Victim Impact Statements

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tripper1000

1019 posts

Uber Geek

# 1767930 20-Apr-2017 14:59

dejadeadnz:

surfisup1000:

More expensive to have them out of jail.

Specially if you are the one that gets robbed/beaten/murdered.

Applying your brilliant logic of simply ignoring costs v benefits, one would have to rule out all kinds of other things in life. By the way, it's "especially" that you were looking for. Most robbery victims, I can assure you, do not suffer 100K of loss. That's average cost of incarcerating a criminal each year. There's a reason why, by and large, every semi-informed commentator on all sides of the political spectrum regard prisons as a social and economic failure.

LOL - an English lesson, however correct, doesn't make your rebuttal correct. English lesson aside, your maths is flawed.

Here is some cost vs benefit analysis for you - only 6.2% of burglary's were solved in Auckland last year (LINK). Criminologist etc regularly assert that criminals are only convicted of a fraction of their actual crimes. That means that your average burglary criminal is possibly/probably responsible for up to 16 times more damage than he is being given credit for. If we take a conservative average cost of $10K in damage & loss per burglary(think property repairs, goods replacement, time off work sorting it out, the investigating cops wages, forensic analysis, cost of upgrading security/cameras/alarms/insurance etc), for a total cost of $160K pa to keep a thief at large vs $100K pa to keep them in jail, society would save a cool $60K per year, per burglar by keeping these guys in jail.

That is a return on investment of 60% which is a damn compelling cost vs benefit.

Prison is for punishment of offenders and the safety of the public. The fact that it fails at corrective training reveals lost opportunities, not a failure of the punishment, and not a failure to protect people as it is 99% effective at preventing prisoners from harming the public.

Edit: avoiding a schooling in English.

marmel

1573 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 1767935 20-Apr-2017 15:18

tripper1000:

dejadeadnz:

surfisup1000:

More expensive to have them out of jail.

Specially if you are the one that gets robbed/beaten/murdered.

Applying your brilliant logic of simply ignoring costs v benefits, one would have to rule out all kinds of other things in life. By the way, it's "especially" that you were looking for. Most robbery victims, I can assure you, do not suffer 100K of loss. That's average cost of incarcerating a criminal each year. There's a reason why, by and large, every semi-informed commentator on all sides of the political spectrum regard prisons as a social and economic failure.

LOL - an English lesson, however correct, doesn't make your rebuttal correct. English lesson aside, your maths is flawed.

Here is some cost vs benefit analysis for you - only 6.2% of burglary's were solved in Auckland last year (LINK). Criminologist etc regularly assert that criminals are only convicted of a fraction of their actual crimes. That means that your average burglary criminal is possibly/probably responsible for up to 16 times more damage than he is being given credit for. If we take a conservative average cost of $10K in damage & loss per burglary(think property repairs, goods replacement, time off work sorting it out, the investigating cops wages, forensic analysis, cost of upgrading security/cameras/alarms/insurance etc), for a total cost of $160K pa to keep a thief at large vs $100K pa to keep them in jail, society would save a cool $60K per year, per burglar by keeping these guys in jail.

That is a return on investment of 60% which is a damn compelling cost vs benefit.

Prison is for punishment of offenders and the safety of the public. The fact that it fails at corrective training reveals lost opportunities, not a failure of the punishment, and not a failure to protect people as it is 99% effective at preventing prisoners from harming the public.

Edit: avoiding a schooling in English.

I think the flaw in your reasoning is that prison should be for the safety of the public and the REHABILITATION of the offender. If this is not the goal we shouldn't be surprised when a high percentage of offenders re-offend. There needs to be a massive investment in prisons and a real push to give these offenders some skills so those that want to work and lead a decent life can do so once released. It's very easy to want to chuck people in prison and forget about it but long term that attitude doesn't work unless you keep building more prisons.

dejadeadnz

1538 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

# 1768103 20-Apr-2017 20:08

One person supports this post

cldlr7:
I think your brilliant and somewhat simple logic needs some work. You are probably quite right that victims don't have 100k of gear stolen from their homes but there are a lot of other costs that make up the total value of that particular crime. For a start there is the police time to address the crime, the time off work for the victim to replace their locks, broken windows, stolen items etc, resulting in lost productivity for their employer as well. Then there is the increased costs of insurance premiums because of the crime and not just for the victim but for all insurance policy holders.

None of that takes in to account the adverse effect a crime has on the mental wellbeing of a victim. The person who is now scared to be home alone so requires counciling etc, or the kid who can't sleep because they are scared, so can't function at school. Or worse a kid who sees nothing being done about the crime so decides that's an acceptable way of life and starts steeling from others.

No kidding, Sherlock. You don't think someone who's prosecuted criminals, defended alleged/convicted criminals, and actually worked for the judiciary would know all of the things you so brilliantly highlighted? You just chose to take my reply out of context. I was replying to this comment:

Those who say a theft is a minor crime have no idea of the disruption this causes to victims. In fact, theft is worst than assault in many cases. Wounds heal, money and cars do not rebuild themselves.

The person was asserting a position that people guilty of theft should be more harshly dealt to and that having property stolen is often times worse than being assaulted. Even acknowledging the mental anguish suffered by theft victims, anyone who bothers to attend courtroom 1 at any District Court (which is where most crimes are prosecuted) would see that most petty thefts are very low value. I, unlike a certain poster that I am about to reply to below, am not about to just pull a figure out of my butt, but from looking at probably thousands of court files I can say that most thefts involve relatively modest amounts. Certainly not amounts that generally justify the very punitive and financially costly approach favoured by the person that I was replying to.

tripper1000: LOL - an English lesson, however correct, doesn't make your rebuttal correct. English lesson aside, your maths is flawed.

Here is some cost vs benefit analysis for you - only 6.2% of burglary's were solved in Auckland last year (LINK). Criminologist etc regularly assert that criminals are only convicted of a fraction of their actual crimes. That means that your average burglary criminal is possibly/probably responsible for up to 16 times more damage than he is being given credit for. If we take a conservative average cost of $10K in damage & loss per burglary(think property repairs, goods replacement, time off work sorting it out, the investigating cops wages, forensic analysis, cost of upgrading security/cameras/alarms/insurance etc), for a total cost of $160K pa to keep a thief at large vs $100K pa to keep them in jail, society would save a cool $60K per year, per burglar by keeping these guys in jail.

That is a return on investment of 60% which is a damn compelling cost vs benefit.

LOL - a bunch of numbers, however impressive looking on the surface, are nonetheless as good as rubbish if the number is just made up: on what basis do you "conservatively" estimate an average of 10k in damage and loss per burglary? Case closed. I can pull a bunch of random numbers showing how a more benevolent approach would produce a better cost and benefit analysis than yours. But what good will that do? You can't try and win these debates by basically making numbers up.

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