Outgoing Czech President Vaclav Klaus Pardons Almost One Third of Prisoners
Almost one third of Czech prisoners have been granted amnesty by outgoing president Vaclav Klaus. The pardons will not affect prisoners serving sentences longer than 10 years.
Mr. Klaus defended the move saying, “This is a gesture aimed at giving a fresh chance to those citizens who may have broken the law but who are not repeat offenders.”
The mass pardon has prompted worry and confusion. The head of the supreme court has expressed concerns that the move undermines the rule of law, while Social Democrat politician Jiri Dienstbier described the decision as "unacceptable and incomprehensible."
Judges are preparing to work overtime to implement the pardon, which was partly motivated by the need to ease overcrowding in Czech prisons. The Czech Republic has a prison population of around 23,000 in a prison system that is designed to hold a little over 21,000, and has an incarceration rate of 219 prisoners per 100,000 people. The U.S. has an incarceration rate of over 700 prisoners per 100,000 people.
Despite the move causing some worry in the Czech Republic perhaps American officials could take some inspiration from Klaus’ mass pardon.
Given that almost half of the inmates in our federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses, many of which involved no victim, I can’t help but think a mass pardon on this side of the Atlantic would do society some good.
However, as Jacob Sullum has pointed out, Obama's record leaves us no reason to be optimistic:
Yet as president, Obama has granted exactly one commutation so far. This allegedly progressive and enlightened man has been far stingier with pardons and commutations than any of his four most recent predecessors, which is saying something. Now that Obama has been safely re-elected, he has no excuse for failing to use his unilateral, unreviewable power to make our criminal justice system a bit less egregiously unfair.
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Do you think we could run Klaus for POTUS in 2014?
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No way! Klaus did/said something bad when Matt Welch lived in Czechoslovakia, so Klaus is no go.
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I never understood El Jeffe's dislike of Santa Klaus. He's the most libertarian elected official anywhere in the world.
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I posted this maybe an hour ago and nobody has yet pointed out that the next Presidential election takes place in 2016.
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Not if there's a coup.
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An Obama auto-coup? With gun control and the supine media I can see why people would think this.
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Yes.
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Part of me would like to think that this is not all different from what the lefties said about Dubya but on the other hand the lefties are 0 in the tank for Obama and some have been calling for dictatorship. Also the news media wouldn't even need to be coerced to support an Obama coup.
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Should be "lefties are 0 in the tank for Obama."
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Oh yeah no percentage points. 100 percent in the tank for Obama.
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The number of them calling for a dictatorship is what really gets me. I never remember it getting this nuts in '04. Major papers are publishing calls for getting rid of the 1st, 2nd, 4th amendments, or just the constitution outright.
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And now you're just nakedly whoring for attention. Typical.
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Who is whorier, the whore or the whore that whores him?
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Me.
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Looks to me like it worked. I ought to attention whore more often.
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I always say, the sluttier and whorier the better. It works for you, Hugh.
"I knew there was something special about you and I'm not just saying that 'cause you're a whore, but...you are a total whore."
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I thought you were in a hurry.
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Klaus, for all his posturing as a Thatcherite, is the poster child for corrupt crony-capitalism.
And a large number of people he pardoned were convicted or in the process of being convicted for fraud and corruption. Considering how this country ranks on Transparency International, those people were the tip of the iceberg, and no doubt many of them were friends of friends.
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I had a feeling you rain-in on the Havel Love Parade. Interesting comment...
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Didn't they have an anti-corruption party in government now? How's that been working out?
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I think Top 09 was a massive disaster. Or was it Public Affairs?
As for Klaus, I've always gotten the impression that his biggest problem is thoughtcrime: that he doesn't have the proper Media/Political Class views on things like the EU or So-Called Global Warming.
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my neighbor's mother makes $82/hr on the internet. She has been unemployed for nine months but last month her pay was $20994 just working on the internet for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more. http://ace60.com
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I think the president is more of a "Ser Ilyn, bring me his head." kind of person.
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Given that almost half of the inmates in our federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses, many of which involved no victim, I can’t help but think a mass pardon on this side of the Atlantic would do society some good.
BUT WHAT IF THEY GET OUT AND GO RIGHT BACK TO DOING THE DRUGS? It would be worse than releasing GITMO detainees right back to the Al-Qaeda. And who ends up taking the blame? The pardoner. There's literally no benefit.
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KLAUS BALLZ. That's what they should be called henceforth.
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Don't forget the damage all those extra workers would do to our economy! Look what happened when all the soldiers came home after WWII. Oh, wait.
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We might also have to pay for their food and clothing, and a place for them to live if they can't find a job. No, wait... we do that already too. Hmm.
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Given that almost half of the inmates in our federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses, many of which involved no victim, I can’t help but think a mass pardon on this side of the Atlantic would do society some good.
I'm not sure. Why do a mass pardon of "prisoners"? Why not do a mass pardon of prisoners with non-violent drug offenses? Do we really want to set free everyone in prison (doing less than a dime) just because?
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Hmm, wait, this post: The pardons will not affect prisoners serving sentences longer than 10 years
PM Links: Outgoing Czech President Vaclav Klaus pardoned all prisoners serving a term less than one year, plus all those over the age of 75, provided their sentence was less than 10 years — about 30 percent of the total.
That's kind of a big difference. The second doesn't seem as dramatic as the first.
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Both are accurate.
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I agree. Didn't mean to suggest they weren't. But the first omitted some important details. If one looked at every crime that could get you a 10 year (or less) sentence, I'm not sure you'd just want to blanket pardon it.
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"Apatheist hasn't beaten his spouse in the last three weeks" is probably accurate, but it's still a dishonest way to put it, unless I know that you've beaten your spouse some time in the last month or two. Likewise the way Reason put it was "accurate", but dishonest.
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Oh. My. God.
Geriatric drug-abusing terrorists?!?
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What're they hiding in those canes?
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I pardon you.
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I just farted, ProL. Can you pardon that?
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I AM TRYING TO PRAY
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Class is when you're alone, and you fart, and you say "Pardon me". That's CLASS.
-- The late, great Rodney Dangerfield
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That's hilarious, because I actually do that.
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I don't even do that when I'm around people.
Figure they should be thanking me.
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Yeah, but do you thank the ATM machine for giving you cash?
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I thank SQL Server about 5 times a day for giving me data.
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As opposed to the other 995 times when it just laughs at you.
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My farts smell like vanilla and potpourri
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Why would Obama want to pardon anyone? If the state is god then admitting that the criminal justice system is flawed is heresy.
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^ This
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Not to mention if the state is god then what exactly is the problem with the war (on terror and drugs), censorship and torture?
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Nothing, the violence ritually purifies unbelievers.
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I think this is like in Batman Begins when Scarecrow let all the prisoners out of Arkham. Klaus is using the chaos as cover for some fiendish plot to further some insidious scheme. Or vice versa.
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Unleash violent criminals on the street to use as a pretext for a crackdown? I remember Chavez being accused of doing that.
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Too pedestrian. You and Chavez lack imagination. I'm talking about an ancient order deciding that the Republic is beyond saving and in need of destruction or maybe a bank heist a la Die Hard. Prisoners running free would be the perfect distraction.
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Oh wow, that dude sure is going out with a bang lol.
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Yeah, bang your bot-mom!
HA!
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ZING!
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breaking: Lance Armstrong ready to admit he doped
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Ok he's just another attention whore now.
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Hugo Chávez: Venezuelans urged to ignore 'enemy' health rumours
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He's getting better!
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Was just at my cousins and her kids were watching something called "Buck Wild".
What the fuck is that? -
Jersey Shore goes West Vaginians.
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It looked retarded.
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More retarded than Jersey Shore?
It's the MSM idea of reality TV, dude.
If you want to watch reality TV, I mean if you REALLY have to, watch the doods gold mining in Alaska, or something that is at least a little more than simple retard on pararde.
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Just saw an ad for a new reality show about "the world of competitive taxidermy."
It's getting really hard to make up fiction.
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Stand by for, "All My Babies' Mamas". Coming soon to the Oxygen channel.
"All My Babies' Mamas," a one-hour reality special slated to air in the spring of 2013, features Carlos "Shawty Lo" Walker, an Atlanta-based hip-hop artist with 11 children by 10 different women. Oh, he's also got a 19-year-old girlfriend, who's a year shy of his oldest child. "
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Jose Canseco wants to be mayor of Toronto.
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So? If he wants to be irrelevant, then WTF?
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Who wants to go ice fishing?
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Anonymous responds to Sandy Hook.
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I just heard that that fuckstick Bloomberg was on Jimmy Fallon tonight. Bloomberg apparently blamed the media for not constantly covering gun violence.
At this point I would have pointed out to Bloomberg that "stop and frisk" is predicated on the threat of violence, so when was he going to end that program. Fallon, of course, simply fellated Bloomberg.
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Shootout in Sweden during jewelry store heist.
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Unpossble. Sweden has an assault weapons ban.
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I thought they had a jewelry ban.
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Yet as president, Obama has granted exactly one commutation so far.
Well, only if you don't count all the Thanksgiving turkeys.
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Good (late) Morning Reasonoids! Archduchy, thanks for the amusing links, as usual. Also, it's Orthodox Christmas weekend in UKR, so MERRY CHRISTMAS!-D
As PS astutely pointed out, Euro-landia, and Eastern Euro-landia in particular, is home to some EPIC Crony-Capitalism. UKR and Belarus certainly tolerates it, and Russia is quite fond of it as well.
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Merry Christmas from a lapsed Heterodox Christian.
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Also, it's Orthodox Christmas weekend in UKR...
I'll never get a handle on that International Date Line.
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So you're saying it's John-sized and not Sarcasmic-sized?
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"Given that almost half of the inmates in our federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses, many of which involved no victim"
Are YOU on drugs? Legalize the drugs, and they'd have no victim. But as they are now, they have hundreds of victims. Take a look at Mexico, and the war the drug barons are carrying out against civil society? Every single one of those murders is funded by US drug users.
Closer to home, take a look at all the young black males in the drug trade who murder each other (and, unfortunately, random innocent bystanders). Those murders are pushed for, and paid for, by those drug users you're crying for.