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Tbf, sounds kinda like the homeless man wanted to get caught, maybe for the free rent.
You are showing your innocence.
Yeah, that wasn't remorse. That was not wanting to live on the streets and being desperate to have a consistent amount of food.
Yeah. No wonder they threw the book at him.
I mean come on, who is really the one more deserving of punishment here: the fine upstanding job creator who had a small and momentary lapse of judgement, or the clearly bootstrap-deficient monster who – after choosing to be poor – doesn't have the moral fortitude to live on the streets like he should?
I think the right answer here would be to sell the guy to the upstanding job creator. The creator gets to prove how upstanding he is. The feckless man with no bootstraps gets a place to stay. Everybody wins! How lovely and compassionate that world would be.
But surely you can't be suggesting that the homeless man should be housed for free, so that someone who has contributed so much to society has to bear the costs?
Maybe we should let the free markets decide: first, the criminal should sign a completely voluntary contract which specifies that his new owner is entitled to assign to him any work they deem a suitable compensation for his upkeep during his sentence (not signing the contract or shirking work duties leads to a doubling of the sentence and immediate transfer to an isolation cell for the remainder of his sentence), then put him up for auction and sell him to the highest bidder
Well that's it. We've solved homelessness once and for all.
Y’all are making a lot of assumptions none of which involved asking if this man was wrongfully imprisoned.
The homeless guy? He was definitely wrongfully imprisoned. There are plenty of homeless people in locations with poor social safety nets who commit petty crimes to get a roof to sleep under for a while. But the prosecutors and cops get to inflate their numbers so they're more than happy to throw the book at someone who can't defend themselves.
You have completely changed the subject. You and the other user said he probably did this on purpose to get food and shelter.
I firmly believe he did. Otherwise he would have stolen more than $100 and wouldn't have turned himself in. A lot of homeless folks at shelters will commit petty theft and turn themselves in if their time is up or if there are no beds left, especially during extreme heat in places like Texas and Louisiana with poor social safety nets.
You're the one that brought up the question of wrongful imprisonment so I spoke to that. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough for you, I was trying to speak to your specific concern.
Yes, he was wrongfully imprisoned no matter the motive. $100 ain't worth that much time, or, honestly, any real time. He was likely looking for a few days to a few weeks of three squares and a cot. Instead he's sitting in the hoosegow for a decade with time off for good behavior which will make it that much harder for him to get out of his situation and, on top of the gross injustice by people who paint themselves as fiscal conservatives, it'll cost more than a properly functioning social safety net would have cost to get him housed, fed and back to being part of society where he could be comfortable.
I have a lot of feelings about this that are hard for me to articulate. There are a lot of subjects to cover here. It starts with how shitty we treat the homeless, moves to what some of the homeless have to do just to survive, and ends with how we're throwing away money just to keep someone down for the rest of their damn life.
It’s possible =/= it happened that way. You have no evidence this was a choice. The reasonable assumption is he did not expect 15 years for $100
They covered him not expecting 15 years.
He was likely looking for a few days to a few weeks of three squares and a cot.
I don't think anyone expects 15 years over an unarmed robbery of $100 because it's completely disproportionate.
This is going to sound like I'm being shitty, but I promise this question is genuine because I really feel like I'm missing something.
Is your issue the original language I used when making the assumption about his motive?
It’s not just the language, it’s assuming his motive period.
I don’t think you sound shitty I’m just a little surprised you two are being so presumptuous.
Fair enough. Then the best thing for us to do is part ways here.
I do believe that's his motivation because I've seen it happen a lot back when I was working in shelters and because he could have gotten more than a hundred bucks if he was robbing a bank if his motivation was money.
However, if you don't think I should be assuming anyone's motivation that's a perfectly reasonable stance. It won't stop me, but I get where you're coming from and I'm glad we talked it out so I could understand.
Imagine living in a country where you need to steel a bank in order to get the chance for shelter and food, albeit with no freedom anymore.
The way we treat our vulnerable is sick.
Right. Even if we assume that's the case it only explains one guy getting a harsh sentence. It doesn't explain the guy with a way harsher crime not getting a harsh sentence.
Think of it this way. If the other guy had robbed the bank empty, just for the sake of the argument he stole 3 billion, and he didn't turn himself out do you think he should've gotten 40 months?