They should all be put in Internet jail.

Put in internet corporal punishment, you mean!

I listened to the rest of this on the way home from work; he makes a few other good points, too. The ban on prison stock ownership for people involved in the criminal justice system is a no-brainer. Fines being paid to victims rather than to the state, time served awaiting trial counting towards sentences in all cases, and a focus on restitutionary fines over other, less-direct forms of punishment, are also pretty clear-cut. Replacing incarceration with corporal punishment, at least on an elective basis, is more controversial, but I do think it would be both more humane and more cost-effective than our modern obsession with torturing the soul. Obviously, the mass executions being proposed by Mr Hovind are insane, but light flogging and pillorying, particularly when chosen by individual prisoners on a voluntary basis, are perfectly reasonable and would be better for everyone, save the PIC.

The best part about this, though, is when he starts advocating National Socialist style eugenics programs, shortly after quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer. You know, in case you forgot what a douchebag he is.

Read the "Legal Problems" section of his wikipedia page and then take a second look at his points. This is a guy who could have been out by now if he had just behaved himself while in prison, and had not tried to scam his way out of paying his restitution.

His "points" are ultra-self-serving.

Paying fines instead of incarceration is a concept that gives me the heebie jeebies. It creates a class of people who are just straight up immune to huge swaths of the law, instead of what it's like now which is a class with a better chance of getting away with things.

His motives are irrelevant; a valid point that is self-serving is still a valid point.

As for fines, how does this create a class who is "immune" to law? If you have to pay a fine, then you have to pay a fine; having more money doesn't get you out of this obligation, in fact, if anything, it makes you even more vulnerable to it! Fines do create lopsided legal situations, in the sense that the wealthy are better able to bear the burden of fines. However: that does NOT mean the wealthy are immune to punishment, a fine paid to a victim is (I'd argue) a far better consolation to that victim than any other form of punishment, and this lopsidedness is actually a situation which exists today (people often do have the choice between fines and jail time). Doing away with fines altogether (not something that is likely to happen) would certainly eliminate the specter of class privilege, but at the cost of condemning even more people to prisons (where the state will drag economic value out of them over time, instead of all at once as per fines), thus making the whole system worse while providing no upsides for anyone. You'd also have to get rid of the bail system, since bail is a major component in that same process of economic class stratification.

I'd also like to point out that, if we were to institute a more direct, value-based system of fining criminals (for example, the four-fold rule proposed by the Old Testament), then we'd actually be seeing white collar criminals suffering far, far worse than the poor! A man who steals my three hundred dollar stereo would get off with a 00 fine, but a banker who bilks millions from elderly investors? Well, clearly he is in a lot more trouble. *Scalability* is the most important factor if we are concerned about mitigating class privilege, and if this can be achieved in a simple, logical, and just manner, then why not do so?

yeah... BUT it wouldn't feel like someone is really getting punished if a high flying banker has to reduce himself to living like the rest of us poor folk because he got some fines or something. He should be reduced to guzzling liquid shit out of a hat for making millions suffer not being faced with the agony of picking which if his two least favourite watches to turn in.

Ideally jail should be about rehabilitation and currently it's about profit and bloodlust in the majority of cases but there has got to be SOME kind of happy medium surely!