2008 Soap Box Archives

Crime and Punishment

It makes no difference which media outlet we watch, read or listen to, every day we are inundated with reports of violent crime, random shootings, knifings, kidnapping and horrible sexual molestation of children.

Oh most of these culprits get caught. They're not really smart enough to get away with a crime. The problem is usually not catching them but what the justice system does with them after they've been arrested and tried.

So many times these violent people serve a pittance of a sentence and are turned right back out on the street where they take up where they left off causing mayhem and destroying lives.

So many of the violent criminals the law arrests for a current crime have no business on the street. They have committed crimes before and some do gooder judge has given them a ridiculously short sentence and they're right back to messing up the lives of innocent people and making the streets of this country unsafe to walk.

While I believe in rehabilitation, you have to have something to rehabilitate before you can accomplish anything and many of these people have no intention of ever being anything but a crook preying on society and they desperately need to be kept off the street.

As to violent murderers, I do truly believe in the death penalty and it should not take twenty years to carry it out.

So many people argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime and therefore impotent in preventing future crime. I disagree with that hypothesis. I believe it is a deterrent and besides it was never intended to be deterrent. It was meant to put an end to one person who has done something so heinous that they don't deserve to live in society.

It is made to deter one person from ever committing another crime and it works one hundred percent of the time.

To me the most heinous of all crimes are those which are carried out against small defenseless children. How could
anyone who has tortured, raped and killed a three year old child be given anything less than the death sentence? What worse crime could there be?

I personally believe that thieves should have to work and pay back what they've stolen and should they choose not to do so, be kept in jail until they did.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona has the right idea. He runs a no frills jail. The inmates sleep in tents and wear pink underwear. His jail is truly not a pleasant place to spend time.

The sheriff readily admits that he is not running a resort and tells the inmates that if they don't like it there, they should never come back again. Amen!

I hear occasionally that crime statistics are down from what they were a few years ago. I find it hard to believe that but I'll have to admit I don't trust the system that does the stats. There are too many ways to monkey with the numbers.

The upshot being that I believe that crime is on the upswing in America and it's high time for our local state and federal governments to untie the hands of law enforcement, they are
capable and willing to get the job done but they need some help from the judicial system and less apathy from the public.

The one overriding thing that fuels crime in America and the world is drugs. They finance gangs and organized crime, they wreck lives, and they corrupt whole political systems.

It's time to take off the gloves America.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

January 4, 2008