some people are so criminal, that they cannot think of anything else but committing crime?

I suppose a danger can be scaled, that is why there are different types of prisons. Yet are there instances where certain types of crimes and by certain individuals who do not have as severe patterns might not be worth the cost burden? That instead of inactivity in jail, could be working with increased tax burden for that crime?

Or would such a system of punishment, be somehow abused by the system for greatly lesser offences by comparison.

In some ways I understand the ideology of containment of certain individuals, whom are presenting a trend of destructive behaviors towards society. Such as for instance robbing a store, rather then drinking and driving.

I have not read much of the criminology text books, so I am not aware of much of this stuff.

They annoy us and we don't mind ruining a few lives to keep us happy.

Care to elaborate?

i disagree with you on drugs. drugs cause violence and are dangerous moreover because they're illegal. same with prostitution. are drugs dangerous and can kill you? yes. does that mean the government should lock people up for doing it? no. if it was the government's job to jail people for messing up their lives, a lot of breeder white trash would be in jail for having too many kids when they can't even support one. and everyone who ever dropped out of high school would be jailed for ruining their lives that way.


and just to let you know, i know not everyone who drops out of high school has a failed life....and in the same way, not everyone who uses drugs messes up their lives or dies from it.


white collar crimes should be punished much more harshly, though, because such crimes of greed hurt the economy, destroys many lives, and (in general) the culprits end up buying their way out of it with the ill-gotten money anyways.

people like jack abramoff will still have high paying jobs after their year of house arrest. that's how white collar crimes work right now and that's wrong and does nothing for society other than widening the gap between what the rich can do and what the poor can do. someone steals $100 out of their macdonald's drawer and they see way more time than the execs at enron will ever see despite the enron execs ruining hundreds of peoples' lives.



big difference between other non-violent crimes and white collar crimes.

People like Martha Stewart owe the system money for processing them for the crime. The time to oversee them in jail and feed them and all other associated costs relevant to the incurred cost burden of tax payers.

Likewise any criminal that works after jail time should incur increased taxes to subsidies the cost burden shared by tax payers.

No, I was being deliberately cynical, bitter, and unrealistic.

interesting concept....but what about the fact that more lower-class people and people on welfare see jail-time than rich people?


i mean it's a nice concept to say tax the hell out of criminals...but whether or not they can actually pay such taxes is a completely different matter.

I once saw a hate page about people with disabilities being combined with different groups of people, as if they were the same. The social service system keeps America from becoming a 3rd world nation for some.

I am not sure, I don't know the mentality specifically of individuals. Yet there must be ways to strengthen the economy. Incentives regarding small business and it's sub group self-employment should be made. Maybe by adding crime based taxes by a scale of how wealthy the person is could indeed offset others taxes.

There is less reason for a wealthy person to commit a crime then there are poor people in desperations of lost dreams.

this point here is very interesting. according to the theories of michel foucault, in his book "discipline and punish", the prison systems complete failure to accomplish its overt goal, ie to rehabilitate offenders and punish crime thus preventing further criminality, and reducing crime in general, should mean logically that the prison system of punishment in itself should have been abandoned long ago. to be specific, it is clear that the prison system actually creates and perpetuates criminality. an individual imprisoned for a minor crime subsequently has a much higher probability of visiting prison in again in the future, in many cases for more serious, organised criminal activities. in effect, through various mechanisms, prison does little more than create and perpetuate further delinquency.
foucault's logical conclusion to this was to say then that the prison system is really the tool of the ruling social classes, used to perpetuate criminality and delinquency among the lower classes, subsequently reducing greatly the tendency for confromtation between class groups and in turn perpetuating the status quo.





this would easily explain, then, the mechanism by which the lower classes face far greater punishment for far lesser crimes, and also the reasoning behind apportioning prison sentences for non-violent or victimless crime, given that the perpetrator is of a lower social class.

Actually, becoming a criminal makes it so you can't get some welfare. In my state, anyone who has been convicted of a felony is unable to apply to DARS and many other community services. This means any poor person who has committed a felony will not have access to mental health or rehabilitation services. It also greatly decreases any chance of getting a job worth more than minimal wage.
That alone perpetuates more crime, because after all, one conviction destroys most chances of having a better life through legal means. If we forced them to pay taxes on top of that, there would be even less chances for them.

Do you not have the concept of spent convictions in America? Here in the UK, after a certain number of years of not being in trouble, you don't have to declare your convictions...

No-one should be punished (by the government; private punishment such as ostracism should be allowed, because of freedom of association) for victimless "crimes", and non-violent (and even some violent) crimes - think vandalism or theft - incur a debt to the victim, not to the state, so any money taken from them should go to restoring the victim to the state they were in before. If someone destroys my car, I want them to pay for a new car, not go to prison where they'll be unable to pay for what they've done.

I don't know. I know for traffic violations there is a merit system where some convictions give you demerit points and it takes five years of perfect driving to restore a point.
I'm not sure if we have anything like that for other kinds of crimes.

I think it would be the laws that make drugs illegal which more directly contributes/causes violence as well as the war on drugs...as for drugs themselves I do not think most in themselves have violence as an effect per say, though some drugs have effects that could contribute to violent behavior perhaps.

Like alcohol?
I agree with you on the drug war. There is so much violence exactly because they made stuff illegal, but since there is demand there will always be suppliers. If they made alcohol illegal again Al Capone would come back from the dead to quench our thirst. And locking up Joe Jerkoff for selling bags of dope doesn't help anyone, because Joe Jerkoff #2 will be ready to take his place on the street (and later his place in prison at the tax payer's expense).