Fair Sentencing Law
We need a federal and state based mandate to choose fair sentencing, and not this half-assed and fucked up system we currently have.
Federal and state crimes are so stupid, and set up so artbitrary that a person could be sentenced to 10 years for the crime of drug addiction, and someone in a white collar crime like embezzling $10M from a company could get away with a 4 year sentence.
This isn't just unfair, it makes criminals bolder to commit crimes which are worse than being a drug addict, because the inequities of the sentences are making it more attractive to commit them.
Someone who tortures an animal, mostly get NO SENTENCING, but probation and a slap on the wrist--the only reason Vick got any sentence at all was because of the blown up story on his involvement. If someone stole my dog or cat or other pet and set them on fire, skinned them or committed any heinous action on them I would not only be looking for their blood, but I'd be a conviclt myself if I ever got hold of them. Perhaps that makes me unstable--instead of the fucking asshole who committed the crime, but I would not remain quiet or even sane after such an action.
But it's ridiculous to prosecute someone who commits a non-violent crime and hand down a stiffer sentence to them than someone who has killed, caused someone to die, or whose crime have hurt a significant number of people, like the Enron fuckers whose sentences were disproportionate with their bilking of thousands of Enron employees out of their retirement funds.
Perhaps some of the sentences that were available in Puritan New England or further back were far better as deterrents to small-change crimes: the stocks, the pillories, the scarlet letter type of punishment--obviously, it would be a better sentence for a minor (note I said MINOR) drug dealer to be stuck in a pillory for a week and put a sharp focus on his crime and how to resolve it, and take a lengthy jail term off the table.
I've read about horrible, tortuous punishments for people in the past, but I'm not talking about the punishments themselves, only to separate out what are egregious crimes versus non-egregious ones, and how their dismissal in terms of sentencing should be arrived at. Obviously, it is extremely wrong to lock up a first time offender of a crime with seasoned, hard criminals except in the most insidious crimes, and no one seems to care about this. No one really gives a shit if someone has received a life term with no parole and locked them up with a scared teenager who commits a second story burglary with no victim. People are too far from understanding criminal behavior and why certain crimes are committed.
Indeed, until far, far more recently, homosexuals were sentenced to longer punishments than many other crime perpetrators in the past. We know far more about the psychology of homosexuals and know it's not a crime to be gay, but even in our current society, we (as in the universal "we"
will {mentally} think in greater punishments for people who have had consensual sex between adults than in someone who has allowed some action to have taken place that injures or harms people in a way that leaves them unable to cope with life, like bankrupting them and taking away financial or other asset support from them (like arson, destruction of home or livelihood).
Fair sentencing would propel our country into a far more progressive arena, and make us a leader in understanding the sociological needs of the modern world. Barbarian ways of dealing with justice are untenable, and there isn't much good to say about torture or inequality in this topic. Suffice to say, it all needs to come out into the open, and be shown in the light of day regardless of how it should proceed further.
We all get frustrated when we see innocent people getting greater sentences than they deserve, or watching those involved in deaths or harm to other living creatures getting away with lesser sentences. It needs to be re-envisioned to make everyone equal under the law and prescribed sentences and punishments appropriate to the occasion.
If someone knows a group or poltical effort to make such a cause a reality, I would like to know about it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
You start by saying, "...a person could be sentenced to 10 years for the crime of drug addiction, and someone in a white collar crime like embezzling $10M from a company could get away with a 4 year sentence."
But then you say, "...it's ridiculous to prosecute someone who commits a non-violent crime..."
Insider trading and embezzling are non-violent crimes while trafficking illicit drugs involves criminal networks that are willing to wreak violent mayhem to protect and expand their markets.
This is not to diminish the harm of financial crimes or extol any fictitous virtue of the so-called war on drugs but a better expressed principle would help nudge the discussion along. I think there is plenty of room for improvement in how penalties are assigned to various offenses but at the end of the day we elect representatives that reflect (we hope) our views on what is an offense and what the appropriate penalty ought to be.
As financial crimes take an ever increasing toll on our society they will no longer be viewed less damaging than a bank robber taking money under threat of violence. Likewise we may decriminalize marijuana out of fatigue of enforcing laws against what is at worst a nuisance. However, we may stiffen penalties for harder drugs like meth and cocaine that do undeniable damage to individuals and society as a whole. Once upon a time horse thievery was a capital offense because the loss of a horse was so devastating to the livelihood of the victim. Nowadays it is merely felony larceny. Laws evolve over time and what is important is to have a system that facilitates this natural evolution.
Good conversation starter. 
