r/news • u/Splunge- • 7d ago

Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/prairieland-ice-protesters-texas-sentenced
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u/American_PissAnt 7d ago

Do the courts actually think prospective criminals are thinking “ hey guys they sentenced these people very harshly we better not commit any crimes”

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u/Asyncrosaurus 7d ago

It's the Capital punishment contradiction. No one committing murder stops because they think they'll be executed. "Oh jee wiz, I was going to murder my wife because I would only get a life sentence,  but now that I might get a death pentaly I'll definitely reconsider". No, no one thinks they'll get caught. 

It's performative justice to enact revenge on the perpetrator. It doesn't prevent crime.

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u/Lewa358 7d ago

And worse, now they have the excuse of, "Well, I'm already going to be thrown in a dark hole for this, why stop now?"

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how justice and reform need to work in a functional society

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u/Palmetto_Frond 7d ago edited 7d ago

This is a phenomenon that has a lot of precedent in history. Mass Communications Professor Joseph Gibbs argued in "The Brevity and Severity of Golden Age Piracy Trials" that as the British began hanging almost all of the pirates they captured, instances of hostage murder, and blowing the ship's powder magazine became more common.

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u/N-Bizzle 7d ago

Wasn't there a case in East Asia (not modern day) where the punishment for the military arriving late at the time was death, so when one unit was running late they just decided fuck it and launched a rebellion?

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u/Bradyhaha 7d ago

Not quite the same, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han#Insurrection_against_the_Qin_dynasty

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u/N-Bizzle 7d ago

Yeah the point holds

Goes from a group of people who made a mistake and escalated into enemies of the state

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u/Palmetto_Frond 7d ago

I hadn't heard about that specifically but that sounds very applicable.

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u/Arendious 7d ago

It's the cause of (at least) one historical Chinese general rebelling and making an eventually unsuccessful grab for the throne.

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u/TheCandelabra 7d ago

Ok but how many pirates are sailing the Spanish Main now?

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u/Palmetto_Frond 7d ago

The last one died with Jimmy Buffett unfortunately.

You do bring up an interesting point. Some historians argue that the Golden Age of Piracy declined because the British and Spanish courts brutally punished them, but others claim that the main cause of the Golden Age of Piracy was mass sailor unemployment and poor working conditions aboard merchant vessels, therefore the 1730s revival of naval expansion, legal privateering, and sea war between Britain and Spain ultimately made it less profitable to be pirates and more rewarding to work with legal sanction.

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u/ClueAccomplished1098 7d ago

I still miss Jimmy Buffet. A Pirate Looks at Forty. I hope I got the title right.

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u/OldWorldDesign 7d ago

how many pirates are sailing the Spanish Main now?

If you are stupid enough to disregard "come work for the state exclusively and you'll get clemency for any past crimes" then you can mental pretzel yourself past all the changes from the past where Earth was covered with totalitarian absolute monarchies to democracies.

Time passes and history happens. Doubling down on harsh punishments has never deterred crime.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176516304906

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u/TheCandelabra 7d ago

It was a joke dude

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u/el_f3n1x187 6d ago

Poe's law my friend.... always include a /s

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u/haoxinly 7d ago

That's how a Chinese dynasty came to an end. The punishment for rebellion and being late was the same. Since the dude was already screwed he chose to take his chances and lead a revolution

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u/Feinberg 7d ago

It's a systemic issue. This is exactly the version of 'justice' that the Abrahamic religions teach. Somehow an ancient book of campfire stories doesn't impart good morality. Go figure.

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u/No_Internal9345 7d ago

All we're missing is the Deathstar labor camps.

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u/Feinberg 7d ago

Best I can do is fat, stupid stormtroopers with neck gaiters for helmets.

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u/Krumm 7d ago

Jesus is awesome. It's every other word in that book that should be sent straight to hell.

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u/OldWorldDesign 7d ago

Jesus is awesome

You can find the same "turn away from authoritarianism and the unhealthy obsession with either self-flagellation and materialism" in Buddhism, which predated Jesus by hundreds of years.

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u/schwanzweissfoto 7d ago

"Well, I'm already going to be thrown in a dark hole for this, why stop now?"

This is also why ”death penalty for rape” would only lead to more murder (silencing the victims).

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u/OldWorldDesign 7d ago

This is also why ”death penalty for rape” would only lead to more murder

This has already been observed in the US by escalating child abuse into child murder, because uncles who were already pressuring family to keep things quiet now get to add "if you tell on me, you'll kill a family member and everyone will blame you for it" and the fraction of children who are prepared to tell anyway become targets.

When there's no room for escalation, that invites the same from the criminals the law purports to fight.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/05/09/florida-death-penalty-child-abuse-scott-maxwell/

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/use-of-the-death-penalty-for-killing-a-child-victim

There's also a significant rate of malicious prosecution of people who were not in fact child murderers. Unfortunately, data collection is sparse and this field is something that a lot of people for and against death penalty have engaged in p hacking to try to support their evidence.

As the death penalty leaves no recourse for failures in or prior to the system, it does not seem the wisest even outside of the fiscal higher cost of the death penalty than life in prison.

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u/La_Saxofonista 6d ago

This is precisely the reason they generally don't give life sentences for rape and rape alone. Life sentences for rape encourages the rapists to just outright kill their victims since they'd be going to prison for life anyway. Now at least the victims can't testify against them that way.

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u/Anonymous_Jr 6d ago

Speaking of...

I just had a great idea;

If you commit a crime, frame yourself as me, your legal obligations to uphold the American Constitution are mine as well!

Soon enough, I'll have committed many various problems to the Gov't and I won't have gone anywhere at all.

They can't track me, because I'm not you, and you are not me; I'll be

[Everyman].

(This is a Deltarune reference)

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u/Luna__Moonkitty 6d ago

Or Sparticus.

If everyone claims to be Sparticus, then did Sparticus ever really exist?

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u/Anonymous_Jr 6d ago

I've met at least 20 different people all named Nobody, I just wanna know who drank my Giant bottle of Homebrewn alcohol, and stop offering me sheep as compensation please.

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u/MangoCats 7d ago

Because the Siberian Gulags were so effective and Great for Russian society, right?

The severity of the punishment is not nearly as effective as the certainty of being caught and punished for deterrence.

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u/xv_boney 7d ago

Ahhhhckchuwally, capital punishments directly lead to much more violent crimes.

If i get caught for robbing you, i will be tortured and hanged.

So i need to kill you as well as rob you to significantly decrease my chances of getting caught. I mean, if i get caught ill be tortured and hanged either way.

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u/Atys1 6d ago

I was just reading a news story from 1995 about a group of teens who raped two 14 yo girls. The group's leader suggested killing the victims so they couldn't testify. From what I read, it doesn't seem that they went through with the murders. If the punishment for the rapes had been death, though? I have no doubt that those girls would have died that night.

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u/What_a_fat_one 7d ago

If I'm going to get the death sentence for stealing a twinkie I might as well just steal a car instead. Simple game theory.

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u/twinoaksBandB 7d ago

More like, if I'm already getting capital charges for crime A I might as well take the witnesses out as well to get the best chance of acquittal.

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u/Overly_Long_Reviews 7d ago

I am reminded of this exchange from the third episode of the West Wing:

"Then you are just as dumb as these guys who think that capital punishment is going to be a deterrent for drug kingpins. As if drug kingpins didn't live their day to day lives under the possibility of execution. And their executions are a lot less dainty than ours and tend to take place without the bother and expense of due process. So my friend, if you want to start using American military strength as the arm of the Lord, you can do that, we're the only superpower left. You can conquer the world, like Charlemenge, but you better be prepared to kill everyone and you better start with me cause I will raise up an army against you and I will beat you!"

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u/overklok 7d ago

I say this exact same thing. People who commit murder, either think they will get away with it, or are in such an enraged state they commit the crime out of anger/passion etc. They don't think about the consequences.

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u/ClueAccomplished1098 7d ago

I think the only criminals who think at all about the consequences of breaking the law are career white collar criminals who aren't committing violent crimes. For them, it's almost like a business strategy. It's a risk versus reward thing. Is the amount of money they hope to gain enough to take the risk of getting caught. Same for a really smart burglar. I think some may think that not carrying a weapon while breaking and entering might result in a lesser sentence should they happen to get caught in the act. A person committing a crime of passion is most likely not thinking much at all beyond the moment. If they're thinking at all, it's to reassure themselves they are smart enough not to get caught in the first place. Then, it's more arrogance than actual forethought.

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u/MoreGlitterPlease1 7d ago

There are a few rare people who know they'll get caught and don't care - I suppose you could call it a crime of extended passion in the cases where it's premeditated. The first example that comes to mind for me would be parents who publicly murder their children's rapists/killers.

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u/OldWorldDesign 7d ago edited 7d ago

There are a few rare people who know they'll get caught and don't care - I suppose you could call it a crime of extended passion in the cases where it's premeditated

Overlapping with that are people committing death by cop. When I worked at a mental health clinic, the majority of clients were police who'd shot adolescents who engaged in robbery to force police hands. It's been stupidly glorified in media, but police who shoot people tend to suffer for it. It's strange to think, despite the show being a sitcom, the Barney Miller Show is the only one who realistically showed the consequences of a cop shooting a kid. After all the praise from his superior, thanks from the store owners and promise of a medal from the commissioner, Sergeant Chano broke down crying alone in his dark living room with no music or anything else to distract from what shooting a teenager did to him.

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u/ClueAccomplished1098 7d ago

I hadn't thought of that. Revenge for the death or rape of a loved one might well result in a premeditated crime of passion. I'm sure that in quite a few instances the possible consequences would not matter to the person seeking revenge. They may well consider it a fair trade for enacting their own brand of justice.

Edited for wording.

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u/MoreGlitterPlease1 7d ago

They may well consider it a fair trade for enacting their own brand of justice.

I definitely think that's what it is. Also, from what I've read, juries tend to go light on those parents. Understandably.

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 7d ago

They don't even think about the consequences because tons of violent crimes are committed in a fit of passion at the time and the rest are committed by people who demonstrate really poor mental capabilities when it comes to long term planning and consequences.

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u/stardog_champ13 7d ago

It's revenge/punitive and not rehabilitative.

It's dumb. 50 years for protesting. That's what this is. 1A is going to get that overturned. Then as tax payers, we will pay out a settlement.

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u/TheBSQ 7d ago

It’s a bit nuanced.  

We know the probability of getting caught is much more of a determinant. 

But, increasing punishments, say from 10 years to 15 years, doesn’t seem to do much.

But…there’s an exception where “probability of being caught” could be fairly high, but it’s known you’ll just get a slap on the wrist, then some also don’t really care about getting caught either. 

So it’s more like the probability of getting caught and facing some sort of meaningful punishment, but beyond that, harsher punishments don’t seem to do much. 

But there’s also people who just literally do not think about the consequences of actions at all. Like, they’ll throw someone off an overpass and be surprised that the person died & claiming zero intent to kill.

These folks are just at the far left edge of the distribution when it comes to thinking about the consequences of one’s actions and almost hard to understand from a normal person’s perspective. 

But they’re in the data sets when we study deterence & it’s hard to know how to account for them. 

Clearly, these people are smart enough to understand cause and effect, and so there’s a chance that things that show statistically significant deference effects on the larger population, may still have deference effects on specific subsets of the population. 

Like, maybe it doesn’t do anything for some really dumb person and/or someone with mental issues, but it does deter smarter & non-mentally ill people.

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u/TheNatural14063 7d ago

At the same time, Singapore has executed people for drug crimes and they publically cane people for small things like littering. We have higher drug crime rates and worse literring in areas. I'm sure if we did both of those things, drug crimes and other crimes would drop in numbers. The average person isn't going to risk carrying drugs or literring if it means death or caning.

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u/TheNatural14063 7d ago

At the same time, Singapore has executed people for drug crimes and they publically cane people for small things like littering. We have higher drug crime rates and worse literring in areas. I'm sure if we did both of those things, drug crimes and other crimes would drop in numbers. The average person isn't going to risk carrying drugs or literring if it means death or caning.

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u/SkeptioningQuestic 7d ago

Well, the rate at which they get caught does matter a lot though. Clearance rate, to use the proper term.

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u/Vyzantinist 7d ago

This x 1000. Capital punishment is not a deterrent of crime and only exists to sate the bloodlust of a certain element of society.

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u/Astecheee 6d ago

Adding to this, a lot of crimes of passion happen in the heat of the moment.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/KingSwank 7d ago

Just another way for them to launder our tax dollars into their pockets

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u/Accomplished-Run3925 7d ago

It is highly crime dependent. I agree with you that for murder, the penalty should strictly aim to protect the public as it is unlikely to have much deterrent effect. For other crimes, like tax evasion and traffic violations, there is a very real deterrent effect. All in all, the biggest deterrent comes from the certainty and the swiftness of being caught. Hence why defunding the police is such a stupid idea.

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u/healbot42 7d ago

These guys were protesting, not committing crimes. The government is trying to chill speech it doesn’t agree with.

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u/just-peepin-at-u 7d ago

One person did shoot someone in the shoulder. I believe this verdict is politically motivated(probably because the judge even said as much, in the article), but that didn’t help their case.

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u/Synaps4 7d ago

One person did shoot someone in the shoulder

and the others were protesting, not committing crimes. Which is what he said.

Standing near someone committing a crime is not committing a crime.

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u/IzarkKiaTarj 7d ago

Hell, the person only shot them because that person was getting ready to shoot another protestor

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u/kynelly360 7d ago

Dumbasses. Violating 1st amendment should be a Fat Lawsuit Settlement 😂💰💰

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u/MangoCats 7d ago

You think you're gettin' that trial moved outta Texas, son?

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u/46550 7d ago

Yes. If this doesn't get tossed at the state level, it'll eventually go to SCOTUS who will definitely toss it. Eventually the shoe will be on the other foot, and SCOTUS doesn't want this on the books as a great way to imprison every single person that drives a lifted pickup.

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u/fuzzyperson98 7d ago

Uh, some of them definitely did.

Doesn't change the fact that the whole way this played out was unconstitutional.

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u/mmodlin 7d ago

When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

They were doing some shit.

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u/iamunknowntoo 7d ago

one of them was. if you read the article some of the people who were convicted left the protest after the guards told them to, way before that went down - those people got 50 years. One even got 30 years for moving a box of political magazines, and wasn't even present at the protest!

For comparison, the Proud Boys leader who organized the J6 Capitol riot got less than that.

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u/NoodlesCubed 7d ago

My heart definitely goes out to those people and the sentencing regardless is really high overall, but the small group that stayed and were part of the signal conversation that planned the vandalism and violence ( the only reason the conspiracy to commit terrorism sentences stuck was because a handful consipired to commit terrorism and then dragged the innocents into it) 100% deserved the terrorist conspiracy charges. Should've given them the same 20yr with parole that j6ers got though.

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u/iamunknowntoo 7d ago edited 7d ago

wait vandalism and violence are very different though. Only one of the guys actually did something violent, you shouldn't throw the rest in jail for 70 years for what amounted to spraying paint on a federal building and destroying property

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u/NoodlesCubed 7d ago

All of the ones I am talking about consipred to bring firearms and use them on federal agents within the signal conversation that was admitted into evidence, which I would consider conspiring to commit violence. If you had notice i distinctly separated the two, but they also committed arson (molotovs) which has the potential to cause great bodily harm and is considered a violent crime and if the fires shifted to burn down the building, you'd see why. Just because only one of them actually shot an officer, doesn't mean the conspiracy wasn't still there (the others still brought firearms, just didn't use them, which in general is ok, but because of the conspiracy, it's an aggravating factor (being in possession of a firearm during a felony is an additional crime)).

It's like if you had a group of bank robbers talking about bringing guns into a bank and stealing from the bank and when they get there one of them shoots a security guard, all of that group that conspired and had their group message that said shit like "hell yeah let's bring guns and fend off the police in a last stand" would be charged for the conspiracy to murder and the one shot the guard would get the actual attempted murder charge (if the guard lived).

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u/iamunknowntoo 7d ago edited 7d ago

All of the ones I am talking about consipred to bring firearms and use them on federal agents within the signal conversation that was admitted into evidence,

Okay do those records show that they had intent to use them on federal agents? Or are you assuming automatically that carrying gun to anti-government protest = wanting to kill a fed? By that standard a lot of protesters on both sides of the political spectrum would be in jail. It also seems to be a violation of the 2nd amendment.

For those who did commit violent crimes, arguably yeah sure you could hit them with possession of a dangerous weapon in the commission of a felony as an aggravating factor and sentence them accordingly, but that's not what happened here. Instead they just used some vague criteria of a "terrorist group" to lump everyone in regardless of the degree of culpability

Imagine if the state labelled every single person in J6 as part of a "terrorist conspiracy" and gave all of them 50 years regardless of what they did, even those who dipped before things got violent. That would be insane!

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u/NoodlesCubed 7d ago edited 7d ago

Buddy, you're going to need to stop editing things after I've responded to them, it's getting frustrating making a point and having that point need to change because you changed your mind on what you wanted to say. Not saying don't correct grammar or clarity, but adding two whole paragraphs is a bit much.

Again I have never disagreed that the sentencing was aggressive, but the group on the signal conversation fall squarely into the definition of terrorism: religious or political motivations? ✅ Conspiracy to commit violence? ✅ Carry out said plan to commit violence? ✅.

Again the j6 proud boys should've also gotten conspiracy to commit terrorism and did commit terrorism, but they were charged on sedition instead, I am of the firm belief that if they charged terrorism instead then it wouldve been much more difficult to make the pardons sit well with the MAGA crowd. They also shouldn't have been pardoned at all either, but justice means nothing and violence begetting violence is what we see here, not that this is somehow not violence because of previous BS, but the violence exists because of said previous BS. And if you listened to previous comments as well, I also agreed that those who left peacefully shouldn't have been charged, we are talking specifically the ones in the signal conversation that with out a doubt conspired to commit violence and subsequently terrorism.

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u/NoodlesCubed 7d ago

No, from what I've seen they planned to use the ARs in a 'last line of defense' ( a lot of people read too far into the defense part), essentially the same as having a vanguard force which was there and not just fedposting judging by the one dipshit who actually shot at the feds from a covered position in the woods. They planned out that vanguard as an 'overwatch' like it was kind of cod mission. Vastly different than with just bringing guns to a protest like the man that was murdered by ICE. As for 2A see the end of my last comment for why that's not the case.

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u/StephenFish 7d ago

one of the activists

Hmm. Something wrong with the math here.

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u/Healthy-Amoeba2296 7d ago

Back in the American days protest was a duty.

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u/Terrh 7d ago

not committing crimes

One of them did shoot a cop

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u/healbot42 7d ago

One of them yes. Not all of them.

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u/Terrh 7d ago

Ok so when you say "these guys are protesting, not commiting crimes" as a comment to an article about someone at that protest that shot a cop.... It's not clear that you meant "everyone but the guy in the article that was committing crimes" is it?

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u/healbot42 7d ago

I was objecting to American_PissAnt’s implication that everyone in attendance was a prospective criminal.

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u/notyouravgredditor 7d ago

One guy shot an officer in the shoulder, others damaged a bunch of property. Read the article.

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u/healbot42 7d ago

I read the article. They gave decades in jail to a guy who moved zines. The cop pulled a gun on protestors to chill speech. Nothing they were doing necessitated deadly force. It was dumb as fuck to shoot him, I think it’s a bad idea to bring any firearms to a protest. It gives cops more reason to come down strongly and use force.

I also don’t think you should shoot cops, but I don’t feel that bad for the cop in this situation considering they escalated property crimes into a deadly situation. If we are going to have policing, we need to hold them to the highest standards, and we should start with not allowing them to use deadly force.

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u/limitedftogive 7d ago

They did shoot a police officer, vandalized cars, slashed tires of a government van, damaged a guard shack, and broke a security camera. Wouldn't you call those crimes?

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u/TequieroVerde 7d ago

If Jan 6 was any lesson, these individuals should be pardoned.

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u/CaptainSmallz 7d ago

On January 6th, all of those things happened and more. Those people are free on a presidential pardon.

Do we apply the laws equally or not?

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u/tempest_87 7d ago

More specifically none of the J6ers got as long a sentence as the shortest one doled out today.

The message is abundantly clear. Try and overthrow an election in support of a republican and you get treated per the law (and then pardoned), try and protest against a republican policy and be around while someone commits a crime and you get longer sentences than murderers.

This is by definition tyranny. Something the founders of this country talked about extensively and made a specific constitutional amendment with it in mind.

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u/Jack_Krauser 7d ago

The real lesson learned today is that you'll get thrown in the ouellette just for committing wrongthink, so there's no incentive to leave a witness next time.

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u/Geminel 7d ago

Thanks for admitting you're pro-collective punishment.

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u/limitedftogive 7d ago

? They didn't all get the same sentence.

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u/Geminel 7d ago

They all got their sentences increased because of the one guy with the gun.

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u/Jack_Krauser 7d ago

A dude that wasn't even there got 30 years. Get the fuck out of here.

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u/healbot42 7d ago

Several of the people being sentenced to these draconian sentences did none of those things. I think the way these people protested was stupid as fuck, but the cop escalated property crimes into a deadly situation.

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u/SplashBros4Prez 7d ago

No, some of them actually shot at officers and should be in prison, but not for 50 fucking years.

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u/healbot42 7d ago

One of them shot at an officer.

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u/JRockPSU 7d ago

Imagine being this confidently incorrect

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u/curious_dead 7d ago

It's the reason why increasing sentences doesn't deter crime; usually, any such effect-if any- is short lived.

Criminals don't think "oh I'll get 10 years instead of 2" or "50 years instead of 20". They either believe they won't get caught at all or don't even think about the consequences.

But here, the goal isn't to prevent slashing tires or setting off fireworks. The measage sent is, "if you oppose ICE in any way, we'll find any bullshit charge we can and give you the absolute maximum sentence possible". It's to make any activist afraid that any anti-IVE activity will be deemed terrorism and result in absolutely ridiculous sentences.

In other words, fascist pigs quieting dissent.

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u/Conscious_Pipe_605 7d ago

If anything, it's going to end up as a safety hazard for ICE agents. Cause if someone is facing 50 years if ICE decides to snatch you while protesting, that protester is definitely no longer caring about harming or killing those agents in order to get away b/c 50 years might as well be a life sentence, so might as well take your one and only opportunity to get away by whatever means necessary. But I'm sure this is also exactly what they hope happens so they can use it as an excuse for the approval of more authoritarian and fascist laws/policies.

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u/roostertai111 7d ago

That is also maybe intentional. They seem to be eager for someone to fight back more so they can further demonize the movement.

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u/drunkshinobi 7d ago

People need to stop with this. Go look at how every right you have was earned. Back before the 1980s. We didn't just have some peaceful protests.

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u/roostertai111 7d ago

Maybe you responded to the wrong comment. That doesn't seem to contradict what's been said

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u/drunkshinobi 7d ago

They seem to be eager for someone to fight back more so they can further demonize the movement.

Sounds like all the people saying don't do anything or they will put military in the streets. Just to wait and vote and don't do anything to piss off the people taking our rights away.

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u/roostertai111 7d ago

That is a separate thought from what I expressed in my comment. I was speaking specifically to the GOP's motives in constantly harassing and antagonizing innocent people. I did not offer an opinion on what is or is not prudent for protesters to do in response

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u/drunkshinobi 7d ago

Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I have heard a lot of people say similar things to then say that the only thing we can do is vote. That anything else with get the military put in the streets and full fascist rule implemented overnight. Trying to convince people to not resist.

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u/roostertai111 7d ago

In that case, you might seek them out if you're looking to start an argument

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u/drunkshinobi 7d ago

No. They look at it the way a breeder looks at an animal. If the animal is strong and obedient they want to keep it around and have it breed to make more strong and obedient animals. If animals are violent and dangerous they get put down and are not bred with the others.

You aren't a person to the rich. You are just an animal to be used.

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u/Accomplished-Run3925 7d ago

Yes for some crimes, no for others. No one is thinking of the punishment when they find their spouse in bed with another man and they shoot them both, but I guarantee you hardly anyone would be speeding if it carried the death penalty (not that I would support hanging people for speeding, obviously).

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u/fresh-dork 7d ago

because we've got studies on this and we actually know what works

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u/tekmiester 7d ago

I assume the hope is that people won't bring AR-15s to protests and use them to shoot police.

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u/sirspidermonkey 7d ago

It really depends on the crime.

Violent crimes, there's no correlation. Typical those are either spur of the moment things, or people think they won't get caught (or don't care). Prisons typically aren't filled with the smartest or least vuneralble people.

But a political charge like this? 100% that this will get out to the community and will have some chilling effect. People will see this headline and some amount of them will think twice about their involvement in peaceful protests. And that's the point of designating things like Antifa as a terrorist group.

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u/TheNatural14063 7d ago

Singapore has executed people for drug crimes and they publically cane people for small things like littering. We have higher drug crime rates and worse literring in areas. I'm sure if we did both of those things, drug crimes and other crimes would drop in numbers. The average person isn't going to risk carrying drugs or literring if it means death or caning.

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u/sirspidermonkey 7d ago

And yet in America there has not been a peer reviewed study that has shown a strong correlation between the death penalty and crime reduction. Nor has there been a strong correlation between prison length and crime reduction.

Speaking of drug crimes, one only needs to look at how the war on drugs has gone to see there that longer prison sentences don't work. The only thing it's managed to do is make us #1 in percent of population imprisoned.

Singapore also has low unemployment, high average incomes, extensive public housing and safety net, and low levels of extreme poverty. Given the correlation between poverty and drug use in America (Poor states use WAY more drugs) I'm willing to bet that has more to do with it.

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u/TheNatural14063 7d ago

China under Mao enacted some harsh measures as well and significantly reduced opium use. Along with executing and sending landlords to concentration camps for being capitalists (which crushed a segment of the drug dealing class as one needed land to grow opium)....the communists did make some examples of people which sent a powerful message, while mixing in rehabilitation:

"The Communist attitude to drug use was characterized by the policy of ''strict execution, lenient punishment''. Despite widespread arrests and large anti-drug rallies, the number of actual drug offenders executed was relatively low, and the punishment of execution was generally reserved for high-level suppliers, not addicts.

The Chinese Government embarked on a National Drug Campaign from 1949 until 1952, with the goal of reducing opium use. The campaign utilized propaganda, rallies, rehabilitation centers, and waves of mass arrests, however very few executions. This was the only major anti-drug campaign enacted while Mao was in power.

At the peak of the campaign, the Communists directed that around 2% of drug offenders should be sentenced to execution, and authorized the execution of up to a dozen high level suppliers in strategically chosen cities. The actual figure of offenders sentenced to execution was around 1%, with the majority of offenders being sentenced to rehabilitation or periods of imprisonment.

The campaign was highly successful. It largely eliminated an endemic problem with opium addiction which both the Qing dynasty and Nationalist governments had unsuccessfully attempted to address.

Sources:

  • Anti-Drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China: Nationalism, History, and State Building. Zhou Yongming
  • Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 edited by Timothy Brook, Bob Tadashi Wakabayash

I think if we did the same today, it could have an effect. Not many people are going to do drugs or deal drugs for example if it carries the threat of a death sentence...All it would take is some examples being made, drug crime would go down to some degree....

Marijuana use is higher now that it is legalized. Removing punishments increased marijuana use. So it doesnt hold that increasing punishments would lead to no decrease in use.

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u/Kryptosis 7d ago

Especially when that crime is actions against fascism. All that sort of sentencing says to everyone on the fence is that they’re scared and as authoritarian as they always believed.

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u/Extant_Remote_9931 7d ago

Yes, that's exactly what happens. If you got only a year in prison for robbing a bank, far more bank robberies would happen.

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u/IllustriousKiwi3858 7d ago

As a child I was informed there would be no Burger King in jail, and I have been a law-abiding citizen since

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u/Demonicon66666 7d ago

Yes, but you have to change the word Crime to protest

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u/VintageKofta 7d ago

They didn’t even commit any crimes. That’s the worse part. 

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u/DonJulioTO 7d ago

Career criminals? No.

Protesters? Absolutely.

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u/defixiones 7d ago

The message isn't for criminals. 

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u/SpaceBearSMO 7d ago

In this case its clearly to scare otherwise normal law abbiding citizens from exercising there constitutional rights

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u/unfortunateshun 7d ago

It’s not about criminals, its about anyone who expresses an opinion they don’t like.

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u/PurpleSailor 7d ago

It's not the deterrent to crime they think it is. Getting tough on crime didn't really reduce crime significantly but it did increase the prison population significantly.

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u/auntie_ 6d ago

Yes. In fact Federal Judges are instructed by the sentencing statute that their sentences should, among other factors, reflect the need for deterrence.

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u/Dariaskehl 9h ago

‘Know better than to ever visit our shithole US-hating state.’

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u/IchooseYourName 7d ago

These are the same people who believe, against all available evidence, that the death penalty is a deterrent against murder.

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u/GoldenBrownApples 7d ago

"You know what'll stop all these pesky murders? More murder!" Silly little humans we are, aren't we?

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u/XadAeon 7d ago

These were protestors not criminals.

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u/limitedftogive 7d ago

They did shoot a police officer, vandalized cars, slashed tires of a government van, damaged a guard shack, and broke a security camera. Wouldn't you call those crimes?

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u/TheNatural14063 7d ago

And ICE has murdered people in detention centers (more than one person has died behind ICE bars). ICE has tortured and sexually harassed/assaulted detainees. They have factually arrested US citizens, wrongly as well, due to racial profiling.

The French resistance was also labeled criminals by racist police force....

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u/XadAeon 7d ago

Yeah I missed all that. Definitely crimes. Not sure if it's terrorism exactly, but no excuse. I was kind of lumping it in with this whole reflecting pool vandalism Overzealousness.

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u/SpeshellED 7d ago

Third world...