This is partially in response to a diary asking this question a week or so ago.
It was good and interesting question with some interesting comments, though diary itself was a little thin (I think I make up for that below; lol), and there was not actually a poll.
As always, it would be best if this diary and poll, were to stay up in the Recommended Diary list, into the evening west coast time, to give equivalent chance for all regions to vote.
First some Definitions and Discussion...
Arrest, Jail, Prison, Infraction, Misdemeanor, Felony:
An ARREST is the action of the police, or person acting under the law, to take a person into custody, usually so that they may be forthcoming to answer for the commission of a crime. In many legal systems, an arrest requires mere verbal information to persons that they are under arrest; the laying of hands or restraints upon the arrested person is usually not required to effect an arrest. Also, there are certain non-criminal arrests that allow for the seizure of representatives not present in the legislative body lacking a quorum, and the forfeiture of property.
For serious crimes, the police typically take suspects to a police station or a jail where they will be incarcerated pending a judicial bail determination or an arraignment. In other instances, the police may issue a notice to appear specifying where a suspect is to appear for his arraignment.
While an arrest will not necessarily lead to a state sanction such as imprisonment, the arrest itself may have serious ramifications, such as a loss of a job due to inability to pay bail, loss of public housing, and social stigma. Such effects are termed the collateral consequences of criminal charges.
Being arrested is generally a police action. As we all (should) know, just being arrested does not necessarily mean that one will be put in Jail or Prison, which is generally a court action.
JAIL, city jail or county jail, spelled gaol when referring to older English institutions, is a correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government. This includes either accused persons awaiting trial or for those who have been convicted of a misdemeanor and are serving a sentence of less than one year. Jail is also used as a term instead of prison, a place for convicted persons serving a sentence. These jails are, in a sense, small prisons run by individual counties and cities, though some jails in larger communities may be as large and hold as many inmates as regular prisons.
And a Jail is technically different then a Prison:
A PRISON, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned, and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Prisons are conventionally institutions which form part of the criminal justice system of a country, such that imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime.
A criminal suspect who has been charged with or is likely to be charged with a criminal offense may be held on remand in prison if he or she is denied, refused or unable to meet conditions of bail, or is unable to post bail. This may also occur where the court determines that the suspect is at risk of absconding before the trial, or is otherwise a risk to society. A criminal defendant may also be held in prison while awaiting trial or a trial verdict. If found guilty, a defendant will be convicted and may receive a custodial sentence requiring imprisonment.
In the United States, deriving yet often departing from British Common Law, there are (more or less) three levels of law breaking: Infraction, Misdemeanor and Felony.
An INFRACTION in the legal sense (minor offense, minor violation, petty offense, or frequently citation, sometimes used as synonymous with violation, regulatory offense, welfare offense, or contravention) is a "petty" violation of the law less serious than a misdemeanor. Typically, an infraction is a violation of a rule or local ordinance or regulation.
Some refer to an infraction as quasi-criminal, because conviction for an infraction is generally not associated with the loss of liberty, or even social stigma. Infractions are often considered civil cases, in which case an infraction is not even considered a crime. Nonetheless, most infractions are indeed violations of statutory law, but in differing with criminal law where the burden of proof is Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, the standard for the civil infraction is a Preponderance of Evidence.
Infraction is a term in United States law; it is not a term commonly used in the United Kingdom or other countries following English common law. In the United States, the key characteristic of an infraction is that the punishment seldom includes any amount of incarceration in a prison or jail or any other loss of civil rights -- typically the only punishment is a fine, although sometimes other regulatory actions are possible (e.g. revocation of a license or permit) or an order to remedy or mitigate the situation.
The power to cite persons for infractions is usually left with administrative officials; it is often not necessary to hold a court hearing -- in which case a citation the same as a conviction.
Examples of infractions include jaywalking, littering, violations of municipal codes (such as building or housing), or falsification of information. In many jurisdictions today, minor traffic violations have been decriminalized and classified as infractions. In the United States state of Oregon, possession of less than one ounce of cannabis (marijuana) is an infraction rather than a crime.
For this poll, infractions do NOT count as an arrest!
A MISDEMEANOR in many common law legal systems, is a "lesser" criminal act. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than felonies; but theoretically more so than administrative infractions (also known as regulatory offenses).
In some jurisdictions, those who are convicted of a misdemeanor are known as misdemeanants (as contrasted with those convicted of a felony who are known as felons). Depending on the jurisdiction, examples of misdemeanors may include: petty theft, prostitution, public intoxication, simple assault, disorderly conduct, trespass, vandalism, and other similar crimes. In general, misdemeanors are crimes with a maximum punishment of 12 months of incarceration, typically in a local jail (again, as contrasted with felons, who are typically incarcerated in a prison). Those people who are convicted of misdemeanors are often punished with probation, community service or part-time imprisonment, served on the weekends.
In Anglo-American law misdemeanors are in the middle range of seriousness for violations of the law. Felonies are the most serious and typically result in automatic forfeiture of some civil rights, including suffrage, and commonly involve lengthy incarceration. Typically, only those charged with felonies are entitled to the right of trial by jury. Infractions are the least serious, are punishable only by fine (and a command to reverse the behavior), and never carry a formal social stigma (examples of violations include parking and minor traffic offences, late payment of fees, and building code violations).
Misdemeanors usually don't result in the loss of civil rights, but may result in loss of privileges, such as professional licenses, public offices, or public employment. Such effects are known as the collateral consequences of criminal charges. This is more common when the misdemeanor is related to the privilege in question (such as the loss of a taxi driver's license after a conviction for reckless driving), or when the misdemeanor involves moral turpitude -- and in general is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. One prominent example of this is found in the United States Constitution, which provides that the President may be impeached by Congress for "high crimes and misdemeanors" and removed from office accordingly. The definition of a "high" misdemeanor is left to the judgment of Congress.
Did you hear that Congress? Got any judgment?
In the United States, a FELONY is the higher category of criminal offenses, as distinct from a misdemeanor, which is the less serious category of offenses (although some states have done away with the felony & misdemeanor classification). Crimes commonly considered to be felonies include, but are not limited to: aggravated assault and/or battery, arson, burglary, some instances of drug possession (dependent on the jurisdiction, often possession over a certain weight, based on the type of drug, is held to indicate intent to sell or distribute), embezzlement, grand theft, treason, espionage, racketeering, robbery, murder, rape, cannabis cultivation and fraud. A third offense for drinking and driving is also a felony in most states.
A felony may be punishable with imprisonment for more than one year or death in the case of the most serious felonies, such as murder, treason, and espionage; indeed, at common law when the British and American legal systems divorced in 1776, felonies were crimes for which the punishment was either death or forfeiture of property. In modern times, felons can receive punishments which range in severity; from probation, to imprisonment, to execution for premeditated murder or other serious crimes. In the United States felons often face additional consequences, such as the loss of voting rights in many states, exclusion from certain lines of work, prohibition from obtaining certain licenses, exclusion from purchase and possession of firearms or ammunition, and ineligibility to run for or be elected to public office. In addition, some states consider a felony conviction to be grounds for an uncontested divorce. These, among other losses of privileges not included explicitly in sentencing, are known as collateral consequences of criminal charges. Finally if a felon is not a U.S. citizen that person may be subject to deportation after sentencing is complete.
Civil sanctions imposed on United States citizens convicted of a felony in many states include the loss of competence to serve on a grand or petit jury or to vote in elections even after release from prison. While controversial, these disabilities are explicitly sanctioned by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a Reconstruction-era amendment that deals with permissible state regulation of voting rights.
So, for this poll only misdemeanors and/or felonies count for both arrests and jail/prison.
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Prison Population:
If have done time in jail or prison in the United States, you are far from alone.
The United States, for many many reasons (none of them good), has by far the largest number and highest rate of prisoners of any country in the world. Our over two million prisoners for a rate of 743 per 100,000 is not only higher than the highest European country (UK 124 per 100,000) and a country founded by criminals (Australia 126 per 100,000), but even higher than reported by Russia (713 per 100,000) or China (118 per 100,000).
Yeah... we are number one.
Why is this so?:
- Poverty & Inequality worse than other developed countries?
- Culture of violence & individualism
- History of slavery
- Drug laws
- Higher levels of enforcement
- Other?
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Social Contract & Civil Disobedience:
On the one hand, most of us agree with having some level of law and order as part of some sort of social contract. We want to be safe from being assaulted or robbed. We grant the state police power, and we do not allow (in principle) condone individual or private militias taking the law into their own hand (we prefer not to live in Somalia or Iraq).
On the other hand, there is a long & glorified (& I would agree, glorious) tradition of Civil Disobedience in the United States.
Perhaps in Western tradition it starts with the trial of Socrates, though admittedly the modern symbolic meaning - as the righteous philosopher seeker and speaker of truth – standing firm against the tyranny of the majority, may be rather different than the true history (he was arguably a pompous elitist, who had been an accessory to a brief period of tyranny against Athenian democracy).
In England, dare I suggest Robin Hood as an example :)
In the United States, the tradition of civil resistance is there at the foundation, with the resistance against British taxation and regulation without representation, notably by the Sons of Liberty, and culminating in the Declaration of Independence with its calls for violence against the established government. The Sons of Liberty were arguably terrorists, a mob committing violence against persons and property. History is, of course, written by the victors.
Officially, the American political tradition of non-violent civil disobedience starts with Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience" for refusal to pay taxes out of opposition to slavery and the war against Mexico. He spent a grand total of one night in jail, until his Aunt paid the taxes for him.
Gandhi acknowledged Thoreau’s influence as early as 1907 in his work in South Africa, and of course in the Indian independence movement. Martin Luther King refers to reading it in 1944 as an undergraduate student at Morehouse, and it’s influence is clear both in his actions and his writings such as 1963's Letter from Birmingham Jail.
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So, having (over?)set the stage for discussion and comment, we ask: Have you ever been arrested? Spent time in prison or jail?
I am also asking for how long?
- A quickie overnight like Thoreau?
- Extended time or hard core?
- Just once or multiple times?
Also up for discussion
- Misdemeanor or Felony
- Jail or Prison
- American Prison Population... why?
- Social Contract and Civil Disobedience