short drop and a sudden stop
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014308348_appiracy5thldwritethru.html
My main question is why are these pirates being brought back to the US for trial? The cost of housing a prisoner is more than $20,000 per year. 15 prisoners, that makes it $300,000 per year. Presumably they will get life sentences, and they are relatively young, so i'll guess 40 years each, that make it $12,000,000 plus the government will have to pay for their lawyers, for the the judges/lawyers to try them, and all their appeal costs, i don't know how much all that is, but i wouldn't be surprised if the total cost of bringing these guys back to the US is $15,000,000. To what possible ends? Either they die in prison here, or are deported following their prison term? It's just insane. As far as i am concerned pirates don't have any legal rights. Certainly they don't have any rights of US criminals as they are neither US citizens, nor even committing crimes in the US. Should they be granted rights simply because they attacked american citizens, that makes no sense. Nor do they have any of the rights of soldiers/prisoners of war because even under the loosest definition they don't fit. They should simply be left in the ocean to drown. The fact that they are pirates, and killed the the hostages is not even in dispute. They claim they were fired upon, the Navy claims they fired first. Either way they are admittedly guilty of murder and piracy. It seems like nobody remembers the lesson of pirates of the carribean that the only way to deal with pirates is a short drop and a sudden stop. If throwing the pirates overboard seems too personal then upon retrieving the bodies of the hostages, the navy simply should have left the pirates on the ship, and sank it. There is no reason for them to accept the surrender of the pirates, they have no such rights. How much did the pirates want in ransom? I'm sure it was less than 15,000,000, so now the government is going to spend more money imprisoning them, then it would have cost to ransom the hostages. Plus these pirates will probably live better lives, at least in terms of food and shelter, in the US than they would have lived had they not turned to piracy. Essentially to incentivising piracy, if the pirates don't get caught they get rich, and if they do get caught they are still better off than living in there home villages in somalia.
On a side note why are these pirates allowed to continue? With all the technology available we can't locate and sink these pirate ships. These are essentially all somali pirates. If somalia cannot control their piracy then the UN should get to work and ban somalia from having access to ships. From now any ship docked off of somalia will be sunk. Period. No questions asked. I don't know, maybe pirates would just start docking someplace else, but clearly something needs to be done. The murder of these 4 hostages might be enough to finally push the international community into doing something, although i suspect with our current president maybe not.
My main question is why are these pirates being brought back to the US for trial? The cost of housing a prisoner is more than $20,000 per year. 15 prisoners, that makes it $300,000 per year. Presumably they will get life sentences, and they are relatively young, so i'll guess 40 years each, that make it $12,000,000 plus the government will have to pay for their lawyers, for the the judges/lawyers to try them, and all their appeal costs, i don't know how much all that is, but i wouldn't be surprised if the total cost of bringing these guys back to the US is $15,000,000. To what possible ends? Either they die in prison here, or are deported following their prison term? It's just insane. As far as i am concerned pirates don't have any legal rights. Certainly they don't have any rights of US criminals as they are neither US citizens, nor even committing crimes in the US. Should they be granted rights simply because they attacked american citizens, that makes no sense. Nor do they have any of the rights of soldiers/prisoners of war because even under the loosest definition they don't fit. They should simply be left in the ocean to drown. The fact that they are pirates, and killed the the hostages is not even in dispute. They claim they were fired upon, the Navy claims they fired first. Either way they are admittedly guilty of murder and piracy. It seems like nobody remembers the lesson of pirates of the carribean that the only way to deal with pirates is a short drop and a sudden stop. If throwing the pirates overboard seems too personal then upon retrieving the bodies of the hostages, the navy simply should have left the pirates on the ship, and sank it. There is no reason for them to accept the surrender of the pirates, they have no such rights. How much did the pirates want in ransom? I'm sure it was less than 15,000,000, so now the government is going to spend more money imprisoning them, then it would have cost to ransom the hostages. Plus these pirates will probably live better lives, at least in terms of food and shelter, in the US than they would have lived had they not turned to piracy. Essentially to incentivising piracy, if the pirates don't get caught they get rich, and if they do get caught they are still better off than living in there home villages in somalia.
On a side note why are these pirates allowed to continue? With all the technology available we can't locate and sink these pirate ships. These are essentially all somali pirates. If somalia cannot control their piracy then the UN should get to work and ban somalia from having access to ships. From now any ship docked off of somalia will be sunk. Period. No questions asked. I don't know, maybe pirates would just start docking someplace else, but clearly something needs to be done. The murder of these 4 hostages might be enough to finally push the international community into doing something, although i suspect with our current president maybe not.
posted by Trashcan at 2/25/2011 01:04:00 AM
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