I moved to Canada with my ex-husband, and then three months later the relationship was over. I was thus sensitive to issues surrounding failed marriages, and at the same time, I was trying to figure out my new country. That was when I heard on the news the story of a young man who murdered his ex-wife because she had started dating and he was upset. He was given some ludicrous jail sentence – a couple of years, if that.
I was stunned. A young woman was dead. He’d cut her up into ribbons but it was OK because he had wounded fee-fees? He’d get out of jail in a matter of months and go on to have more wives, children, beach vacations, etc while that completely innocent woman was gone forever. Her family would have to observe him prancing happily about while their grief never ended.
Then there was a scandal with a Canadian female serial killer who engaged in orgies while incarcerated, posing for photos with the luxuries she enjoyed at the expense of the taxpayers. This woman had participated in the rape and murder of several people, including her own sister. She served 12 years in resort-like conditions and then was released to a life of discarding husbands and children. Her victims never got a chance to form their own families, of course. The public kept begging the authorities to protect them from this vile creature as she flitted from one location to another. But nobody could do anything because she’d served her sentence and was free to do as she wished.
It gets worse in other countries. Spain releases its Basque terrorists who committed more than two dozen murders, and they joyfully scarper into the very communities that they devastated. The courts give them thousand-year sentences but they all get commuted to something insignificant. A dude murdered more than 20 people, and he gets to walk around free, like it’s all fine. I don’t want to imagine how the relatives of his victims feel, seeing his fat, happy mug posing for photos at some protest du jour.
We keep getting told that something is wrong with America where this doesn’t happen. But maybe the problem lies with how other countries keep their incarceration rates lower. What do you think?
Clarissa's Blog 
I think that if a large percent of the population is locked up, that’s a sign that something is very wrong. “A law in every heart, or a policeman on every corner”
It could be wrong with the reasons for the incarceration: For example, all the innocent people locked up for Covid Panic. Or the J-6ers. Or the Cubanos who circulate home libraries. Or the Soviet… Or…. Or… Well, you perceive.
Or it could be that the society or the culture itself is sick, which would yield the prior results as well as directly raising people to commit crimes, or failing to redirect those who commit those crimes early enough (e.g. “the Broken Windows” policies), or some other reason.
My money is on entropy. The old word for the entropy of human nature is sin. We’re born into an entropic universe, and there is no escaping it. It’s also a beautiful universe, full of good gifts from God, distributed openly and with astonishing grace to everyone, even those who loathe Him.
Unfortunately, everyone is free to reject those gifts, including the gift of His miraculous presence. The which is the only (equally miraculous) intervention for entropic effects on the soul*.
“I hate you Dad, now drive me to the mall and pay for my cell-phone bill” is not a recipe for success.
*That’s the old word for the persistent “you-that-is-you-ness” despite both the material mind and body radically altering over time.
Though, in fairness, generally everyone asks “why doesn’t X” work, rather than trying to understand those shining examples of “X” working, and doing whatever maintenance is required, or build-tech wanted to copy it’s successful anti-entropic efforts. So there’s that as an explanation, as well.
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https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/repaving-crew-abandons-oakland-neighborhood-citing-safety-concerns/
If you don’t incarcerate…. everything else goes to hell too.
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Thank you for your magisterial answer. Now I know why I always felt you were a kindred spirit.
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Americans have this weird inferiority complex with Europe. If Europeans are doing something differently, it must be superior. Nobody wonders, what if Europeans are actually messing it up? That possibility never occurs.
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What are you smoking?
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Anon, can you manage to disagree with whatever is being said in a non-roguish way and make your point without devolving the discussion into personal insults? Thanks.
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