>>I will take the fairness of our legal and appeals systems over anyone else's any day. Overall, this country is too lenient on criminals and gives them too many chances to avoid prison time.
>
>Prison time o.k., Convicting criminals o.k., but convicting people to the death penalty who can be innocent is way out of line.
>
>Overall I think your view on this is rather limited. Your country has a far less lenient juridical system than here in the netherlands, yet our crime rates (no matter what they say about it) are only a fraction of yours. There are other environmental issues that causes crime. It's not the juridical system that causes crime, it's the getto's and the very bad position numerous minorities are in which cause the crime. When your covernment does something about those ones, then your crimerates can drop significantly. I've heard something about the lower crime rates in New York, but have not heard what caused this. Can you tell me whats the cause of this ??

I believe their rates have gone down because of increased efforts in New York City by the Mayor, their police force, code enforcement, and other factors. Since New York City is the largest city in that State, any change in their rate would certainly skew the overall State numbers way down.

I think it would be most difficult to compare how strict our gov't is to yours. We give young offenders so many chances to avoid jail, our judicial system provides minimal deterrent to crime. By the time they become young adults, it is too late to save many of them from a further life of [worse] crime. For too long, the rights of criminals have been protected way more than those of the victims. That is slowly changing, but not fast enough.