Most of a nation on probation?
Tim May
tcmay at got.net
Wed Jul 4 15:09:18 PDT 2001
At 2:39 PM -0700 7/4/01, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
>Inchoate wrote:
>
>> 'routine search'? Remind me never
>> to go to Ohio.
>
>It's every state of the Union. Parolees are still prisoners. Just as you
>can search a prisoner's cell, a parole officer can search a parolee's house.
The entire parole process is itself an open sore on our justice
system. It's turned into a control system, a "force magnfication"
scheme. Instead of actually having to _jail_ all of the people, they
release them early, take away their key Bill of Rights protections
(2nd, 4th, etc., including the vote) and have them as virtual slaves
of the system.
From an economic/libertarian point of view, what this has done is to
alter the costs of making things criminal. Standard economic theory:
making more people criminals doesn't cost much, and makes them more
malleable. As so many people have said so pithily, "At the rate
they're going, we'll _all_ be felons." And felons don't need no
steenking constitutional rights.
Were Orwell writing today, he'd probably replace his "proles" with
"parolees." And the cameras in each room would merely be part of the
parole process.
One of the biggest concerns Keith Henson had in his probable 6-month
sentence in his case (which is another issue) is that he was likely
to receive a 5-year probation term, during which his house could (and
likely would) be entered at any time, day or night, and during which
period his private files and records would be scrutinized for any
thoughtcrimes which could be used to send him back for a longer
period. (Which happened with both Bell and Parker.)
As a felon myself, and one who committed a dozen or so felonies each
carrying 3-year terms just last week, I realize how the entire
probation/parole process is what Big Brother really likes the most
about our so-called justice system.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May tcmay at got.net Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
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