Jackson Jambalaya

What an idiot. "...aspiring public intellectual..." WTF. Town idiot would be more like it.

Tom Head, Jackson's own village idiot! Anyone who has ever met him in person knows he doesn't just play the part online, either. He makes people laugh...but he's too clueless to know they're all laughing AT him, not WITH him.

Be nice to Rousseau.

Of course, he totally misses the racist aspect of what he proposes. I'll let you guys figure out how its racist.

1. Thank you for using the word "racist" correctly. Unlike folks on cable news, you recognize that someone can accidentally say or propose something racist.

2. We need to look at what prisons are for. If they're for punishment, then obviously the embezzler should get it just as hard as the robber, if not harder. But if the objective of the criminal justice system is honestly rehabilitation, then everybody who can be incarcerated under house arrest instead of in prison probably should be, because prisons socialize prisoners exclusively with each other, remove job prospects, separate prisoners from their families, and otherwise create problems that make it difficult for the prisoner to reestablish himself or herself in the outside world on release.

2a. To the extent that not incarcerating white-collar criminals would give them house arrest, the proposed system has a racist effect. This racist effect is, however, miniscule compared to the racist effect of the current system, which needlessly screws up the lives of millions of men of color. We need a system that is honestly geared towards rehabilitation instead of punishment, and if a side effect of that is that Bernie Ebbers never sees jail but somebody who takes ten bucks at gunpoint does, then that's an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of any system that treats violence as the only legitimate reason for incarceration. I'm not saying this sort of approach is perfect. I'm saying that it's better.

2b. I think that from a rehabilitation POV, the amount stolen is less important than the means used to steal the amount. The amount stolen only becomes relevant when the purpose of prison is to exact retribution for offenses, which is not a pragmatic goal.

By the way, I'm not suggesting changing anything in one step. I'm suggesting that the eventual goal of the movement towards alternatives to incarceration should be to eliminate prison for all nonviolent offenses.

Right now the community courts system is used primarily to present alternatives to prison in cases of drug-related offenses, prostitution, etc.--largely crimes in which people of color are disproportionately incarcerated. By the time the system gets around to big-money embezzlers (if it ever does), the racial disparity in that area might be gone. I'm not enough of a Rousseau to expect all of this to happen in my lifetime.

I gotta get me some of whateverdahell he's taking....

Come on. You can disagree with Tom all you like but he's not a person who deserves name calling.

Who called him a name? Unless he answers to Village Idiot. I think it was more a characterization than actual name-calling.

Tom Head's a damn male feminist. What do you expect? He probably wears Birkenstocks and eats mango chutney on Orowheat.

Anybody who takes Tom Head seriously should be laughed at.

Who cares what Tom Head? Why are you idiots still talking about this clown?