Ultimately, the question is what we want from the justice system. I see three major goals of the criminal courts.
1) Make the victim/society whole (As an aside - it seems like whether this is possible would be a good starting point to separate major and minor crimes)
2) Prevent it from happening again (whether through a deterring effect of the punishments or incarceration)
3) Rehabilitate the offender (Remove, if possible, the motivation for the crime. It's better for society that an offender be able to rejoin it productively than for them to be incarcerated when possible)
I feel these should contribute to punishments differently. From the first, punishment should be proportional to the damage. From the second, punishment should be proportional to the offender (income, danger to society, repeat offender, etc). From the third, nothing (this is the part where you try to help the person who stole because they were poor, and punishing them more is counterproductive).
I'm thinking that the final sentence needs to incorporate all these goals as much as possible (1 and 3 may be moot depending on the offense and offender, of course). At a minimum, the judge and/or jury should be thinking about all of them, though the final sentence may not explicitly call them out.
I am concerned that the current justice system is focused too much on the second factor, to the detriment of society. Excessive incarceration is a bad thing, since it costs money (and inmates can hardly pay), is counterproductive to 3 (they're more likely to commit crimes after the sentence rather than less), and it means they aren't contributing anything to society. To some degree, this seems to be because 2 is the easiest to accomplish, as opposed to having to figure out how to help the person, and because it is easier to quantify the impact (ironically, it's also easier to quantify the negative impacts). Rehabilitation is the best outcome for society when possible, but making this determination (and how to do it) is much harder than locking someone up or fining them.
Revenue generation should never be a goal, but merely a happy accident at most (maybe it should all be earmarked for paying for the system and nothing else, to reduce temptation?). Making it a goal is detrimental to society, because it encourages legislating to make more criminals rather than less, and discourages actions that would reduce recidivism. It also encourages more load on the courts, which works against justice as a whole.
Prison is different. I don't subscribe to rehabilitation, but I do believe in separating wrong doers from other people for the protection of society. I prefer exile simply because it is free. But since we cannot do this, I endorse jailing habitual wrong doers, to prevent harm.
How exactly is exile "free"? It might have been a lot easier back in Ye Olde Medieval Times, when you could brand their face with a letter and the place they were exiled from consisted of a hundred square miles or so, but how do you propose, exactly, exiling people from the United States of America in this day and age?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Prison is different. I don't subscribe to rehabilitation, but I do believe in separating wrong doers from other people for the protection of society. I prefer exile simply because it is free. But since we cannot do this, I endorse jailing habitual wrong doers, to prevent harm.
How exactly is exile "free"? It might have been a lot easier back in Ye Olde Medieval Times, when you could brand their face with a letter and the place they were exiled from consisted of a hundred square miles or so, but how do you propose, exactly, exiling people from the United States of America in this day and age?
It isn't practical, so its silly to talk about. I don't want to derail this thread.
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
It's a pretty good option - it combines repaying society and shaming nicely, and is probably ideal for minor offenses overall. I'd argue that even if someone shoplifted every time their sentence ended, just throwing another round of community service at them again would be fine so long as the crimes weren't escalating (and they kept doing it), since there's a net benefit to society there... despite it failing utterly at rehabilitation.
When your preferred response to specifically minor property crimes is to disappear people, you've officially crossed into evil dictator/comic book villain territory.
That isn't to say that the people doing the vandalizing should be excused, but potentially ruining their lives forever because they keyed someone's car is absurd. Yes, there should be some punitive damages from them, but destroying any future chance they may have of having a good life is beyond fucked up.
Again, we are talking about MINOR crimes. The US seems to often have punishments that are way too severe for the actual crime committed. Add probation to that (which can be very difficult to get out of), and punishment can get out of hand entirely too easy.
Insurance just socialized the costs of individuals bad behavior. Why should my and everyone else's home owners insurance be higher because some asshole kid spray paints on my door and insurance need to budget for things like that? And how on earth is having to repay petty vandalism going to ruin someone else's life forever? If they never make more than a few hundred or thousand dollars in their life, they have bigger problems.
A justice system itself socializes a lot of stuff because it's aspect of the government which is paid for by taxes. If we're interested in reducing socialized costs we should perhaps keep our eye on cheap but effective tools of justice. My understanding is that harshness isn't very cheap because we use the courts to at least keep up appearances that we're trying to harshly punish the right people, and court costs aren't cheap.
Hashing minor offenders is I think socializing costs of wrongdoing, and it's doing so in a way that, I think, isn't very effective.
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Neco on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Put the discrepancy aside. Why should she have kicked the car? What possible justification or excuse for that action? Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Put the discrepancy aside. Why should she have kicked the car? What possible justification or excuse for that action? Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Let's be perfectly clear - things that shouldn't happen will happen. Saying 'well, they shouldn't do that' isn't an argument - it's merely a statement of fact.
I don't think anyone is defending malicious destruction of property or saying that someone who destroys property should be free of consequences. I mean, there are different excuses with varying degrees of legitimacy - 'baseball bat to the cheater's car', or 'kids will be kids', or 'drunks don't think things through', but I generally don't think those are 'good' excuses or excuse that kind of behavior. And you know what? As a society we normally don't accept those excuses.
Those things ARE going to happen. People do things they shouldn't and make bad decisions. They are angry, inebriated, or immature. Some people are just straight out cocks. It's wonderful to say 'well, they shouldn't do that', but that doesn't create a compelling reason to punish them to a degree that far exceeds the damage or impact of their actions.
I mean - people 'shouldn't' speed. But they do. When people speed, we don't take away their license and impound their car, and tell them 'well, you shouldn't have sped'. No, we give them a punishment that is somewhat proportional to their actions. If they were going five over, they get less of a fine than if they were going fifteen over. If they were recklessly endangering the lives of others, we punish them even more harshly.
Although this is getting away from the purpose of the thread, I also want to note that incredibly harsh punishments for mundane crimes tend to not be a tool of public good, but rather a tool utilized unevenly and in a way that singles out certain groups for harsh punishment in a discriminatory fashion. If 'exile' or 'life imprisonment' is the consequence of petty vandalism, the public will report crimes / utilize the justice system in an inherently unjust / unfair fashion.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Put the discrepancy aside. Why should she have kicked the car? What possible justification or excuse for that action? Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Let's be perfectly clear - things that shouldn't happen will happen. Saying 'well, they shouldn't do that' isn't an argument - it's merely a statement of fact.
I don't think anyone is defending malicious destruction of property or saying that someone who destroys property should be free of consequences. I mean, there are different excuses with varying degrees of legitimacy - 'baseball bat to the cheater's car', or 'kids will be kids', or 'drunks don't think things through', but I generally don't think those are 'good' excuses or excuse that kind of behavior. And you know what? As a society we normally don't accept those excuses.
Those things ARE going to happen. People do things they shouldn't and make bad decisions. They are angry, inebriated, or immature. Some people are just straight out cocks. It's wonderful to say 'well, they shouldn't do that', but that doesn't create a compelling reason to punish them to a degree that far exceeds the damage or impact of their actions.
I mean - people 'shouldn't' speed. But they do. When people speed, we don't take away their license and impound their car, and tell them 'well, you shouldn't have sped'. No, we give them a punishment that is somewhat proportional to their actions. If they were going five over, they get less of a fine than if they were going fifteen over. If they were recklessly endangering the lives of others, we punish them even more harshly.
Although this is getting away from the purpose of the thread, I also want to note that incredibly harsh punishments for mundane crimes tend to not be a tool of public good, but rather a tool utilized unevenly and in a way that singles out certain groups for harsh punishment in a discriminatory fashion. If 'exile' or 'life imprisonment' is the consequence of petty vandalism, the public will report crimes / utilize the justice system in an inherently unjust / unfair fashion.
For purposes of this topic I am limiting the scope of punishments I view as appropriate to minor ones. But as a general matter I disagree with the above. No matter how minor the law is, we should expect full cooperation, and I see no reason at all that we should feel compelled to make punishments proportional. No one is forced to commit a crime.
I have no problem with creating classes of behavior that are not crimes (like moving violations or disorderly person offenses) but something like vandalism is pretty clearly going to be a crime under any circumstances at all. To be honest, in a way vandalism is one of the worst crimes to me, because it is pure malice to no end at all. I abhor stealing, but sometimes people do that to stay alive. But keying someone's car? There is never any justification.
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to love in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
Stealing to survive isn't the same as art theft, and vandalizing a car isn't the same as vandalizing a statue or painting.
For one thing there is a 100% chance that a keyed car can be repaired. That's why we value the thing that has been vandalized to help establish the severity of the crime. We look at motive to help guide sentencing.
Well. Keeping in mind, our prison system is not a great place for people to be. Even a short stint in prison entails some really brutal, harmful experiences, which do not encourage healthy psychological development and reform - aside from a desire to avoid further contact with our prison system, which can either teach a person to stop committing crimes or to hide their crimes more intelligently. So the first thing I'd like to do is to see our prison system reformed, from its current (apparent) focus on punishment for crimes toward a more productive approach of reintegrating the convicted criminal into society after their release.
I'd especially like to avoid "tough on crime" laws, like mandatory minimums and "three strikes," for the most part. Where possible, the judge should be exercising their, y'know, judgement of how much of a danger an offender is to the public and what needs to be done to prevent that.
I think that for drug crimes (other than dealing, smuggling) and other substance abuse crimes, like DUI, I'd like to see rehab pushed in pretty much all cases, so long as nobody has died as a result of reckless or irresponsible actions of yours. Driving while seriously intoxicated (by anything, including legal prescription drugs) I would like to see punished with forfeiture of license for at least six months. (This can and does kill people - automobile accidents kill about twice as many people in this country as all forms of murder. If you drive under the influence and haven't killed anybody, you've been lucky; quit it.)
For most vandalism...assuming no discriminatory/gang affiliation element....I'd lean toward community service. Picking up trash in the park, maybe. Building homeless shelters. Aimlessly destructive, yes, but not exactly dangerous, just a nuisance. Not something I'd like to push an Aryan Brotherhood recruiting drive over.
I think that Singapore's approach, caning people over sticking gum under benches in the park, is way over the line. Singapore, of course, was once described by William Gibson as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty." *
I dunno how I'd deal with, like, petty theft, things like that. I guess community service would be my preference over time in jail. Jail might come in for somebody who skips out on their community service.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Stealing to survive isn't the same as art theft, and vandalizing a car isn't the same as vandalizing a statue or painting.
For one thing there is a 100% chance that a keyed car can be repaired. That's why we value the thing that has been vandalized to help establish the severity of the crime. We look at motive to help guide sentencing.
That isn't really true though. If you key my car, I need to bring it to an auto body shop and may not have the car for days. I need to make calls to insurance, arrange for alternate transportation, etc. If you smash my bumper it is worse, because the insurance will likely only pay for an aftermarket bumper, not a genuine part. You get close to the status quo, but you never quite reach it. This is why I think that it is worth spending more than the expected harm to prevent that harm from occurring (i.e., by using the criminal justice system to prosecute property crime). If I own a car, I want to actually have use of that car, not own a bundle of rights that is a car sometimes and is a right to gave that car restored at others. Now we can't avoid this situation when a tree falls on a car, but a person committing intentional acts of vandalism is not a tree, and I can't see why we should treat them like their actions are inevitable.
The nature of the justice system is that it kicks off after these events have occurred. Particularly with something as simple as keying which takes all of a few seconds; so you'll get it happening regardless. And you could just you know, drive the car as-is until the body shop can take care of it?
Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Nobody is arguing that vandals shouldn't be punished. This rhetorical question is effectively a strawman.
How it comes across is that you believe that any arbitrarily severe punishment is justifiable because - hey, if you didn't want to be euthanized, you shouldn't have trampled that flowerbed. (Yes, that is a Star Trek TNG reference.)
The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is that you don't believe that there is any moral proscription against cruel and usual punishment. Now, I would like to think that you don't think that, but it's hard to tell. That's why people are likening you to a comic book villain.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Also, you know, because SKFM places more value on the moral worth of "stuff" than most people think is seemly. He's certainly entitled to his opinion, but he shouldn't be surprised by now to learn that most people don't share his.
Exile for vandalism? Yeah, sorry. There's a vanishingly small number of people who share that view.
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to love in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
That's not really the question at all.
The actual question is: "Given that there are always going to be people doing bad things, what can we do to minimize the frequency of those bad things and the negative impact those bad things have on society?"
You seem to get hung up on the direct relationship between a specific criminal and a specific victim, to the point where you're tuning everything else out. Your approach says, "You caused $1000 damage to my car, and you must therefore give me $1000." And you seem pretty okay with any means of getting there as quickly as possible. You don't give much regard to anything past "making the victim whole," in your words.
What is the cost of putting this guy through a criminal trial? What is the cost of locking him up for ten years? Eh, fuck it, at least I got my thousand bucks and he doesn't get to cause any more damage to people's cars. Even though all those other costs might amount to ten times the actual damage done. Sure, maybe it costs society ten grand, but I got my thousand bucks.
And this is actually the mentality of a whole lot of people. Polarite mentioned the different motivations behind our criminal system, and rehabilitation is the one that most people genuinely give zero fucks about, even though it's potentially the one that can best minimize total cost to society (and, by extension, average cost per dude who gets his shit wrecked). But that is not a lot of people's concern. They are concerned about not restitution, but revenge. They will happily pay $2000 to recoup their $1000, as long as it means the person who caused that $1000 loss gets figuratively (or, often, literally) ass-fucked for several years.
And that is the Bonus Option Number 4 that Polarite omitted from his list. It's the one we don't talk about, but it's the one that a lot of us secretly (or not so secretly) care about the most. Our justice system is, right now, largely motivated by revenge. Think about it. Think about so many people's response to the idea of getting their car keyed.
It's not: "I want them to pay to have it fixed."
It's not: "I want them put in jail where they can't harm anyone."
It's sure as hell not: "I want to rehabilitate this person so they can be a productive member of society."
It's, "I want to tie that fucker down and kick him in the junk until his dick explodes."
Our justice system boils down to: "Man, fuck that guy." That is its core philosophical justification. We just don't like to talk about that in polite circles, except in the case of certain crimes for which it's publicly acceptable to support flat-out cruelty and torture. But that's it, in a nutshell. Ours is a society that glorifies revenge as justice, to the point where it's now encoded into our criminal justice system.
Which is why there's such a resistance to the idea of rehabilitation, or just any sort of pragmatism in general. Revenge is inherently impractical. It serves no reason other than pure, base catharsis. And so trying to discuss pragmatic alternatives with someone who really just wants revenge is going to fail. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The nature of the justice system is that it kicks off after these events have occurred. Particularly with something as simple as keying which takes all of a few seconds; so you'll get it happening regardless. And you could just you know, drive the car as-is until the body shop can take care of it?
The system can prevent it in two ways. First, it can deter people from engaging in the act. Second, it can isolate people who have shown that they will not act civilized and refuse to stop keying cars from society, so that they can't key cars anymore.
There is literally no way to make it so that the victim of vandalism is 100% whole. There will always be some cost in time and possibly money, or acceptance of things just not being as good as they once were. This is what I am trying to minimize.
Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Nobody is arguing that vandals shouldn't be punished. This rhetorical question is effectively a strawman.
How it comes across is that you believe that any arbitrarily severe punishment is justifiable because - hey, if you didn't want to be euthanized, you shouldn't have trampled that flowerbed. (Yes, that is a Star Trek TNG reference.)
The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is that you don't believe that there is any moral proscription against cruel and usual punishment. Now, I would like to think that you don't think that, but it's hard to tell. That's why people are likening you to a comic book villain.
Why does proportionality matter though. Why can't we just rely on people to not be assholes, and then when they are assholes, mete out the punishment that they knew (or should have known) was coming to them for being assholes?
I am opposed to cruel and unusual punishment because I am not really interested in inflicting harm on anyone as a punishment. All that I want is for the criminal to stop hurting innocent people, and for the victim to be made as whole as possible. If this means community service which serves as a lesson that you shouldn't key cars, plus paying $700 to get the door repainted? Great. If we can't get you to stop no matter what we do though? Now we need to keep you away from polite society because you aren't willing to be part of it.
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to love in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
That's not really the question at all.
The actual question is: "Given that there are always going to be people doing bad things, what can we do to minimize the frequency of those bad things and the negative impact those bad things have on society?"
You seem to get hung up on the direct relationship between a specific criminal and a specific victim, to the point where you're tuning everything else out. Your approach says, "You caused $1000 damage to my car, and you must therefore give me $1000." And you seem pretty okay with any means of getting there as quickly as possible. You don't give much regard to anything past "making the victim whole," in your words.
What is the cost of putting this guy through a criminal trial? What is the cost of locking him up for ten years? Eh, fuck it, at least I got my thousand bucks and he doesn't get to cause any more damage to people's cars. Even though all those other costs might amount to ten times the actual damage done. Sure, maybe it costs society ten grand, but I got my thousand bucks.
And this is actually the mentality of a whole lot of people. Polarite mentioned the different motivations behind our criminal system, and rehabilitation is the one that most people genuinely give zero fucks about, even though it's potentially the one that can best minimize total cost to society (and, by extension, average cost per dude who gets his shit wrecked). But that is not a lot of people's concern. They are concerned about not restitution, but revenge. They will happily pay $2000 to recoup their $1000, as long as it means the person who caused that $1000 loss gets figuratively (or, often, literally) ass-fucked for several years.
And that is the Bonus Option Number 4 that Polarite omitted from his list. It's the one we don't talk about, but it's the one that a lot of us secretly (or not so secretly) care about the most. Our justice system is, right now, largely motivated by revenge. Think about it. Think about so many people's response to the idea of getting their car keyed.
It's not: "I want them to pay to have it fixed."
It's not: "I want them put in jail where they can't harm anyone."
It's sure as hell not: "I want to rehabilitate this person so they can be a productive member of society."
It's, "I want to tie that fucker down and kick him in the junk until his dick explodes."
Our justice system boils down to: "Man, fuck that guy." That is its core philosophical justification. We just don't like to talk about that in polite circles, except in the case of certain crimes for which it's publicly acceptable to support flat-out cruelty and torture. But that's it, in a nutshell. Ours is a society that glorifies revenge as justice, to the point where it's now encoded into our criminal justice system.
Which is why there's such a resistance to the idea of rehabilitation, or just any sort of pragmatism in general. Revenge is inherently impractical. It serves no reason other than pure, base catharsis. And so trying to discuss pragmatic alternatives with someone who really just wants revenge is going to fail. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.
I am not advocating retribution at all. I don't want the guy who keys my car to be hurt. I want my harm to be made up to me, and I want him to never key a car again. That's really all I want.
Exile is my ideal because it is cheap and final. Prison is really expensive and we rarely give people life. Also, prison is built on a rehabilitative model that I don't think works. Anything that stops them from hurting people works for me, its just hard to come up with many ways that work.
Well yeah, when your standard is 'no one does any harm ever', your realistic options are reduced to genocide. That doesn't mean we should start building gas chambers; it means you should probably revisit your ridiculous standard.
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to love in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
That's not really the question at all.
The actual question is: "Given that there are always going to be people doing bad things, what can we do to minimize the frequency of those bad things and the negative impact those bad things have on society?"
You seem to get hung up on the direct relationship between a specific criminal and a specific victim, to the point where you're tuning everything else out. Your approach says, "You caused $1000 damage to my car, and you must therefore give me $1000." And you seem pretty okay with any means of getting there as quickly as possible. You don't give much regard to anything past "making the victim whole," in your words.
What is the cost of putting this guy through a criminal trial? What is the cost of locking him up for ten years? Eh, fuck it, at least I got my thousand bucks and he doesn't get to cause any more damage to people's cars. Even though all those other costs might amount to ten times the actual damage done. Sure, maybe it costs society ten grand, but I got my thousand bucks.
And this is actually the mentality of a whole lot of people. Polarite mentioned the different motivations behind our criminal system, and rehabilitation is the one that most people genuinely give zero fucks about, even though it's potentially the one that can best minimize total cost to society (and, by extension, average cost per dude who gets his shit wrecked). But that is not a lot of people's concern. They are concerned about not restitution, but revenge. They will happily pay $2000 to recoup their $1000, as long as it means the person who caused that $1000 loss gets figuratively (or, often, literally) ass-fucked for several years.
And that is the Bonus Option Number 4 that Polarite omitted from his list. It's the one we don't talk about, but it's the one that a lot of us secretly (or not so secretly) care about the most. Our justice system is, right now, largely motivated by revenge. Think about it. Think about so many people's response to the idea of getting their car keyed.
It's not: "I want them to pay to have it fixed."
It's not: "I want them put in jail where they can't harm anyone."
It's sure as hell not: "I want to rehabilitate this person so they can be a productive member of society."
It's, "I want to tie that fucker down and kick him in the junk until his dick explodes."
Our justice system boils down to: "Man, fuck that guy." That is its core philosophical justification. We just don't like to talk about that in polite circles, except in the case of certain crimes for which it's publicly acceptable to support flat-out cruelty and torture. But that's it, in a nutshell. Ours is a society that glorifies revenge as justice, to the point where it's now encoded into our criminal justice system.
Which is why there's such a resistance to the idea of rehabilitation, or just any sort of pragmatism in general. Revenge is inherently impractical. It serves no reason other than pure, base catharsis. And so trying to discuss pragmatic alternatives with someone who really just wants revenge is going to fail. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.
Keying a car is a symptom not really a problem. If an otherwise perfectly fantastic, productive and awesome individual went around keying cars we probably wouldn't be as collectively angry. But generally people who walk around keying cars because they feel like it are total assholes and generally act like assholes in other aspects of their life unrelated to keying cars. When assholes just act like assholes we can't arrest them. But when they vandalize or do other crimes we want to throw the book at them because well, they are assholes.
How it comes across is that you believe that any arbitrarily severe punishment is justifiable because - hey, if you didn't want to be euthanized, you shouldn't have trampled that flowerbed. (Yes, that is a Star Trek TNG reference.)
That was a pretty good episode, except that weird god satellite deal and Wesley not actually dying.
I personally doubt the value of punishment as a deterrent. For most crimes, the perpetrator isn't going to be looking over their shoulder, expecting to be caught - you commit crimes when you think you'll get away with it. That goes for keying cars the same way as for murder. The punishment should, ideally, fit the severity of the harm done by the action.
Punishment for petty crimes? Jeez...I can barely get a good punishment for organized criminal burglary rings or violent assaults.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Put the discrepancy aside. Why should she have kicked the car? What possible justification or excuse for that action? Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
clearly her life is inferior in value to that car window, despite the fact that its owner could be made whole monetarily
after all the other guy in the story was just abusing another human, which as we know isn't worth nearly as much as property
How it comes across is that you believe that any arbitrarily severe punishment is justifiable because - hey, if you didn't want to be euthanized, you shouldn't have trampled that flowerbed. (Yes, that is a Star Trek TNG reference.)
That was a pretty good episode, except that weird god satellite deal and Wesley not actually dying.
I personally doubt the value of punishment as a deterrent. For most crimes, the perpetrator isn't going to be looking over their shoulder, expecting to be caught - you commit crimes when you think you'll get away with it. That goes for keying cars the same way as for murder. The punishment should, ideally, fit the severity of the harm done by the action.
Punishment works best as a deterrent if the punishment is swift and extremely likely.
When punishment takes forever, or if there's a good chance that the criminal will escape punishment, then it works as a poor deterrent.
The severity of the punishment is less important than those two variables.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Well yeah, when your standard is 'no one does any harm ever', your realistic options are reduced to genocide. That doesn't mean we should start building gas chambers; it means you should probably revisit your ridiculous standard.
That is not my standard. My standard is that people who intentionally inflict harm on others don't get to keep doing so. In practice, I am a big fan of three strike laws. I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we have someone who repentantly continues to go around harming innocent people? Why is their freedom more important than the freedom of the innocent from harm?
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to l(i)ve in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
We already live in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity. If you're rich enough, you don't even have to pay. Just look at the financial sector for evidence of this.
This goes right back to what people have been telling you, you have insurance to protect against this kind of incident. Insurance is to protect you against the unexpected, which includes random acts of vanadlism that inconvenience you. Every day, you have the risk that your vehicle may be destroyed by a random act of god, replaced the next day, and destroyed by another act the day after. That's just part of life.
Stealing to survive isn't the same as art theft, and vandalizing a car isn't the same as vandalizing a statue or painting.
For one thing there is a 100% chance that a keyed car can be repaired. That's why we value the thing that has been vandalized to help establish the severity of the crime. We look at motive to help guide sentencing.
That isn't really true though. If you key my car, I need to bring it to an auto body shop and may not have the car for days. I need to make calls to insurance, arrange for alternate transportation, etc. If you smash my bumper it is worse, because the insurance will likely only pay for an aftermarket bumper, not a genuine part. You get close to the status quo, but you never quite reach it. This is why I think that it is worth spending more than the expected harm to prevent that harm from occurring (i.e., by using the criminal justice system to prosecute property crime). If I own a car, I want to actually have use of that car, not own a bundle of rights that is a car sometimes and is a right to gave that car restored at others. Now we can't avoid this situation when a tree falls on a car, but a person committing intentional acts of vandalism is not a tree, and I can't see why we should treat them like their actions are inevitable.
If the worst thing that happens to you today is that your bumper is replaced with an aftermarket part, then you aren't exactly having a terrible day, and it's definately not so terrible as to warrant putting a person in jail for several years over.
You're a lawyer, so you should understrand that owning a car is a bundle of rights, and insurance is the right to get that car restored at other times. Hell, owning a car doesn't guarantee use of that car. You have to have a license, gas, etc.
You may be able to prevent some or most reoccurences through the justice system, but you will NEVER eliminate the initial incident nor entirely eliminate reoccurences. So, you have to treat it like it's inevitable.
That is not my standard. My standard is that people who intentionally inflict harm on others don't get to keep doing so. In practice, I am a big fan of three strike laws. I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we have someone who repentantly continues to go around harming innocent people?
We examine social issues to prevent other people from becoming like this instead of permanently subjecting society to 3 incidents per disenfranchised person before throwing said disenfranchised person away like garbage.
Systemic inequality in our glorious capitalist system of perfect meritocracy* is pretty much why we have these criminals you hate and fear so much.
I don't see why - if moving offenses and disorderly person offenses cam be treated as a class of offenses that are not q crime property crime couldn't be treated as a similar class of offenses.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to l(i)ve in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
We already live in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity. If you're rich enough, you don't even have to pay. Just look at the financial sector for evidence of this.
This goes right back to what people have been telling you, you have insurance to protect against this kind of incident. Insurance is to protect you against the unexpected, which includes random acts of vanadlism that inconvenience you. Every day, you have the risk that your vehicle may be destroyed by a random act of god, replaced the next day, and destroyed by another act the day after. That's just part of life.
Stealing to survive isn't the same as art theft, and vandalizing a car isn't the same as vandalizing a statue or painting.
For one thing there is a 100% chance that a keyed car can be repaired. That's why we value the thing that has been vandalized to help establish the severity of the crime. We look at motive to help guide sentencing.
That isn't really true though. If you key my car, I need to bring it to an auto body shop and may not have the car for days. I need to make calls to insurance, arrange for alternate transportation, etc. If you smash my bumper it is worse, because the insurance will likely only pay for an aftermarket bumper, not a genuine part. You get close to the status quo, but you never quite reach it. This is why I think that it is worth spending more than the expected harm to prevent that harm from occurring (i.e., by using the criminal justice system to prosecute property crime). If I own a car, I want to actually have use of that car, not own a bundle of rights that is a car sometimes and is a right to gave that car restored at others. Now we can't avoid this situation when a tree falls on a car, but a person committing intentional acts of vandalism is not a tree, and I can't see why we should treat them like their actions are inevitable.
If the worst thing that happens to you today is that your bumper is replaced with an aftermarket part, then you aren't exactly having a terrible day, and it's definately not so terrible as to warrant putting a person in jail for several years over.
You're a lawyer, so you should understrand that owning a car is a bundle of rights, and insurance is the right to get that car restored at other times. Hell, owning a car doesn't guarantee use of that car. You have to have a license, gas, etc.
You may be able to prevent some or most reoccurences through the justice system, but you will NEVER eliminate the initial incident nor entirely eliminate reoccurences. So, you have to treat it like it's inevitable.
Why shouldn't our ideal be a world where everyone follows the rules and harms to rule followers are minimized to the extent possible, and then work towards approximating that? This is my view, at least. I don't really care about the rule breakers (they shouldn't have broken the rules, full stop. I care about protecting the people who follow the rules from whatever harms we can. Put another way, we don't just leave a rotting, tipped over tree alone until it crushes a car, or let a bridge deteriorate until it collapses and say "sometimes bad things happen" when the bad result occurs. We try to identify and prevent them. And people being dicks are not a force of nature. Every act of vandalism involves a choice, and it is because of that choice that I think vandals are blameworthy, and less deserving of our compassion and understanding than the people who make the choice not to be assholes. To be clear, the choice between holding the vandal responsible for his actions and making the victim handle it and be reimbursed the the greatest extent we can is literally a choice of privileging the right of the asshole to be an asshole over the right of the law abiding person to just be left alone.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Aren't most of the people screwed by 3 strikes on minor crimes or things like drug crimes?
Of course.
Also they are overwhelmingly lower class.
And we pretend that says things about them and nothing about us.
What should it say? It is possible that we have criminalized the wrong things, but even if we have, why should the poor be any less capable of following the law than the rich? This line of thinking seems dangerously like a view that the poor are poor because they are inferior in some way, like lacking impulse control or being inherently less moral. I do not subscribe to that view.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
You really just made the argument that the poor people in this country should follow the law like the rich?
Hey everyone! Nobody will ever get punished for wide reaching institutionalized fraud!
High priced lawyers for everyone!
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
You really just made the argument that the poor people in this country should follow the law like the rich?
Hey everyone! Nobody will ever get punished for wide reaching institutionalized fraud!
High priced lawyers for everyone!
That fraud is a difficult crime to prove which has many prongs does not mean that it is ok to key someone's car. I don't really follow this. It seems to me that this is an argument in favor of reform for white collar crime (which I support), not an argument that people should commit clear violations of other laws.
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1) Make the victim/society whole (As an aside - it seems like whether this is possible would be a good starting point to separate major and minor crimes)
2) Prevent it from happening again (whether through a deterring effect of the punishments or incarceration)
3) Rehabilitate the offender (Remove, if possible, the motivation for the crime. It's better for society that an offender be able to rejoin it productively than for them to be incarcerated when possible)
I feel these should contribute to punishments differently. From the first, punishment should be proportional to the damage. From the second, punishment should be proportional to the offender (income, danger to society, repeat offender, etc). From the third, nothing (this is the part where you try to help the person who stole because they were poor, and punishing them more is counterproductive).
I'm thinking that the final sentence needs to incorporate all these goals as much as possible (1 and 3 may be moot depending on the offense and offender, of course). At a minimum, the judge and/or jury should be thinking about all of them, though the final sentence may not explicitly call them out.
I am concerned that the current justice system is focused too much on the second factor, to the detriment of society. Excessive incarceration is a bad thing, since it costs money (and inmates can hardly pay), is counterproductive to 3 (they're more likely to commit crimes after the sentence rather than less), and it means they aren't contributing anything to society. To some degree, this seems to be because 2 is the easiest to accomplish, as opposed to having to figure out how to help the person, and because it is easier to quantify the impact (ironically, it's also easier to quantify the negative impacts). Rehabilitation is the best outcome for society when possible, but making this determination (and how to do it) is much harder than locking someone up or fining them.
Revenue generation should never be a goal, but merely a happy accident at most (maybe it should all be earmarked for paying for the system and nothing else, to reduce temptation?). Making it a goal is detrimental to society, because it encourages legislating to make more criminals rather than less, and discourages actions that would reduce recidivism. It also encourages more load on the courts, which works against justice as a whole.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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PSN: AbEntropy
How exactly is exile "free"? It might have been a lot easier back in Ye Olde Medieval Times, when you could brand their face with a letter and the place they were exiled from consisted of a hundred square miles or so, but how do you propose, exactly, exiling people from the United States of America in this day and age?
It isn't practical, so its silly to talk about. I don't want to derail this thread.
For the more petty crimes fines are usually reasonable. At least IMO. For our repeat offenders of petty crimes we will normally have them out cleaning graffiti which is especially deterrent in Phoenix summers. I'm a big fan of community service
It's a pretty good option - it combines repaying society and shaming nicely, and is probably ideal for minor offenses overall. I'd argue that even if someone shoplifted every time their sentence ended, just throwing another round of community service at them again would be fine so long as the crimes weren't escalating (and they kept doing it), since there's a net benefit to society there... despite it failing utterly at rehabilitation.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
A justice system itself socializes a lot of stuff because it's aspect of the government which is paid for by taxes. If we're interested in reducing socialized costs we should perhaps keep our eye on cheap but effective tools of justice. My understanding is that harshness isn't very cheap because we use the courts to at least keep up appearances that we're trying to harshly punish the right people, and court costs aren't cheap.
Hashing minor offenders is I think socializing costs of wrongdoing, and it's doing so in a way that, I think, isn't very effective.
This is actually where one of my biggest complaints of our legal system comes from...
I know someone who put his girlfriend in a hospital after beating her so badly. He was looking at ten years prison on his third felony for it before he took the plea deal and got only four years.
I know someone else who was looking at 25 to life after kicking out the back window to a car before she took the plea deal. She had NO criminal record before this. In fairness, her plea deal involved NO jail time at all, but come on! Had neither taken the plea deal, the one with the non violent crime would have been the one looking at a triple felony sentence...
Put the discrepancy aside. Why should she have kicked the car? What possible justification or excuse for that action? Why can't way say that if you don't want to be punished you should not kick cars?
Let's be perfectly clear - things that shouldn't happen will happen. Saying 'well, they shouldn't do that' isn't an argument - it's merely a statement of fact.
I don't think anyone is defending malicious destruction of property or saying that someone who destroys property should be free of consequences. I mean, there are different excuses with varying degrees of legitimacy - 'baseball bat to the cheater's car', or 'kids will be kids', or 'drunks don't think things through', but I generally don't think those are 'good' excuses or excuse that kind of behavior. And you know what? As a society we normally don't accept those excuses.
Those things ARE going to happen. People do things they shouldn't and make bad decisions. They are angry, inebriated, or immature. Some people are just straight out cocks. It's wonderful to say 'well, they shouldn't do that', but that doesn't create a compelling reason to punish them to a degree that far exceeds the damage or impact of their actions.
I mean - people 'shouldn't' speed. But they do. When people speed, we don't take away their license and impound their car, and tell them 'well, you shouldn't have sped'. No, we give them a punishment that is somewhat proportional to their actions. If they were going five over, they get less of a fine than if they were going fifteen over. If they were recklessly endangering the lives of others, we punish them even more harshly.
Although this is getting away from the purpose of the thread, I also want to note that incredibly harsh punishments for mundane crimes tend to not be a tool of public good, but rather a tool utilized unevenly and in a way that singles out certain groups for harsh punishment in a discriminatory fashion. If 'exile' or 'life imprisonment' is the consequence of petty vandalism, the public will report crimes / utilize the justice system in an inherently unjust / unfair fashion.
For purposes of this topic I am limiting the scope of punishments I view as appropriate to minor ones. But as a general matter I disagree with the above. No matter how minor the law is, we should expect full cooperation, and I see no reason at all that we should feel compelled to make punishments proportional. No one is forced to commit a crime.
I have no problem with creating classes of behavior that are not crimes (like moving violations or disorderly person offenses) but something like vandalism is pretty clearly going to be a crime under any circumstances at all. To be honest, in a way vandalism is one of the worst crimes to me, because it is pure malice to no end at all. I abhor stealing, but sometimes people do that to stay alive. But keying someone's car? There is never any justification.
In theory, non-violent property crimes like vandalism could be treated as civil matters. If someone breaks or steals your stuff, you can take them to civil court and seek recompense. There is no inherent reason it needs to be treated as a crime at all.
We could reasonably prosecute crimes like arson, burglary, even grand theft in the context that the danger to individuals or the illegal entry is the criminal act, but the theft or destruction is merely a civil matter. That's definitely an extreme position, but I would say it is less extreme than exile for the same actions.
Destruction of private property, with no violence or endangerment, could easily be a civil / insurance matter, and the costs not be socialized on the community via the criminal justice system at all.
That is true. Its really a question of whether we want to love in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity as long as they can pay (and if they are judgement proof because they are poor, then with total impunity) or if we want people to feel safe in their possessions. It is the difference between being confident that your car is most likely going to be on the steer and ok when you wake up on the morning or having no idea if you will wake up to a functional car or a big hassle needed to make a claim for the money to buy a new one. . . Which may be destroyed the next day.
Stealing to survive isn't the same as art theft, and vandalizing a car isn't the same as vandalizing a statue or painting.
For one thing there is a 100% chance that a keyed car can be repaired. That's why we value the thing that has been vandalized to help establish the severity of the crime. We look at motive to help guide sentencing.
I'd especially like to avoid "tough on crime" laws, like mandatory minimums and "three strikes," for the most part. Where possible, the judge should be exercising their, y'know, judgement of how much of a danger an offender is to the public and what needs to be done to prevent that.
I think that for drug crimes (other than dealing, smuggling) and other substance abuse crimes, like DUI, I'd like to see rehab pushed in pretty much all cases, so long as nobody has died as a result of reckless or irresponsible actions of yours. Driving while seriously intoxicated (by anything, including legal prescription drugs) I would like to see punished with forfeiture of license for at least six months. (This can and does kill people - automobile accidents kill about twice as many people in this country as all forms of murder. If you drive under the influence and haven't killed anybody, you've been lucky; quit it.)
For most vandalism...assuming no discriminatory/gang affiliation element....I'd lean toward community service. Picking up trash in the park, maybe. Building homeless shelters. Aimlessly destructive, yes, but not exactly dangerous, just a nuisance. Not something I'd like to push an Aryan Brotherhood recruiting drive over.
I think that Singapore's approach, caning people over sticking gum under benches in the park, is way over the line. Singapore, of course, was once described by William Gibson as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty." *
I dunno how I'd deal with, like, petty theft, things like that. I guess community service would be my preference over time in jail. Jail might come in for somebody who skips out on their community service.
That isn't really true though. If you key my car, I need to bring it to an auto body shop and may not have the car for days. I need to make calls to insurance, arrange for alternate transportation, etc. If you smash my bumper it is worse, because the insurance will likely only pay for an aftermarket bumper, not a genuine part. You get close to the status quo, but you never quite reach it. This is why I think that it is worth spending more than the expected harm to prevent that harm from occurring (i.e., by using the criminal justice system to prosecute property crime). If I own a car, I want to actually have use of that car, not own a bundle of rights that is a car sometimes and is a right to gave that car restored at others. Now we can't avoid this situation when a tree falls on a car, but a person committing intentional acts of vandalism is not a tree, and I can't see why we should treat them like their actions are inevitable.
Nobody is arguing that vandals shouldn't be punished. This rhetorical question is effectively a strawman.
How it comes across is that you believe that any arbitrarily severe punishment is justifiable because - hey, if you didn't want to be euthanized, you shouldn't have trampled that flowerbed. (Yes, that is a Star Trek TNG reference.)
The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is that you don't believe that there is any moral proscription against cruel and usual punishment. Now, I would like to think that you don't think that, but it's hard to tell. That's why people are likening you to a comic book villain.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Exile for vandalism? Yeah, sorry. There's a vanishingly small number of people who share that view.
That's not really the question at all.
The actual question is: "Given that there are always going to be people doing bad things, what can we do to minimize the frequency of those bad things and the negative impact those bad things have on society?"
You seem to get hung up on the direct relationship between a specific criminal and a specific victim, to the point where you're tuning everything else out. Your approach says, "You caused $1000 damage to my car, and you must therefore give me $1000." And you seem pretty okay with any means of getting there as quickly as possible. You don't give much regard to anything past "making the victim whole," in your words.
What is the cost of putting this guy through a criminal trial? What is the cost of locking him up for ten years? Eh, fuck it, at least I got my thousand bucks and he doesn't get to cause any more damage to people's cars. Even though all those other costs might amount to ten times the actual damage done. Sure, maybe it costs society ten grand, but I got my thousand bucks.
And this is actually the mentality of a whole lot of people. Polarite mentioned the different motivations behind our criminal system, and rehabilitation is the one that most people genuinely give zero fucks about, even though it's potentially the one that can best minimize total cost to society (and, by extension, average cost per dude who gets his shit wrecked). But that is not a lot of people's concern. They are concerned about not restitution, but revenge. They will happily pay $2000 to recoup their $1000, as long as it means the person who caused that $1000 loss gets figuratively (or, often, literally) ass-fucked for several years.
And that is the Bonus Option Number 4 that Polarite omitted from his list. It's the one we don't talk about, but it's the one that a lot of us secretly (or not so secretly) care about the most. Our justice system is, right now, largely motivated by revenge. Think about it. Think about so many people's response to the idea of getting their car keyed.
It's not: "I want them to pay to have it fixed."
It's not: "I want them put in jail where they can't harm anyone."
It's sure as hell not: "I want to rehabilitate this person so they can be a productive member of society."
It's, "I want to tie that fucker down and kick him in the junk until his dick explodes."
Our justice system boils down to: "Man, fuck that guy." That is its core philosophical justification. We just don't like to talk about that in polite circles, except in the case of certain crimes for which it's publicly acceptable to support flat-out cruelty and torture. But that's it, in a nutshell. Ours is a society that glorifies revenge as justice, to the point where it's now encoded into our criminal justice system.
Which is why there's such a resistance to the idea of rehabilitation, or just any sort of pragmatism in general. Revenge is inherently impractical. It serves no reason other than pure, base catharsis. And so trying to discuss pragmatic alternatives with someone who really just wants revenge is going to fail. The two things are fundamentally incompatible.
The system can prevent it in two ways. First, it can deter people from engaging in the act. Second, it can isolate people who have shown that they will not act civilized and refuse to stop keying cars from society, so that they can't key cars anymore.
There is literally no way to make it so that the victim of vandalism is 100% whole. There will always be some cost in time and possibly money, or acceptance of things just not being as good as they once were. This is what I am trying to minimize.
Why does proportionality matter though. Why can't we just rely on people to not be assholes, and then when they are assholes, mete out the punishment that they knew (or should have known) was coming to them for being assholes?
I am opposed to cruel and unusual punishment because I am not really interested in inflicting harm on anyone as a punishment. All that I want is for the criminal to stop hurting innocent people, and for the victim to be made as whole as possible. If this means community service which serves as a lesson that you shouldn't key cars, plus paying $700 to get the door repainted? Great. If we can't get you to stop no matter what we do though? Now we need to keep you away from polite society because you aren't willing to be part of it.
I am not advocating retribution at all. I don't want the guy who keys my car to be hurt. I want my harm to be made up to me, and I want him to never key a car again. That's really all I want.
Exile is my ideal because it is cheap and final. Prison is really expensive and we rarely give people life. Also, prison is built on a rehabilitative model that I don't think works. Anything that stops them from hurting people works for me, its just hard to come up with many ways that work.
Keying a car is a symptom not really a problem. If an otherwise perfectly fantastic, productive and awesome individual went around keying cars we probably wouldn't be as collectively angry. But generally people who walk around keying cars because they feel like it are total assholes and generally act like assholes in other aspects of their life unrelated to keying cars. When assholes just act like assholes we can't arrest them. But when they vandalize or do other crimes we want to throw the book at them because well, they are assholes.
I personally doubt the value of punishment as a deterrent. For most crimes, the perpetrator isn't going to be looking over their shoulder, expecting to be caught - you commit crimes when you think you'll get away with it. That goes for keying cars the same way as for murder. The punishment should, ideally, fit the severity of the harm done by the action.
clearly her life is inferior in value to that car window, despite the fact that its owner could be made whole monetarily
after all the other guy in the story was just abusing another human, which as we know isn't worth nearly as much as property
Thieving kids and crusty jugglers
Punishment works best as a deterrent if the punishment is swift and extremely likely.
When punishment takes forever, or if there's a good chance that the criminal will escape punishment, then it works as a poor deterrent.
The severity of the punishment is less important than those two variables.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That is not my standard. My standard is that people who intentionally inflict harm on others don't get to keep doing so. In practice, I am a big fan of three strike laws. I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we have someone who repentantly continues to go around harming innocent people? Why is their freedom more important than the freedom of the innocent from harm?
We already live in a society where we are at the mercy of assholes who can destroy things with impunity. If you're rich enough, you don't even have to pay. Just look at the financial sector for evidence of this.
This goes right back to what people have been telling you, you have insurance to protect against this kind of incident. Insurance is to protect you against the unexpected, which includes random acts of vanadlism that inconvenience you. Every day, you have the risk that your vehicle may be destroyed by a random act of god, replaced the next day, and destroyed by another act the day after. That's just part of life.
If the worst thing that happens to you today is that your bumper is replaced with an aftermarket part, then you aren't exactly having a terrible day, and it's definately not so terrible as to warrant putting a person in jail for several years over.
You're a lawyer, so you should understrand that owning a car is a bundle of rights, and insurance is the right to get that car restored at other times. Hell, owning a car doesn't guarantee use of that car. You have to have a license, gas, etc.
You may be able to prevent some or most reoccurences through the justice system, but you will NEVER eliminate the initial incident nor entirely eliminate reoccurences. So, you have to treat it like it's inevitable.
We examine social issues to prevent other people from becoming like this instead of permanently subjecting society to 3 incidents per disenfranchised person before throwing said disenfranchised person away like garbage.
Systemic inequality in our glorious capitalist system of perfect meritocracy* is pretty much why we have these criminals you hate and fear so much.
*This is sarcasm btw
Of course.
Also they are overwhelmingly lower class.
And we pretend that says things about them and nothing about us.
Marijuana possession.
A lot.
I've always liked this quote
Why shouldn't our ideal be a world where everyone follows the rules and harms to rule followers are minimized to the extent possible, and then work towards approximating that? This is my view, at least. I don't really care about the rule breakers (they shouldn't have broken the rules, full stop. I care about protecting the people who follow the rules from whatever harms we can. Put another way, we don't just leave a rotting, tipped over tree alone until it crushes a car, or let a bridge deteriorate until it collapses and say "sometimes bad things happen" when the bad result occurs. We try to identify and prevent them. And people being dicks are not a force of nature. Every act of vandalism involves a choice, and it is because of that choice that I think vandals are blameworthy, and less deserving of our compassion and understanding than the people who make the choice not to be assholes. To be clear, the choice between holding the vandal responsible for his actions and making the victim handle it and be reimbursed the the greatest extent we can is literally a choice of privileging the right of the asshole to be an asshole over the right of the law abiding person to just be left alone.
What should it say? It is possible that we have criminalized the wrong things, but even if we have, why should the poor be any less capable of following the law than the rich? This line of thinking seems dangerously like a view that the poor are poor because they are inferior in some way, like lacking impulse control or being inherently less moral. I do not subscribe to that view.
Hey everyone! Nobody will ever get punished for wide reaching institutionalized fraud!
High priced lawyers for everyone!
That fraud is a difficult crime to prove which has many prongs does not mean that it is ok to key someone's car. I don't really follow this. It seems to me that this is an argument in favor of reform for white collar crime (which I support), not an argument that people should commit clear violations of other laws.