osan
Member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2009
- Messages
- 16,867
That means only incarceration is fit for punishment.
For actual felonies, absolutely.
I'd say deny the person with X amount of DWIs a license, but not necessarily lock him up.
This implies that licensing drivers is a valid practice and I question that strongly.
Like "conspiracy", "endangerment" is not a crime. To endanger others is bad, of course, but it is NOT a crime. I fully support the notion that any citizen holds the moral authority to prevent another person from proceeding in a manner that is manifestly and immediately dangerous to the wellbeing of others. I also believe that when a person interferes with another under the pretense of preventing some disastrous event from occurring, that person may be held to account for his actions. If he arrests the neighborhood burnout for sniffing glue, I would deem that a tort at the least. Other forms of interference may be rationally deemed as felonious. But if the glue sniffer was trying to get your neighbor's ten year old to get high with him, I would consider his interference a just and perhaps even heroic deed.
I have no problem with people pulling drunk drivers over and preventing them from proceeding behind the wheels. I know things can get sticky in specific circumstances, but IMO those are comparatively rare occurrences and can perhaps be handled well in any event. There is a fine line to be tread, but I suspect that holding those who so interfere to a high standard of justification would cover the vast majority of cases, especially if the consequences, both criminal and civil, were substantially unattractive.
There are sane and rational ways of addressing non-criminal acts - misdemeanors I suppose - without resorting to the sorts of prison-filling approaches that we now employ.