Claim: We, In America, Need to rethink the way we define crime and the way we punish it.

Marijuana. . . It's not specifically a pot debate, But I would be lying if I said that it wasn't one of the things that led me to this conclusion. I'll try to make my position clear right here so we're on the same page. I am against criminalizing any type of self harm at all. Because under my view of victims and potential victims being the gold standard for law making, It is necessary that self harm be excluded. Now obviously, I can't just throw out self harm on a whim, So I'll explain my logic behind it. When a person wants to hurt themselves, There's not really a whole lot that we can do about it. They can use their wits and their unlimited access to their own body to achieve this when you least expect it. I think we should let people be the masters of their body and only intervene their self harm spills out to other people. I would like to state here that I am not against mental health facilities and I'm not against treating people against self harm in extreme cases. But I think it's a medical issue and not a criminal one. So under my beliefs, I think that all drugs should not be a crime. Selling drugs by consent should not be crime (Minors cannot consent, And I'm against the idea of any parental consent that facilitates self harm of a minor), Suicide should not be a crime although assisted suicide would be, And I can make other judgments off this standard, But I can't account for every scenario in this argument. Inhumane Treatment. . . Don't underestimate the psychological effect of insufficient living space. There's a reason that groups like PETA make a big deal about it with animals. It causes social tensions and can deal heavy psychological damage if the environment becomes hostile, Which it often does in prison. I would like to point out that the meals are not just bad tasting, They are often nutritionally lacking. Prisoners have given accounts of their stool hardening and how their stomachs couldn't handle real food when they first got out. On the bad tasting part, I guess it's trivial to an extent. But is there any reason we can't make it at least feel like real food by giving it some taste? I mean they're safely behind bars and no one is getting hurt. Is a little salt really gonna break the budget? We don't have to decease freedom to decrease violence. Part of my system is that, By not punishing victimless crimes, We will clear a huge portion of the prison population. This by itself will help the problem to an extent. The rest is about creating healthy environments for the prisoners so the violence reduces itself. Some prisoners will still be violent. But prisons can separate people into groups and the violent ones can be put with each other under more strict security so as not to limit the freedoms of the general populace. Most people try to get along honestly but it only takes one violent person to start creating a power dynamic. Separation. . . Honestly, The separation from home thing is not an issue for me if we're not locking people up for victimless crimes. I mostly highlighted it cause you brought it up and I thought it properly illustrates the plight of a nonviolent offender. I could care less if the violent ones lose their homes. Justice. . . I don't see how suffering is an effective teacher. Knowledge is an effect teacher. Feed their brains, Not their depression. People only buy into this idea because they don't want people to get away with their crimes. They want them to feel the same pain that the victim felt, That's stupid. If we all agree that the victim should have felt that pain, Then we shouldn't be wishing that same pain on other people. 1 million offenses. . . I get where you're coming from, But that's a slippery slope fallacy. We can't justify punishing people for. . . I guess we can call them micro crimes or fractional crimes sounds catchy, Lol. If we don't know whether or not it will go down that way. Certain ones can be proven and in that case, It falls under my potential victim requirement, So I have no problem with it in my system. I actually did a debate on prostitution earlier, Lol. I don't think that one falls into the 1 million category. I don't want to go into painful detail, But I'll just say that prostitution isn't hurting anyone if it's consensual and human trafficking is a separate issue that should be taken seriously, But not conflated with prostitution. We should only put prostitution in this category at times when it overlaps with human trafficking.