Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3166-3170 (29 February - 4 March 2016)
Is it cold in here?:
By coincidence I just read a story about how probation actually works. The guy got a skilled blue collar job. The probation officer interfered with it at every opportunity. He repeatedly interrupted work to interrogate bystanders and scheduled mandatory but irrelevant programs during working hours. The boss was understanding, but the guy voluntarily went back to prison rather than have the probation officer continue to come by in the early morning and shine a flashlight through every window in the house.
Would you like to say it's only what he deserved as an enemy of society? He had already served out the sentence from when his construction boss and he went shopping for a power tool and he walked out thinking his boss had paid for it. Felony sentence, because that state had the threshold for felony theft set so low a single power tool could meet it.
Then what was he doing on probation, you might ask? Isn't he a dangerous repeat offender?
Working as a mechanic, he was test driving a customer car and got pulled over. The officer asked to search the car. The mechanic thought "I have nothing to hide". The customer was a hunter. The customer had left two rifles in the trunk. Despite an affidavit from the customer that the mechanic had nothing to do with the rifles and hadn't been told about them, it was "felon in possession of a firearm" with a mandatory sentence.
----
On the other hand, is repairing May's chassis more like health care, or more like mending her clothes?
Is it cold in here?:
--- Quote from: chaospersonified on 03 Mar 2016, 10:03 ---Two days ago, we were on the topic of Faye's BO, and now we're discussing rescidivism and societal barriers against ex-cons.
Goddamn, I love this comic and its forum.
--- End quote ---
Administrator Comment We've got a remarkable group of members here. I am regularly amazed at the quality of people who are willing to spend time with us.
katsmeat:
--- Quote from: Magniras on 03 Mar 2016, 08:01 ---I'm more saying I don't care about cons on probation. That I don't care how long it takes for them to get medical care.
--- End quote ---
So basically you think the prison wasn't punishment enough. You want people to continue to be punished by giving them sub-standard medical care. You say you don't care how long it takes for them to get medical care. Would that include being the last to be treated if they were one of the passengers of a bus that crashed? Treated after others with less serious injuries? Or perhaps would they be a lower priority for appointments to see a cancer specialist? Give that suspicious rash time to develop a bit.
This is such BULLSHIT! You are the first person posting on this forum to have annoyed me.
If a prisoner has been released, it must be taken that's because their punishment is over and finished and they should have the rights of any other person. If the person's crime was sufficient to warrant further punishment, they simply should have stayed longer in prison. Imposing arbitrary further punishment on the outside is simply petty, vindictive crap. Presumably dreamt up by arsehole politicians who want to appeal to the kind of people who think as you. do.
Radium_Coyote:
--- Quote from: TheEvilDog on 03 Mar 2016, 09:22 ---
--- Quote from: Magniras on 03 Mar 2016, 08:01 ---
--- Quote from: BenRG on 02 Mar 2016, 23:06 ---So, you are saying that the government should withhold medical care from cons on probation, am I right? That they should guarantee that they reoffend by forcing them to use illegal providers, risk unlicensed practitioners or steal to pay for help?
--- End quote ---
I'm more saying I don't care about cons on probation. That I don't care how long it takes for them to get medical care.
--- End quote ---
Suppose you make one mistake. You just happen in the wrong place at the wrong time but you still have to pay for that for six, seven years of your life. And when you come out, the system is stacked against you the very second you step out. Suppose you have an inherent condition that could be easily dealt with but because you spent time in prison, you're going to suffer.
You're saying that you would rather parolees suffer despite the fact that they have done their time and paid their debt to society.
So which is the real crime?
--- End quote ---
Here's your problem, as I see it. Here is a culture based, not on solving problems, but on punishing those they can be blamed on. Having briefly been in, I find the concept of a "debt to society" quaintly primitive, and the idea of paying one by sitting on your butt most of your day or, if you're lucky, stealing telephone answering jobs from Indians-from-India, a bit... the word is failing me, but it means "fully intended bad consequences that aren't supposed to seem so".
You don't sit, literally almost all day, in jail being micromanaged by musclebound nitwits half as a smart as you, to repay a debt to society. That situation was created a little over a century ago, with the sole goal of getting someone paid to warehouse your butt. It doesn't and cannot serve any other purpose. It's been sold as punishment, which is why prison rape jokes never go out of style, but all it is, really, is wasting a lot of people's time, with the goal of making a few people rich doing that.
This really isn't gonna be fixed without a complete cultural overhaul. We're too mired in this whole "beat up the bad guys" mentality
Method of Madness:
Ok, so this is from Jeph's Patreon post, but not from the strip itself, and not even about QC, just something true* and very sad.
--- Quote ---In some states it is literally a probation violation to "associate with evil men"
--- End quote ---
*I haven't checked, but that's hardly something he'd make up.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version