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The fact that it is easier to be persecuted and sentenced in the US shows how strict our laws are. Also since prison makes one bitter especially if they are put there for such victimless crimes as prostitution or drug use. People who once had respectable jobs but go for one night to a prostitution club and get caught in the bust become worse criminals when they get out of jail because they are unable to get employment. They become burglars, muggers, and thieves then end up killing for a bite to eat. It becomes a vicious cycle in America.
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Well, I did time for one of those victimless crimes (less than a gram of hash = a year upstate and another on probation; I got paroled after ten months) and I haven't turned into a burglar or a mugger or killer. I did turn into a Dickhead (well, I was already well on my way), but what I decided was the system wasn't going to fuck me again so I kept right on doing what I had been doing (once I got off parole) BUT I got an education and a better job so everyone would THINK I had changed ...
Darkseid, you post a lot of unsubstantiated crap as if it were fact. You need to learn from JZ and cite some decent sources for some of the allegations you make. But, I doubt you will be able to because most of it is totally false.
But, yeah, I'm still a little bitter about it after almost thirty years. It was totally unnecessary and it wiped me out financially. Plus years later I paid a lawyer to have my record expunged. More years later when I got a job in a halfway house I found out it [b]hadn't[/b] been expunged and the fucking lawyer was dead so there went another grand down the toilet. I could have gotten laid 50 times for that in Buenos Aires, not even thinking about twenty years' worth of interest ...
Well fuck it. I probably got laid 50 times in Buenos Aires anyway so [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord140][CodeWord140][/url] on all the lawyers and all the district attorneys and all the cops and all the religious right wingers (just had some Mormons knock on my door today; boy, did I rip into those fuckers) and and and
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Heh, I didn't know this thread existed. Yep, The Guess Who (and for all you younger folks, Lenny Kravitz) had it PEGGED: "American Woman, stay away from me!"
It seems to me that American women demand absolute equality (dare I say it ... superiority?), yet they'll never complain if a man does something in deference to them.
In short, they want it all.
American women are the reason I've always been single. It pains me to consider finding a foreign woman and bringing her here, as she'd no doubt "be assimilated."
America's litigous, politically-correct culture has done much to temper the American female agenda. And for that, it was easy for me to turn to hobbying ... why not? I mean, for roughly the cost of a nice dinner and a movie, I can go straight to dessert! :) It's the ultimate convenient package, with absolutely no strings attached. Provided, of course, I slather enough antiseptic down there afterwards!
Anyway, there's my several two-cents' worth. Have a good one and VIVA SEXY FOREIGN FEMALES! :D
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Joe - does your source state what sort of offences people are being taken to court for in OZ? It's just that we have sooo many petty crimes on our books that people are charged with all the time, but they do not carry jail sentences. One of the biggest, I would think, is Social Security Fraud. The conviction rates on that are in the hundreds of thousands every year, but unless you do something extremely fraudulent (like using false ID to get welfare, etc) you are only fined or given community service.
We do have a "three strikes" policy for imprisonment - but it seems to be rarely used.
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Okay Dickhead, I'm sorry I struck a nerve on the criminal thing. You served a jail sentence for drugs but didn't turn out a career criminal, unlike what I said on my previous post so I was wrong on that note. The other half is still true that it is much easier to be convicted to jail in the US and for stupid petty shit like drug possession and being a john. These victimless crimes are crimes based on morality and the other crap that the prudes vote for in America. We are also educated to hate and not tolerate these victimless crimes by the media. Drugs and prostitution are always linked to gangs and violence and runned down neighborhoods but Holland paints a different picture because Holland's RLD and sex clubs are none of that.
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rn, they don't break down prosecution by type, other than to say that these are all criminal rather than civil cases. oz interestingly, while it has far lower rates in many categories than the us, is higher in rates of general theft, auto theft, and probably most surprising to me, given the us reputation, [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] -- well over twice the rate in that. the un stats don't report fraud rates for oz, though they do for the us.
and as per dickhead's story -- the rate of recorded drug offenses in the us is far higher than any given violent crime -- and higher than murder, [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url], major assaults, and robbery combined.
i do disagree with you, darskeid, on the john thing. the prosecution and conviction levels there, especially as far as jail time, are very low compared to other crimes. the un doesn't track that, but it's what i've read elsewhere (generally in things that contrast the arrest/conviction rates of prostitutes -- high -- to johns.)
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it's sad to have to admit, but i'm not the slightest bit surprised by the australian [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] rates. but i should say (in our defence) that those rates probably actually reflect how seriously our courts take sexual assault. as more [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord127][CodeWord127][/url] get penalised and imprisoned (finally!) - more women become willing to report. i think our incidence of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] is actually pretty similar to the us (about 1 in 4 women being raped in her lifetime), which should mean that our prosecution rates - compared to the us - look pretty good, really.
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understood, and i'd also pick up on the whole prosecution thing to say again that good reporting and prosecution can make things look like they're getting worse when the opposite is true. better reporting and prosecution of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord124][CodeWord124][/url] or anything else doesn't necessarily mean the rate is actually rising -- only that it's being taken more seriously. this is always one of the things you see in crime stats -- effective police departments often look as though they're doing a bad job because they take reports and pursue things, where ineffective forces not only don't make the crime reports and the effort, they don't get called by people, because they figure it's not worth the effort. and having police who can be bribed out of reporting things means that it's tough to get a true picture of the problem -- if they can be bribed for one thing we might not object to, they can be bribed for others.
but to get this back in the direction of the topic, i have to wonder just how much the focus on victimless crimes does or does not affect the climate of sexuality in the us. we talk about it a lot, but i'm not conviced which is chicken and which is egg -- whether the laws are the result of an up-tight society, or whether the uptight society is the result of the laws, or both. as marlene dietrich once said, "in america sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact."
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there is no way that one in four women are raped in their lifetime. that is just absurd and if there are statistics that support that, they must have a very interesting definition of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url], like the check bounced so it was [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url]. sorry, i'll never believe that no matter what. but, i'd be willing to look at some statistics if and only if they include the definition they used, how they selected the sample, and so forth. i'd be willing to bet that any study that showed rates anywhere near that have a biased sample.
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in nearly everything i've read, from every country around the world, the rates are between 1 in 3, and 1 in 6. granted, i haven't looked at the actual definitions, etc - but they do use the word "[url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url]", not sexual assault. type "women will be raped in their lifetime" into google. i just did, and some pretty scary looking numbers popped up.
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actually, the national institute for justice (part of the u.s. department of justice) has broken down violence in general and violence against women pretty specifically. it pegs the number who have suffered either [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] or attempted [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] during their lifetime at 1 in 6, using a very strict definition of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] as forced oral, vaginal or anal sex. this is considered by many experts to be a very conservative estimate. this same study pegs the percentage of women who will be either raped or physically assaulted during their lifetime at 55%. (men stand at 66.8%, but [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] and attempted [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] here is at 3%, and 53% of men will be "slapped or hit" during their lifetime versus 43% of women.) the breakdown of women raped during their lifetime looks like this: completed [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] -- 14.8%, attempted only, 2.8%.
the study is at [url]http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/172837.pdf[/url] if anyone wants to look at it. one of the disturbing things the study also found was that female [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] victims from the previous twelve months suffered an average of almost three [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord124][CodeWord124][/url]. it also goes into considerable detail about the differences in statistical measuring approaches and why differences might exist in various statistics.
these findings are in line with the national health and social life survey, which found that 22% of surveyed women and 2% of surveyed men said they had "been forced to do something sexual" in their lifetime.
whether it's one in three, one in four, or one in six, i still find these numbers appalling. and let me say that i'm someone who was really pissed off by the first big date [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] study that got all kinds of noise and press, as its definition of sexual assault included "unwanted looking" and popped that into the aggregated statistics. i hate studies with an ax to grind, as they tend to obscure the real issue and do more harm than good, but i don't think there's much question that there's real harm going on here.
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1 in 6 is more believable to me, especially if it includes attempted. Again, I am more concerned with the sampling technique. There is usually some type of response bias. I will check out JZ's source and comment on it later. I am at a public computer right now.
47% of all men have never been in a single fight in their lifetimes? Quite frankly I don't believe that either.
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all i can say is that myself, a couple of my relatives and many, many of my friends, have been either raped or sexually assaulted. (and i'm most certainly not including "unwanted looking!!") it's so very common, it's scary. that doesn't include sex workers who are raped at work either - although, of course it should - but i'm talking only about 'ordinary' women who were raped by strangers, or by dates and/or family friends.
i think this is something that men in this section should think a little about - ask any of your female friends if she knows anyone who has been raped (or even if she, herself, has). i will almost guarantee that most women know at least one woman who has, if not many. i'm not saying it's an excuse for being a frigid ***** - only that it stands to reason that we would err on the side of caution.
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maybe those men are just brilliant defenders so they're never hit :) seriously, though, if you take out fights before adulthood that might well be an accurate number. i know tons of guys who i can't imagine ever being in a physical confrontation.
i'd agree with you, rn -- i've had exactly that conversation with many women i know, and i've rarely come across a woman who doesn't personally know someone who's been raped. and i'd say at least half have said they've been at least physically attacked around sexual issues, with a high number confessing they personally were raped, even if lots of them also "took the blame" for it because it was someone they knew and they "should have been able to stop it."
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i didn't realize those fight stats were adults only. then it sounds about right. my sister was raped at knifepoint when she was 15. now that's [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url]. some other shit i heard about, including my ex-girlfriend's account of being raped, doesn't qualify imo. i am not trying to say it isn't a frequent and serious problem, only that the studies i looked at in school did not survey a sample of all women, and that there is a lot of junk science out there as far as studies are concerned.
i wonder what portion of those male [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord124][CodeWord124][/url] occurred in prison. i wonder if prison inmates ever get into these survey samples. i wonder if different generations respond to surveys with the same honesty and frequency.
i bet the incidence of [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] in third world countries is very high. i wonder if [url=http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123][CodeWord123][/url] is actually increasing or decreasing in frequency in developed countries.
but really, i will never be either a victim or a perpetrator so maybe i don't have much perspective on the issue. so, i'll shut up until i get a chance to review jz's link.