Posts by Stephen Judd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Sacha, I have never understood this school of analysis which presents the aggregate vote as somehow a unified voice of the voters sending a message together, as though we all rang each other and said "you vote for him, I'll vote for her, I've arranged for just two of my mates to vote for candidate Z so they feel a bit supported but not too cocky".
It's bullshit to read any intention into the collective of all voters and it makes me grind my teeth to read it, no matter who does it.
Also, thanks for using "Thorndon Bubble" instead of "beltway".
-
I don't think words like crimes, armament or anti-artist are really very helpful here. Even you Chris seem to be ambivalent about the "crime" label.
One might look at the old slogan that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Apple doesn't share files, users of Apple devices share files. I've never really bought that in the context of gun control, but then again, sharing bits doesn't kill anybody and each incremental act is nearly damage free.
-
I learned recently that in Brazil, things revert to the public domain IF they haven’t been published in a long time. So I am merrily downloading Brazilian music that’s out of copyright there because the holders can’t be arsed making it available.
That strikes me as sound. The publishing cost in making high quality audio files available is fuck-all, other than the actual data transfer cost. Yet so much is locked up in analogue media that we just can’t get.
Chris: this ability is inherent in the combination of the general purpose computer and stupid networks. Both these things are the product of many small, indeed often long-dead companies, and a great deal of publicly funded research. It makes no sense to blame whatever technology company is currently dominant. They merely added a little convenience to things that were already ambient, and if they hadn’t done it, another company would have. The success of those particular companies is a consequence of chance and network effects more than anything else. Capturing sounds as bits and shipping those bits around is an obvious and inevitable development.
-
I am very interested to see the Mana party list, when it comes out. The main parties' selection processes tend to filter out ideologues -- while capable and pragmatic operators are necessary to broker the deals that ultimately get shit done, I would love to see some more people with unblunted principles in Parliament.
-
Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to stephen walker,
I do feel there is a place for a very high level view of motivations that should inform drug policy.
I speculate that the change in drinking habits in Europe's youth and in our own could be tied to a rat park type analysis. The last time we had a discussion like this, someone corrected my mistaken beliefs about drinking in France, pointing to some articles about how young people in France are drinking like Anglosaxons. The accompanying analysis suggested this was to do with the breakdown in traditional French family patterns.
In other news Independent Liquor claims that law reforms in the alcopop area will wipe out 25% of its profit...
-
Until the First World War, Finland was a province of the Russian Empire. Crime and punishment in Finland were governed by the tough Russian justice system, a system the Finns inherited after independence. The break with Russia at the end of the First World War was followed by a terrible civil war, political unrest, and then two wars with the U.S.S.R. After 1945, peace returned, but Finland was firmly fixed within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence.
This violent history hardened Finnish attitudes toward crime and punishment. Long prison sentences in austere conditions were standard. In the 1950s, Finland's incarceration rate was 200 prisoners per 100,000 people -- a normal rate for East Bloc countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia where justice systems had been Sovietized, but four times the rate in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In the 1960s, Finland began edging cautiously toward reform, using its Scandinavian neighbors as models. Nils Christie, a renowned Norwegian criminologist, recalls speaking to Finnish judges and criminologists in Helsinki in 1968. At the time, Mr. Christie and others were developing the first international comparisons of prison populations, so he was the first to tell the Finns that their incarceration rate was totally unlike that of their Scandinavian neighbors and was "really in the Russian tradition." The audience was shocked, Mr Christie recalls in an interview in Ottawa, "and some of them then decided this was not a very good policy." Discussions and debates were widespread. Ultimately, says Tapio Lappi-Seppala, the director of the Finnish National Research Institute of Legal Policy, an agreement was reached that "our position was a kind of disgrace."
During the next two decades, a long series of policy changes were implemented, all united by one goal: to reduce imprisonment, either by diverting offenders to other forms of punishment or by reducing the time served in prison. "It was a long-term and consistent policy," Mr. Lappi-Seppala emphasizes. "It was not just one or two law reforms. It was a coherent approach." The reforms began in earnest in the late 1960s and continued into the 1990s. In 1971, the laws allowing repeat criminals to be held indefinitely were changed to apply only to dangerous, violent offenders. The use of conditional sentences (in which offenders avoid prison if they obey certain conditions) was greatly expanded. Community service was introduced. Prisoners may be considered for parole after serving just 14 days; even those who violate parole and are returned to prison are eligible for parole again after one month. And for those who aren't paroled, there is early release: All first- time offenders are let out after serving just half their sentences, while other prisoners serve two- thirds. Mediation was also implemented, allowing willing victims and offenders to discuss if the offender can somehow set things right. "It does not replace a prison sentence," says Mr. Lappi- Seppala, but "in minor crimes, you may escape prosecution or you may get a reduction in your sentence." There are now 5,000 cases of mediation per year, almost equal to the number of imprisonments.
Juvenile justice was also liberalized. Criminals aged 15 to 21 can only be imprisoned for extraordinary reasons -- and even then, they are released after serving just one-third of their time. Children under the age of 15 cannot be charged with a crime. The most serious crimes can still be punished with life sentences but these are now routinely commuted, and the prisoner released, as early as 10 years into the sentence and no longer than 15 or 16 years. The Finns retain a power similar to Canada's "dangerous offender" law: persons found to be repeat, serious, violent offenders with a high likelihood of committing new violent crimes can be held until they are determined to no longer be a threat to the public. There are now 80 such offenders in prison and they, like Canada's dangerous offenders, are unlikely to ever be released. One especially critical change was the creation of sentencing guidelines that set shorter norms. Similar guidelines are used in the United States, but many of those restrict judges' discretion -- Finnish judges remain free to sentence outside the norm if they feel that is appropriate. These guidelines were also the product of extensive discussions among judges and other officials in the justice system, unlike American guidelines which were, in most cases, simply imposed on judges by politicians.
THE ABSENCE OF DIRECT POLITICAL control was critical to the Finnish transformation. Despite the enormous changes in Finnish criminal justice, crime has never been a political issue. "None of the major parties took this on their agenda," says Mr. Lappi-Seppala. That's still true today. Even Finnish victims of crime seem to be satisfied with that approach. Victims' organizations act as support groups, not political lobbies, says Markku Salminen, the head of prisons. "You don't mix politics with this. There are so many feelings," he says. "It's a tradition."
-
One of the many things to learn about on my list is Finland.
The reason is that culturally, Finns aren't that far away from us. They have a tiny population in a big country, they're heavy drinkers, they have the same dark streak, the same high suicide rate, several ethnic minorities including an indigenous one...
The Finns started out with the Imperial Russian penal code, which as you would expect was extremely harsh. McVicar would have loved it. They now have a very progressive penal code of the sort that would make McVicar have a meltdown, with a low recidivism rate. What I DON'T know or understand is how they got there. There is an obvious appeal to the emotion in a punitive code, and I'm interested in what public debate led to a less punitive one. I feel it could be helpful to know this in trying to change policy here.
-
Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
If this site had favourites/like buttons, I would "like" this comment of RoO's about a squillion times.
-
Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to John Monro,
Put a New Zealander on wheels, cars, cycles, skate boards, whatever, and you go barmy. I think I’m taking education here.
Cyclists (and skate boarders) are currently disproportionately young men. That goes a long way towards explaining it.
If cycle skills are still taught at schools, I'm not convinced about what's being taught. My daughter, in about 2003, was told *by a constable instructing at the school* to ride on the footpath. Mind you, in that part of Auckland, it was the safest thing to do.
We have to untangle some safety contradictions where real safety is increased as more people cycle, but people won't take it up if they perceive it to be dangerous, and those who aren't bothered by danger also aren't bothered by being good cycling citizens.
-
Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Greg Dawson,
apparently now you can't really ride a bike without buying a superman outfit and being Serious about Cycling.
I ride in my work clothes, as most of the commuters I see do. I have a carrier and panniers for my lunch and rain gear and paraphernalia, and my right trouser cuff tucked into my sock. I joke that I've turned into the middle-aged maths teacher I had as a kid.
I think that as cycling dwindled through the 90s and 00s, the last cyclists left were sporty ones and young male ones (often the same people, of course) and bike marketing has yet to really grow out of catering to that reliable hard core and wooing all the kinds of people who used to ride when I were a lad in the 70s.
It's as though car ads and depictions of drivers in the media only ever featured racing and rally drivers (although to be fair, they disproportionately do anyway, given how few motorists actually race).
Anyway there's nothing stopping you getting a simple cheap bike and riding at all. Who's going to laugh at you? Not me, or anyone here.