Originally Posted by
Dave Cutter
Yes... the future... it is a safe and elegantly peaceful place of flying cars and cheap nuclear energy OR the apocalyptic, polluted and fuel starved anything goes... mad max-walking dead nightmare. Or just maybe.... the future will be much like the past was... which is much like today is.
15 year prison sentences are great things.... unless your the 15 year child whose parent has "been away" all of your remembered life.
No one advocates impaired driving! But overly harsh or tyrannical punishments doesn't benefit individuals, the victims family, or society as a whole. Causing physical and/or emotional discomfort, stealing away many of the pleasures of life through imprisonment, may provide a slight degree of sadistic pleasure for some. But at a cost of equal discomfort and suffering for the motorist's family.
A sentence functions as a deterrent as well as punishment. Getting a misdemeanor ticket for texting is annoying. Getting a prison sentence is alarming. Which do you think will deter more people from texting? It's a slippery slope you're on: so murders shouldn't get long sentences because it harms the murders' families? Where in the continuum of crime do you draw your line? I kinda like it where it's at, myself, when someone's actions causes another's death.