why is the answer always more time?

in yet another indication that there really is not much difference between republicans and democrats bill richardson is flexing his muscles to prove he is tough on crime. this latest effort comes amidst years of local news networks promoting the idea that albuquerque is a haven for rampant sex crimes, complete with camera crews going to the registered offenders addresses (and i thought these people had paid their debt to society...guess i was wrong). well, big bill wants to make sure that there are less sex offenders on the street...so he has proposed a bill that will put a few sex crimes in a category with murder as eligible for life without parole. sure they are nasty crimes to be included, such as aggravated criminal sexual penetration of a minor under the age of 9, but haven't we already proven that this is a dangerous proposition?

for one thing, sex crimes against children are a mess. kids tell stories, they will tell adults what they think the adults want them to say, they are bright enough to figure out that they are supposed to say X did Y to me. just as dna evidence is proving with capital murder convictions, there are undoubtedly plenty of false convictions when the majority of evidence comes from the mouth of a small child and quack doctors such as a certain someone at a certain university run children's sex abuse clinic in a certain southwestern state providing hearsay (sometimes double and triple) because they are convinced they can tell on sight if a child has been abused/raped.

and whatever happened to evolving standards when it comes to the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment? we act as though only torture and death can qualify...as if life without parole is an existence that cannot qualify as cruel and unusual.
haven't we realized that simply putting more criminals behind bars for longer periods of time does not solve crime. if it did, this country would have the lowest crime rates of any industrialized nation...well we don't. as our sentences get longer, our jails get more crowded, less money goes towards addressing the issues that lead to criminal acts, and our crime rate remains too high. i realize that sex crimes may be in a different category, but the vast majority of crime is a result of poverty...hopeless poverty...a condition that is all too common in this country. and instead of addressing this, instead of using some of the wasted billions spent on incarceration to build up inner city and rural schools, to provide jobs and opportunity for the poor of this country, we simply put them in lockdown on the outskirts of town. god forbid the government require that you be paid enough to live on, instead, you should plan on getting 25 to life for being involved in drugs (unless of course you are dealing in "designer" drugs that most likely will be used by wealthier clientelle, probably more likely to be white as well - another example of how beautifully our incarceration scheme puts an end to crime). it is just backwards.

tougher penalties do not prevent crime, they do not deter crime...they never have, they never will. but i understand bill, you want to be big on the national stage so you need to be "tough on crime."

we set out to change the world and ended up only changing ourselves - what's wrong with that? - nothing...if you don't look at the world.