Originally Posted by Agent_Grey

Ah, a fair point. I suppose I would have to clarify by stating that I may have falsely assumed that BD was arguing from the conservative viewpoint (i.e. Hardcore criminals all get away scot free while hard-working americans are unfairly persecuted for not being Politically correct.)

If my assumption was correct, my statement stands in terms of such a high population of poor minority offenders and low population of white-collar criminals. In a sense, I'm agreeing its unequal, but not in the way I'm assuming BD means.

If however BD is equally appalled at dispreportionate arrest, conviction, and sentancing rates of poor and/or minority offenders, then I don't actually disagree. But I also don't really see what liberalism has to do with it... good liberals tend to advocate preventative and rehabilitative justice over emphasis on hard time, so I don't see how one could lay dispreportionality in the prison population at our feet.

And as for you Takuan SoHo, I'm not sure if you're a true libretarian or not. While I admire libretarians for their consistancy (government out of EVERYWHERE, including the bedroom) I don't tend to agree with their viewpoint, since I believe government can be a positive force in a great many things. At least certainly more than conservatives and libretarians tend to give credit for.