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Bill: Effective Justice Bill
Details
Submitted by[?]: Adam Smith Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: March 2074
Description[?]:
| It is with regret that we observe that those individuals who have chosen to transgress against the laws of our nation are treated with such exaggerated respect. Those who choose not to repect the rights and or property of others have chosen to discard all claim that they may have had to such rights. A law abiding citizen may be in financial difficulties and reduced to doing odd jobs to support himself. The law breaker in our socierty is currently afforded the opportunity of performing similar tasks but without having the onus of having to support themself. This discrepency does two things. It tells our law abiding citizens that we care less for them than we do for the criminals. It also createws a temptation to break the law when faced with difficult financial circumstances. To correct this we propose that instead of being permitted to volunteer for certain jobs and receive a wage for this, that all able bodied prisoners are required to work, unpaid, for the duration of their sentance. This measure would send a clear message that crime does not pay, literally, as well as allowing us to improve our countries infrastructure through the usew of this forced labour. We would be able to prevent the flooding that has so bedeviled our low lying regions, we would improve the transport network, we could ensure that each and every citizen receives running water, electricity and has an effective sewage and effluent system. We commend this chanfge to the house in the spirit of providing quality lives to our law abiding citizens and providing an effective system of justice which does not descriminate against the honest working man. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Prison policy concerning prisoner labor.
Old value:: Prisoners can do certain jobs in prison, voluntarily, for a small wage.
Current: Prisoners can do certain jobs in prison, voluntarily, for a small wage.
Proposed: Able-bodied prisoners have to work during the day.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 02:19:24, June 25, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Absolutely not. This is the sort of bill I would expect from the Fascists, not a right wing liberal party. |
| Date | 02:30:45, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | You have a strange idea of fascists and of right wing liberal then. However would you care to present an argument against the bill, or are you content to just to protect the criminal at the cost of the law abiding citizen. We will explain that we consider the breach of the law to be extremely serious, but then we consider that there should be very few laws. The fascists would regulate everything, would control the media, control the lives of the citizens, we would not. We would enforce legal contracts, protect the private property and the physical body of the citizens and that is it. |
| Date | 02:54:30, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Opposed to forced labour here. We will support the status quo. |
| Date | 07:23:52, June 25, 2005 CET | From |  Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | I will probably support. But please define the work to be done... |
| Date | 17:02:52, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | The work to be done was pretty clearly defined in the bill description. It is to be work dedicated to the improvement of the infrastructure of the country as a whole. Those who set out to harm the society, by breaking the agreed tennets of behaviour are made to compensate society as whole by working on projects that benefit everyone. Drainage systems for low lying areas, roads, river dredging, pipe laying etc Hard physical unskilled labour. For those without the physical conditioning to perform such hard labour, there would be tasks such as litter clearance, unblocking of ditches and drains, repaintng of road markings, weeding of sidewalks etc. All public service. |
| Date | 23:21:56, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Democractic Socialist Party of Lodamun | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Forced labor, even on criminals, is wrong. Talk about a way to grow disdain for the Justice System in the public's -- especially criminal's -- eyes. |
| Date | 23:30:38, June 25, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Why is forced labour wrong? There are representatives presenting this as fact when it is opinion. Please justify the opinion. Who cares what the criminal thinks of the justice system, as they would obviously like there to be no justice system. What matters is what the law abiding citizen thinks of it. Your claim that it would cause disdain is unsupported at the moment. |
| Date | 00:07:21, June 26, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | "We will explain that we consider the breach of the law to be extremely serious, but then we consider that there should be very few laws. The fascists would regulate everything, would control the media, control the lives of the citizens, we would not. We would enforce legal contracts, protect the private property and the physical body of the citizens and that is it." Stop playing dumb, you know exactly what I mean. |
| Date | 02:39:57, June 26, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | No CNT/AFL we are not mind readers. We do not know anything more than you post here. You have accused us of being fascist. We have denied this and explained why the accusation is false. Now do you retract the accusation or do you choose to justify it? |
| Date | 19:00:27, June 26, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | We did not once accuse you of being fascist. We claimed that positions like the one taken on this bill are akin to positions that Fascists have taken in the past. Infact, I remember the National Fascist Legion proposing a bill like this in the past. Needless to say, it failed. |
| Date | 19:15:21, June 26, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | We take that as a retraction of your first comment. The bill may have failed in the past, prior to our entry into the political arena, but this is no reason to reject it now. We have presented what seems to us a compelling argument for the action, based on not treating criminals better than non criminals. Are there any arguments (not statements of dogma) against this motion? |
| Date | 23:58:14, June 26, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Yes. Labour is a choice, and the status quo preserves that choice, awarding the prisoners who choose to labour a small wage, that cannot really be called a wage. By forcing prisoners to labour against their will, we will stoop to the levels of the fascists and the autocrats. |
| Date | 01:32:41, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | So someone who has broken their compact with the other members ofd society has to be treated better than someone who has not. There are many unemployed people out there who would love to have the choice of working for a small wage offered to them, but the only way that this is going to happen is if they break the law. Sorry, but that is plain wrongheaded. If you can not keep a contract, keep your hands of goods that don't belong to you or set about to inflict harm on anothetr individual then you deserve to have to work to repay those you have wronged. Oh yes, we will provide education for you, but no leisure time to be charged to the tax payer. You will either be studying or working to pay for your keep and studies. Is it normal to suggest that if someone tries to steal something from me that I should then pay for that persons upkeep for the time that they are imprisoned, and that in addition to this they should be able to earn money which they do not have to use towards their upkeep. You don't like forced labour but you are hapy to forcibly take the earnings of honest citizens to support the criminals. That is forced labour applied to the inniocent. Let the criminal work to pay for his or her own upkeep. Why should they be a burden on the honest citizenry? |
| Date | 05:31:30, June 27, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | "Is it normal to suggest that if someone tries to steal something from me that I should then pay for that persons upkeep for the time that they are imprisoned, and that in addition to this they should be able to earn money which they do not have to use towards their upkeep." Sorry, but I'm first in the 'abolishing prisons' line. ------ "If you can not keep a contract, keep your hands of goods that don't belong to you or set about to inflict harm on anothetr individual then you deserve to have to work to repay those you have wronged." I don't remember signing a social contract, do you? |
| Date | 05:43:40, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | As the criminal is incarcerated at cost to the taxpayer, we agree that the taxpayer should recieve some form of return on this money. This was the purpose behind our earlier question. We would support this bill, but are not sure that this bill should be proposed as of this time. Just dont want public opinion to hurt other like-minded parties. |
| Date | 05:46:12, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | CNT/AFL, the "social contract" refers to the implied. You want the benefits of living in society? Then you are not allowed to take these benefits away from others. Criminals have wronged society, breaking their end of the deal. Therefore society has no obligation to them whatsoever. Therefore they should be expected to, at least partially, support themselves. As their incarceration is not voluntary, making the work voluntary would be...ineffective. |
| Date | 07:46:09, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | CNT/AFL We were not referring to a social contract. If you remember we identified three types of action that were, in our opinion, criminal in nature. These were assault of any kind on another person (Assaulting yourself is not criminal, just stupid). Theft of or damage to property belonging to another (Again destroying your own property is not criminal) and thirdly breach of contract. I.E. You promise, formally, to do something and you do not do it. Is that clear now? You are the first in abolishing prisons line? Fine. We have no love of prisons either. Forced labour seems a much more equitable solution to deterring crime. What solution do you have for deterring crime? |
| Date | 17:43:31, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | The point of our prison laws is to promote the rehabilitation of prisoners, in the hopes that some will become productive members of society after their release. If successful, this policy should reduce recidivism rates and reduce the need for prisons. Our prison system is currently geared more towards rehabilitation than punishment: prisoners are kept apart primarily to protect society, not to punish the offender. In this model, being imprisoned does not strip the individual of certain basic rights. We believe the prison system should continue to stress rehabilitation, and thus will support the status quo on this matter. Irwin Goodman CCF-Greens Justice critic |
| Date | 18:16:21, June 27, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | "You are the first in abolishing prisons line? Fine. We have no love of prisons either. Forced labour seems a much more equitable solution to deterring crime. What solution do you have for deterring crime?" Abolishing capitalism ends property crime. Social crime can be dealt with by a combination of reducing the causes and rehabilitation. |
| Date | 20:31:26, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Abolishing capitalism/property IS a crime |
| Date | 21:04:11, June 27, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | Abolishin property simply creates a systemic criminality. No one is even permitted to retain the value of their labour. However, we are not about to abolish property, not now, not ever. So we have to deal with property crime. Reducing causes? Be specific, Do you mean brainwashing everyone so that no one is capable of disgreeing with another, or do you mean simply killing off the whole population. Because unless you make a major change in human nature, you can not reduce the causes. |
| Date | 20:34:48, June 28, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | If there is no more debate forthcoming shortly we will move this to vote. |
| Date | 21:15:57, June 28, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | The twenty delegates of Tuesday Is Coming concur |
| Date | 06:04:31, June 30, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Effective Justice Bill |
| Message | If the sensible activists party votes...it passes...otherwise it doesnt... |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 162 | ||||||
| no |
Total Seats: 195 | ||||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 93 |
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