Well they banned guns in Britain ...

Professur

Professur

Well-Known Member
For all the good it's doing them

Jail for 'suicide vest' student


Isa Ibrahim experimenting at his home

A student has been jailed for a minimum of 10 years for plotting to blow himself up using his own "suicide vest" and home-made explosives.

Isa Ibrahim, from Bristol, was convicted at Winchester Crown Court of making explosives with intent and preparing terrorist acts in April 2008.

He had denied both charges but pleaded guilty to a third charge of making an explosive substance.

Prosecutors said Ibrahim had planned to set off the blast in a shopping centre.

Police said the case was a landmark one because it was the first time a tip-off from the Muslim community had led to a major anti-terrorism arrest.

He was given an indeterminate sentence, with the judge saying he should serve a minimum of 10 years.

Mr Justice Butterfield told Ibrahim that, even though he had not made a detonation device or completed the suicide vest, "your preparation to inflict an atrocity on the innocent civilians of Bristol were advanced".

'Lonely and angry'

"You are a dangerous young man, well capable of acting on the views you held in the spring of 2008," he said.

He said he considered Ibrahim to be a "continuing danger" to the public but gave a substantial discount on the minimum term imposed because he had acted alone and because of his age.

"You were, in my judgment, a lonely and angry young person at the time of these events, with a craving for attention," said the judge.


He had all the things he needed to make a viable explosive device. He was dangerous.


How a loner became a would-be bomber

Police found a quantity of home-made high explosive HMTD, the same substance used in the 7 July attacks, in a container in the fridge of Ibrahim's home when he was arrested.

They also discovered an electrical circuit capable of detonating the explosive at short range and a half-made "suicide vest".

The prosecution said the Muslim convert was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack on the Broadmead shopping centre in Bristol, where he had been seen doing reconnaissance.

Prosecutors said he became increasingly radicalised after converting to Islam, developing a "mindset of martyrdom" and changing his name from Andrew to Isa.

Det Supt Nigel Rock: "The device he intended to manufacture was capable of causing serious injury"

He also researched fundamentalism on the internet and searched online for techniques to manufacture explosives from household products.

Ibrahim had told the trial that he made explosives and "suicide vests" because it was "fun" and he was trying to "occupy time" while he struggled to beat an addiction to drugs.

He said he was "planning to set off an explosion but not hurt people".

Det Supt Nigel Rock of Avon and Somerset Police, said it was a landmark case as the initial information came from the Muslim community.

"We will never know what the consequences would have been had the community not had the courage to contact the police.

"But what we do know is that Ibrahim had all the components for a credible explosive device, he had increased the destructive power of that device the night before his arrest by obtaining shrapnel to add to it.

"He had made a suicide vest and built the means of detonation. Finally he had identified a busy shopping centre in Bristol as his target.

"The jury found he meant to detonate that bomb, intending to cause serious harm. There is no doubt people would have been killed."
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Source

I think we need to worry less about the guns and stuff, and seriously start worrying more about loners and dorks.
 
He was planning to set off an explosion, but not to hurt people? Yeah... that makes sense... why would an explosion in a crowded mall hurt anyone?

So, in Britian, terrorism gets you a reduced minimum sentence. But here in the states, it gets you waterboarded in Gitmo. Makes me proud to be an American.
 
Yeah well the American philosophy of prison for revenge against crime is pretty pathetic too Altron. We have about 5% of the world's population, but we have almost 25% of the world's prison population. Our recidivism rates are among the highest in the world. Our prisons are nothing but gladiator schools and legalized slavery.

Trouble is that so many folks who have no interest in making things better, and from what I've see of your young and yet naive politics you are probably among them. They think we should be tougher still on crime, not allow for rehabilitation at all. The trouble is it's exactly the same as a man beating himself on the head with a hammer to alleviate a headache.

Unfortunately the public is unable to look at such issues rationally. Perhaps look at most issues rationally.
 
randomJACKASS said:
Yeah well the American philosophy of prison for revenge against crime is pretty pathetic too Altron. We have about 5% of the world's population, but we have almost 25% of the world's prison population. Our recidivism rates are among the highest in the world. Our prisons are nothing but gladiator schools and legalized slavery.
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So how would you solve the problems of crime and poverty...which go hand-in-hand?
 
randomJACKASS said:
Yeah well the American philosophy of prison for revenge against crime is pretty pathetic too Altron. We have about 5% of the world's population, but we have almost 25% of the world's prison population. Our recidivism rates are among the highest in the world. Our prisons are nothing but gladiator schools and legalized slavery.

Trouble is that so many folks who have no interest in making things better, and from what I've see of your young and yet naive politics you are probably among them. They think we should be tougher still on crime, not allow for rehabilitation at all. The trouble is it's exactly the same as a man beating himself on the head with a hammer to alleviate a headache.

Unfortunately the public is unable to look at such issues rationally. Perhaps look at most issues rationally.
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I'm all for rehabilitating criminals. I'm more for preventing them in the first place. Unfortunately, you'd need to convince me that the proposed rehab actually works first.

Frankly, if the 'three strikes' plan was terminal instead of life behind bars, I think you'd see a remarkable reinforcement to your rehab. That's not a question of punishment. That's simply the confirmation that, for some people, rehab will never work. No matter how much you love your dog, you don't try to retrain it once it's bit someone. I'm willing to accord humans a little more leniency. No third bite, tho.
 
Gato_Solo said:
So how would you solve the problems of crime and poverty...which go hand-in-hand?
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Crime and poverty have an iffy correlation at best. In this country however its strong enough as to not be dismissible. All the same I give you three answers that fit both problems. Education, education, and education are the keys! Firstly I think criminals need an extensive program of working with victims of crimes similar to their own. Very few of the criminals behind bars are sociopaths, but very rarely are they actually forced to see the full implications and consequences of their crime either. Couple this with some kind of moral education, be it exposure to various faiths (*gasp* is rj talking religion?) or probably at best multiple different sources. Follow it up with rehabilitative education and shorter sentences for those who show promise. Of course drug and alcohol treatments have to be considered as well. Most importantly these programs need to be mandatory, and not something a prisoner can opt out of save for with violent behavior. That would weed out the bad ones.

I am absolutely positive this approach would work better than the current system. The trouble is I don't think anyone will seriously commit to such a course until crime reaches such epidemic proportions that we start to have more people who are direct victims of it than not.

But as for poverty specifically I can tell you what will not help is removing educational funding as is happening now.
 
I'd bet you a dollar to a hole in a doughnut that drugs and alcohol play a part in crime exponentially higher than poverty though.
 
I really do think that the interaction of offenders and victims is something that could revolutionize criminal justice. When you make the devastation of the victims of crime real to them, they stand a much better chance of thinking about what they did. Those who continue doing the same shit, they are the ones to lock away for life.
 
randomJACKASS said:
I really do think that the interaction of offenders and victims is something that could revolutionize criminal justice. When you make the devastation of the victims of crime real to them, they stand a much better chance of thinking about what they did. Those who continue doing the same shit, they are the ones to lock away for life.
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Brilliant. Subject the victim to their assailant repeatedly. Won't be any chance of them reporting another crime after that, will there? That's one way to get the [reported] crime rate down.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about and that was deliberately obtuse. It was to point out that every case is different. While it might help some, having the effect they caused to their victims presented to them could very well push some the other way. The more dangerous ones, who are doing it more for the power trip than to feed a family. There is no 'one solution'. That's why I don't have much faith in rehab. There's no 'one solution' there either, and how much time and effort are we willing to invest in retraining each and every criminal?
 
Professur said:
Brilliant. Subject the victim to their assailant repeatedly. Won't be any chance of them reporting another crime after that, will there? That's one way to get the [reported] crime rate down.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about and that was deliberately obtuse. It was to point out that every case is different. While it might help some, having the effect they caused to their victims presented to them could very well push some the other way. The more dangerous ones, who are doing it more for the power trip than to feed a family. There is no 'one solution'. That's why I don't have much faith in rehab. There's no 'one solution' there either, and how much time and effort are we willing to invest in retraining each and every criminal?
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Well I would specify that no criminal should work with their victim, only willing participants victims of similar crimes.
 
Look I am not the man with the whole plan or anything. I am sure some would be willing to do the work cheap. All I'm saying is such an approach makes a lot more sense than the nearly completely worthless system we have now.
 
I know. But it's pointless to point out that the current system is obsolete until questions like that have answers. And unfortunately, too damn many people want someone else to work it out for them. That's how your gov't (and your banks, and your lawyers, etc) have accumulated so much power. It was never intended to be that way. That's a large part of why my outlook is so "primate" as Spike put it. People took responsability for themselves and what was around them then, instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Towns raised barns, not construction companies. Families fed the poor, not soup kitchens. And sheriffs raised posses to enforce the law, not hired tax collectors with guns.

that might be primitive, but they cared. How many of us today can even name everyone on their block, let alone say they've helped them? Without that, prison reform such as you suggest can't happen.
 
Well its something I am considering throwing some work into for real, if only for my well balanced state. People think, mistakenly that we are more left. Check out the results of the last two gubernatorial elections and you'll see we are balanced, but perhaps I can do some good.
 
randomJACKASS said:
Yeah well the American philosophy of prison for revenge against crime is pretty pathetic too Altron. We have about 5% of the world's population, but we have almost 25% of the world's prison population.
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That statistic is completely irrelevant.

Is it because there is truly more crime in the United States? Or is it because we have far superior law enforcement, and more laws to enforce?

We have a huge amount of drug and financial based laws that many second world and third world countries do not. Many countries don't lock up people for drug and alcohol use, but we do. We also have white-collar crimes like tax evasion and embezzlement and other things that are not an issue in poor countries. How many people in the US get locked up for a few ounces of pot, or a DUI, prostitution, or skimming off the books at work? Versus a third world country where it goes unnoticed by authority figures.

Another major issue in why our imprisonment rates are so high is that we have a better police force than the majority of the world. There's corruption and lethargy, sure, but not to the degree that most third world countries have. If I get pulled over for speeding, I can't slip the officer twenty dollars and go on my merry way, like I could in Thailand or Chile or a country like that. Our police forces are larger, better organized, and less corrupt than most countries', which results in a higher percentage of crimes being reported to the police, and a higher percentage of criminals being apprehended.

In order to have any factual basis, a detailed analysis of how many crimes are committed versus how many are reported must be done. The scope of the enforced laws needs to be taken into consideration, since we have people locked up here for doing things that are legal in many parts of the world. The number of criminals apprehended must be taken into account, as well as the effectiveness of the court systems. If you'd like to do that study and prove to me that punitive punishment is completely ineffective, be my guess. Until then, you can continue to quote meaningless statistics until you get carpal tunnel syndrome.
 
randomJACKASS said:
Yeah well the American philosophy of prison for revenge against crime is pretty pathetic too Altron. We have about 5% of the world's population, but we have almost 25% of the world's prison population.
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Holy Crap!! How did we ever fit 1.2 billion illegal aliens in our prisions!!!
 
Altron said:
That statistic is completely irrelevant.

Is it because there is truly more crime in the United States? Or is it because we have far superior law enforcement, and more laws to enforce?

We have a huge amount of drug and financial based laws that many second world and third world countries do not. Many countries don't lock up people for drug and alcohol use, but we do. We also have white-collar crimes like tax evasion and embezzlement and other things that are not an issue in poor countries. How many people in the US get locked up for a few ounces of pot, or a DUI, prostitution, or skimming off the books at work? Versus a third world country where it goes unnoticed by authority figures.

Another major issue in why our imprisonment rates are so high is that we have a better police force than the majority of the world. There's corruption and lethargy, sure, but not to the degree that most third world countries have. If I get pulled over for speeding, I can't slip the officer twenty dollars and go on my merry way, like I could in Thailand or Chile or a country like that. Our police forces are larger, better organized, and less corrupt than most countries', which results in a higher percentage of crimes being reported to the police, and a higher percentage of criminals being apprehended.

In order to have any factual basis, a detailed analysis of how many crimes are committed versus how many are reported must be done. The scope of the enforced laws needs to be taken into consideration, since we have people locked up here for doing things that are legal in many parts of the world. The number of criminals apprehended must be taken into account, as well as the effectiveness of the court systems. If you'd like to do that study and prove to me that punitive punishment is completely ineffective, be my guess. Until then, you can continue to quote meaningless statistics until you get carpal tunnel syndrome.
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One statistic is all that matters, its called recidivism. If our system is so good, go work in it....

Them boys would eat you alive!
 
You know I have one unsaid other point. What I am proposing is not to get softer on these guys. If we provide rehabilitation and enforce it, we ought to be even tougher on those who do not participate and try to better themselves. What I'd like to see is a lot more segregation of violent and non-violent offenders. If you prove you are a violent shithead not fit for rehabilitation you spend a few years in a supermaxx facility and see how that grabs you.
 
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