Perhaps you remember when the UVA engineering students got busted for kidnapping someone in Northern Virginia.
According to the Washington Post, these former students will receive 4 years in the slammer. One of the kidnappers, Shu, said:
I’d like to apologize for my actions. It was outrageous, immature, irresponsible. I never intended to hurt Paul. I thought if I didn’t hurt him physically, I wouldn’t hurt him at all. I was wrong, so wrong.
It’s not fun kidnapping people when you get caught! Do you think they will spend time in US jail, or will they be sent back to China? Still, the question remains.. is this an Honor Code violation?
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Tagged as: Crime, honor code, kidnapping, university, UVA, Virginia
I think we should totally talk about the UVa honor code again! Does this story remind any of you of the movie “Better Luck Tomorrow“?
Ahahaha. I was about to say, hey somebody mentioned the honor code, where’s cocoNut?
And here you are. Nice.
The Honor Code applies to lying, cheating and stealing… I guess you could say that kidnapping is the same as stealing a person, right?
They didn’t steal him. They burrowed him for cash. That’s like charging interest.
Maybe they should try to get a MBA and say “we started a BANK!” on their application?
mico-financing? I hear that is all the rage right now.
Can anyone at all tell me why the judge suspended 15 1/2 years off what is supposed to be a 20 year minimum for kidnapping and extortion? That’s why we have a rampant crime problem and out of control school violence–nobody is ever fully punished for their crimes.
It’s apparently not a mandatory minimum, so the judge has discretion…20-year minimum is just a guideline.
As for rampant crime and out-of-control school violence, I would strongly disagree. There’s a lot to be said for the notion that imprisonment just perpetuates criminal behavior, rather than reducing it. I understand your frustration; I just don’t believe that more prison time will alleviate it…
It depends on the crime. There are people caught with small amounts of narcotics for personal use that get more time than these two guys. These two kids seem like sociopaths. I just don’t think there’s any rehabilitation for certain types of criminals. They kidnapped someone out of boredom and went on a shopping spree. I see very little difference between these guys and that JP Orlewicz guy.
I hope they send them back to China, cause prison is way worse there. I don’t want my taxpayer dollars feeding these scumbags.
Ethan, show me, on the doll, where they kidnapped you.
That’s why we have a rampant crime problem and out of control school violence–nobody is ever fully punished for their crimes
Yeah. Just what this world needs… more punishment. I really thought we would have these problems licked once we became the nation with the highest per capita incarcerated population, but I guess thats not enough. I guess we’ll just have to privatize the prison system We could have the corporations that run the prisons fund them with cheap prison labor. Oh wait… we’re already doing that! Oh well, Im off to protest china’s human right’s violations…
I read the other day that 1 out of every 100 Americans is in jail.
You read right: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html
Wejust need to get that rate up a little more and we’ll have quite the labor base (I know with these fuel costs MallWart would be happy to have their cheap ass crap built here). But how can we bump it up a bit… hmm… I know, let’s legislate morality! Man, this Theocracy stuff is pretty cool, and sooo convenient!
USA! USA! USA!
@19: 我们不希望你在中国。
the chinese are commenting in the future?
such an industrious people!
@ 14 吃蠟蝌蚪
I’m not saying that we need more punishment. I fully support legalizing drugs and prostitution and freeing everyone who had been incarcerated for those things. But on the other hand, we have people who commit devastating crimes and are barely punished. I mean, let’s face it, people like Kenneth Lay destroy more lives than Jeffery Dahmer did. I could go smoke crack under the 14th Street bridge right now, and I wouldn’t go to jail for it. I could admit I had a disease called addiction, and they’d put me in rehab. I am, after all, a protected class of citizen. Someone from a lower class wouldn’t be so lucky.
So what I’m trying to say is that our entire criminal justice system is fucked up and needs to be rebuilt from scratch.
Kenneth Lay destroyed my grandfather’s life. Kenny boy cost me a bundle, too, but i was young enough to recover. I spit on his grave. But I digress…
I agree with you… rather than building more prisons to house those caught committing victimless crimes (which basically amounts to the legislation of morality), we need to take a good hard look at the laws and at what kind of country we want to be. We absolutely should start with mandatory minimums and federal forfeiture laws… cause that shit is out of control.
Ethan: There are people caught with small amounts of narcotics for personal use that get more time than these two guys.
I think that’s apocryphal. There may be a incredibly bizarre case of that somewhere, but the idea that there are any significant number of people serving 4+ years for minor possession only is false.
Not that there aren’t people who are, in fact, serving 4+ years after a conviction for possession, but in those cases, the conviction reflects a plea bargain reduction from the more serious charge or a conviction for possession in the midst of a bunch of other bad activity. E.g., James is caught selling crack, again, to children, and he pleas down to possession with a recommendation of 5-8 years.
If I’m wrong (and, obviously, I haven’t reviewed every prison record), please do point me to the contrary evidence.
No, I’m not going to bother. The crux of the argument was that there are hundreds of thousands of people in jail for relatively insignificant crime, while others receive relatively light sentences for more serious crimes. I’m not going to get into a numbers debate because the average sentence for possession of narcotics is unimportant.
Ethan, I don’t know. I have heard that argument for a long time, but I never have seen any evidence to prove that it’s true.
@ 19-20 Boy, that was hard:
Enjoy!
There are lots of morsels on that page for you to digest, but the relevant table is number 23.
Try to wrap your bean around number 28 while your at it.
/the solution to the drug problem is to make reality better.
There’s one immeasurable effect that putting small-time drug users in jail, and that is the effect on the home. How many children grow up without father figures, and what impact does that have on a society as a whole?
poor kids, they don’t get to grow up having their crack-head father around.
@24 It is a shame, actually. If we decided to really tackle the problems of poverty instead of judging people who become addicted to drugs as evil, then their “crack-head father” might receive a real chance at kicking his addiction, along with whatever education/employment training he probably didn’t get in the first place because of a failing education system. Not to mention that whomever would then bear the majority of the burden of raising those kids might not have to take multiple jobs to support them and could spend more time with them. Everyone deserves compassion, even “crackheads.”
It *should* have an impact on society as a whole; I think the problem is that it isn’t (or it is, but in the wrong ways).
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but if you check the data, it looks a little different. Check out page 12 (pg 17 of the PDF) of this report which is the most recent report you mention:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fccp02.pdf
The violent crime imprisonment is higher than drug crimes and, there is this important NOTE:
Calculations exclude offenders given life or death sentences, and old law offenders given mixed sentences of prison plus probation.
@ 24 I don’t think I have ever read a more ignorant statement in my entire life. It manages to fail on so many levels that I am momentarily struck dumb. I will have to let someone else do the talking. Listen to this, particularly act one:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=143
Go on. I dare you. Its only 15 minutes.
Ask any child of an alcoholic and/or drug-addicted parent if they think their parent was a good influence on them. I am going to vote “no” on this one, personally. If anything, all it does is give the child an example of how “not to be.” any teacher will tell you part of effective mentoring is MODELING positive traits. People make mistakes, duh, i understand that, I am not heartless. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should coddle the people who fuck up. Part of life is learning to deal with the consequences of your actions. I’m sorry, but IMHO you can’t smoke crack on a regular basis and be an effective parent. Why should our society encourage kids to be corrupted by their shitty parents? If you have a kid, and someone reports to social services that you are a crack-head, you know what they’ll do? They’ll take your fucking kid away, as they should.
Everyone attack Odie! ATTACK ATTCK ATTACK
my last comment was directed @25
easy, b’yo. we’re on the same side, here. please read my original comment carefully. the only point i made was that i’m not too worried about drug addicts not being able to see their kids. of course stricter sentencing is not an effective deterrent to illicit drug use. i wrote my thesis in college on the subject, i understand/agree with where you are coming from. drug addicts just don’t make good parents, that’s all. does that mean they should be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives? of course not.
It is a false assumption that anyone who uses or has used drugs is addicted to them.
@32 may i ask who made that ridiculous assumption?
Ethan uses drugs!
Not attacking, debating, shen, there’s a difference.
@ 28 You dont even own a narrow brush, do you? I am not trying to pint out the merits of a crack based parenting model. Hell, in prison or on the street, a crack dad isn’t that present in a child’s life anyway. My point is that in an effort to not coddle the people who fuck up, we have run rough shod over the lives and rights of thousands of innocent people.
Why should our society encourage kids to be corrupted by their shitty parents
Tell me how that is happening, exactly?
Ask any child of an alcoholic and/or drug-addicted parent if they think their parent was a good influence on them
OK. Then ask me. My father was an alcoholic. He was also a fucking awesome father who loved and supported me and gave me my sense of humor. I understand I am a statistical anomaly but hey, so it goes. Pity my little exception gets caught in such broad brush strokes.
But why dont we extend the metaphor? Why dont we ask the kids of schizophrenic parents if they were a good influence? How about the physically handicapped? And if they say no, should we lock them up?
Addiction is a disease and should be treated as such. The drug war is more than a failure, it is a detriment, and antithetical to the most basic principals of America.
Don’t we all?
@35: No, I mean, let’s attack him. Hand me that rock.
My dad was an alcoholic and look how great I turned out. Oh wait…
But seriously, he never let me touch alcohol until I was 21. So he was a good influence I’d say.
le sigh, this is what i get for my one-liner originally made in jest (24). to summarize my argument:
War on Drugs = ridiculous waste of time
Crack + Parenting = ridiculous waste of time
/not sure what a narrow brush is?
Sorry for getting all worked up, by the way. Nothing personal. Its just that nothing pisses me off more than the war on drugs, especially since i got the recent news that our current leaders are working on outsourcing elements of said war to Blackwater. I wish I was kidding.
Alcoholic and/or drug addicted parents haven’t fucked up nearly as many kids as those who spend their live trying to appease an invisible all-powerful “creator”.
Shall we take away the kids of the religious fanatics?
/yes, please.
Excellent point oy. Excellent point.
no worries b’yo, the free exchange of ideas is what America (and more importantly, the internet) is founded upon.
@36 Lu, please refer all drug-related questions to where they belong, on parlie’s desk
@38 there is something to be said for the “do as i say, not as i do” method of parenting
@ 43 I’m pretty sure the internets was founded on pr0n. Specifically pteradactyl orgy pr0n.
@28 I don’t think what I said was an endorsement of having an adult, while they are presently under the influence of crack, supervise his or her child. I appreciate that you seem to have spent a great deal of time and energy thinking and writing on the subject. As a different view of that, however, I have spent a good deal of time in court defending both the “crackhead dads” and their kids, both here in Charlottesville and in Southeast Washington, DC, and I’ve seen at least one view of their lives and how the state tends to impact them. I’m simply suggesting that the very idea of viewing them as “crackhead”-anything attaches a label that is very hard to get out from under, and there are very few channels for even the most motivated of them to take a real shot at changing their lives. To say that “drug addicts don’t make good parents” starts people at a similar deficit and tends to perpetuate the problem rather than attempting to solve it.
also “If you have a kid, and someone reports to social services that you are a crack-head, you know what they’ll do? They’ll take your fucking kid away, as they should.” is a bit of an oversimplification. The goal of social services in this case should be, yes, to protect the child, of course, but social services is also tasked with attempting to keep families together as much as is possible. Hopefully, they would likewise find a way to work with the family to move towards a healthier scenario, if that is what their investigation determines is the best course.
excellent and very well-written points, 26. I suppose we are all probably a little guilty of attaching labels to people (myself included) and it can certainly lead to undesirable results when that is institutionalized in our justice system. i cant disagree with anything you wrote @45 or @46.
suppose we are all probably a little guilty of attaching labels to people
Guilty as charged.
/damn Swedes!
Stupid bloggers
I’m guessing this guy may go to jail longer than the kidnappers.
Poor hippies, they don’t get to take their acid trips at Bonnaroo
@ 20, Ethan - I wasn’t suggesting a debate of numbers, nor did I ask to be pointed to average incarceration terms for narcotics offenders. Instead, I suggested that your claim, i.e., ‘The crux of the argument was that there are hundreds of thousands of people in jail for relatively insignificant crime, while others receive relatively light sentences for more serious crimes.’ is an argument that relies upon rampant misunderstandings of what actually happens in our criminal courts.
In other words, you are obviously right if we let you define without limit what counts as a relatively insignificant crime and what counts as a more serious crime. But, if you relatively insignificant you mean mere possession for personal use, my impression is that you are just wrong on the facts. For an explanation, read on.
@ 22 Belmont yo: Thanks for the link, but it does not address my point. I did not read the whole page, but looking at the table you referred to, it says nothing useful to rebut my claim. The crime of conviction frequently is less severe than the crime committed. In fact, very, very, very few criminal cases go to trial, so most are pled out, and a tremendous number that plead out get reduced charges. So, there are many cases where a dealer is convicted of possession, and there are many cases where a bevy of charges (including both violent crimes and non-violent drug crimes) are pled down to just the drug charges. Moreover, there are many factors other than just the crime itself which go into sentencing, e.g., repeat offender status and the context of the crime. Having seen, e.g., the bumps in sentencing for meth production near children, I have no doubt that a simple meth possession charge (pled down from the stronger production charge) is actually more dangerous than a drunken assault and battery. I’m not saying this is always the case, I’m saying you’re table doesn’t advance the ball in either direction.
(Similarly, what am I supposed to take from the California stat? These sorts of backgroundless talking points are useless. Perhaps California enjoyed a relative boom in the population of those likely to be convicted of crimes requiring prison terms as opposed to university-bound children? Perhaps schools are easier to expand than prisons? Perhaps the prior period had seen overinvestment in universities? Or perhaps California is too focused on prisons? That stat is useless without understanding.)
Note, please, I am not advocating the war on drugs (nor, though, am I criticising it). I am just pointing out that one argument often offered against the war on drugs (that possession is more harshly punished than violent crime) seems to be at best overweening and more likely flat out false.
[…] And no, we are not talking about the wannabe gangsters who were recently served a 4 yr jail sentence. WCAV reports a couple UVa students were arrested […]