A just society is one where:
- You get to keep what you earn
- You aren’t punished for non-violent crimes
- You are held responsible for any damage you cause
I agree with 2/3 of these. But not being punished for non-violent crimes? So if I’m swimming at the YMCA and someone leaves their wallet in their pants pocket in their locker, and I open the locker and abscond with the wallet, I can get away with that?
The current version (check OP’s page) reads “victimless” rather than “non-violent,” so I’d personally presume the OP just messed up when writing it. Obviously non-violent crimes are still crimes and you should still be punished for them, but victimless crimes (prostitution, drug offenses, stuff like that where there isn’t a victim who’s being wronged) are a totally different matter and not something we should be punishing people for.
my first thought when i read this was about people like meth dealers for example, i agree that people shouldn’t be punished for minor drug charges but massive drug rings can still be dangerous even if they are “victimless crimes”
Yes, but the dangers from those rings aren’t in the victimless crimes, but all the other crimes they commit that do have victims, many of which are really exacerbated by the illegality of the victimless crimes. If (ex.) meth was totally legal do you think meth dealers would need guns because of other dealers and the police? If these people weren’t already beyond the law, would they be willing to provoke turf wars with the competition? If the prices weren’t artificially inflated, would these drugs be worth killing over? (When was the last time you heard of a cigarette dealer being murdered?)
If the drugs themselves weren’t an offense, a lot of the other problems would be much reduced. On top of that, it’d be easier to regulate because it would no longer be underground. (For example, standards of purity, making sure things aren’t being laced with other things, safe additives, you get the idea, all things that reduce the current dangers which people quote as reasons for them being illegal.)
I don’t necessarily think that drugs are a good thing….but nonetheless the way we’re dealing with them is totally counter-productive and doesn’t work. It’s like abortion: even if I believed it was wrong I’d still oppose making it illegal because that would only make the problem worse, get people killed and generally be a shitty thing overall.
that is a very valid point, although i probably shouldn’t have used the meth example because even just taking meth (even if it were legal) can lead to crimes that do have victims. i suppose in a just world someone would be punished not for taking the drugs, but for committing a crime that has a victim, while under the influence of drugs
so yeah i suppose rather than non-violent crimes it should be victimless crimes, stealing would still fall under that category but minor things like drug use generally wouldn’t.
