Rational solutions for criminal behavior

Aaron Woell

Today we shall move past the impeachment inquiry and the blathering about Clinton. We shall ignore the ignorant morons who bitch and moan about the liberal bias of The Daily but are too spineless and gutless to do anything about it.

And I thought Republicans believed in solving their own problems! Only liberal wimps expect someone else to solve their problems.

In the spirit of solving problems so that I no longer have to listen to the incessant whining, today I will explore some simple and logical methods that can solve our nation’s problem of violent crime.

In today’s society there has been much debate over what social engineering we should take in order to curb violent crime. Liberals want group therapy and conservatives cry “hang ’em high.”

Each side gets nowhere because they have the collective IQ of a carrot, and you and I get mugged as the two sides compare statistics.

Fortunately, I have a revised three-strikes-and-you’re-out plan that will satisfy both sides and drastically reduce crime. The idea rests on the logic of removing the incentive to commit a crime and the use of an absolute deterrent. It is a two-pronged approach to the problem and one state plan that can work.

To remove the incentive, you must understand why a criminal did what they did and find a solution. You don’t assign guilt, you figure out what the hell went wrong and try to fix it! Maybe they robbed a liquor store because they needed the money. Checking their file, you see they did come from a broken home, dropped out of school and then fell in with the dregs of society. They can’t get an honest job because they have no diploma, but no one is helping them to get a diploma either.

So you incarcerate them for the duration of their rehabilitation, enrolling them in classes so that they can get their GED. If you have to teach them to read and write, so be it.

Then when you release them, you put them in a specific housing bloc, run like a halfway house, for a period of six months. During that time you provide them with food, housing and the basic necessities of life.

You also bust your ass to find them a decent job and see that they stick to it. I’ve worked at car dealerships and shipping warehouses, and I have seen people who have done that type of work their whole lives. If they can do it, so can everyone else.

You don’t charge them for what you provide, or set up some long term payback plan. That will only cause resentment.

Instead, you force them to save their money so that at the end of six months they can move out to their own apartment and make way for the next rehabilitated criminals.

Hopefully, six months will have been enough time for them to plant roots and settle into a comfortable frame of life.

They’ll stick to their job, keep in contact with the friends they made and lead a normal life like every other law-abiding citizen.

At every point in time, you hold their hand and lead them through life because you know the answers. If you just abandon them and set them adrift in the world they’ll be back where they started, and you and I will bear the consequences.

I believe in second chances, which is what criminals would get after they commit their first crime. I also believe in giving people a third chance because some don’t learn as quickly as others. However, after the third crime you have to stop.

It’s not so much as giving up as it is realizing some people will never learn. No matter how much you help they still don’t get it. And it is at this point that the supreme decision must be made: what to do with them.

Lifelong incarceration is the only way to protect the rest of society, but the cost to imprison those criminals is enormous.

While it is estimated that the cost to execute an inmate is around $1 million, almost all of that figure is made up of lawyers’ fees and only a fraction by the actual execution.

Given that it costs around $30 thousand per year per criminal, you can see that it is economically sound to execute the criminal.

No one wants to hear that their taxes support some double-lifer who lives above the poverty line and, in this case, the benefits greatly outweigh the negatives.

Now I know that we are talking about human life, and that it is sacred. That is why during final sentencing, a judge will look the case worker straight in the eye and ask them if they did everything reasonable to save that criminal’s life.

If they shirked their responsibility, now is the time to be honest. Could you live knowing you condemned a person to death because you were lazy? I doubt it.

That being said, society must do everything reasonable to solve our problems. Programs must extend goodwill and encourage positives, but beyond that, you must cut your losses. Anything less would be criminal.


Aaron Woell is a junior in political science from Bolingbrook, Ill. He awaits vituperation.