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Do Murderers and Rapists Deserve to Be Punished?
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EDIT: Important definitions and stipulation at the bottom of this post.
First, some background:
I've been reading the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist. In it, Lakoff examines the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to our politics, and in the process of doing so, examines much of our language. In particular, the way we use language to understand, analyze, and formulate our concepts of morality.
As it turns out, cognitive scientists and linguists have something of a laundry list of the metaphors we use to talk about morality. The reason we use these metaphors is that morality is highly abstract and complex, so we ground our reasoning in metaphors drawn from real experience and physical objects or processes.
One of the most common, pervasive, and persuasive metaphors used is that of Morality as Wealth, in which case we use financial language to describe morality. For example, if I do you a favor, you owe me. If someone saves your life, you ask how you can repay them, you say you're in their debt. Specifically, when talking about criminals, we often talk about paying debts to society, the victims getting what's theirs, etc.
Now, the reason we do this is because wealth is something experiential -- wealth is generally A Good Thing. Wealth is tied directly to well-being by experience. And morality is generally addressed through metaphors drawn from experiential well-being, because morality itself is generally tied to well-being. It can even be described as the promotion of well-being. The reason we use the wealth metaphor has really nothing to do with morality itself, though -- morality is not intrinsically or logically linked to wealth. However, it's an easy, common-sense framework to address a highly complex domain of human thought that addresses something (well-being) that wealth sometimes represents. It's so common-sense because it's rooted in our brains, and how they're built to understand the world. It is not, however, in any way practiced due to the logical or rhetorical merit of the metaphor.
So, let us examine the case of criminality, and the concept of "deserving" something, like punishment. I would venture that the concept of "deserving" is rooted in the financial metaphor of morality. When someone does something bad, in moral accounting (a common extension of the Morality as Wealth metaphor, and form of reasoning drawn from it), they accrue a moral "debit." This is the "debt to society" we often refer to (though moral debits are not always to be paid to the order of society, the reasoning is the same whoever the creditor is).
If we're doing accounting, the goal should be to balance the books, right? Defaulting on your debts has been considered immoral for millennia, and debt itself has been considered immoral in thousands of cultures. So, we can either use retribution -- in which we do something that also warrants a moral debit, to the person who owes us, of equal value ("the punishment must fit the crime") -- or restitution, in which the offender does something that warrants a moral credit of sufficient value to offset their debit (community service).
Now, it should be obvious that all this logic is entirely wrapped up in metaphor. It fits the internal logic of this short-cut to moral reasoning, but we're no longer actually examining morality itself -- how to maximize good and minimize evil, or alternatively, how to maximize well-being and minimize suffering. We've become trapped in this metaphor.
So, if moral accounting has no real intellectual or logical merit, and in no way inevitably or directly results in a maximization of well-being or goodness (and therefore is not inherently moral, and therefore a flawed mode of moral reasoning), then do we not need to reexamine the whole concept of deserving, and of punishment?
If we aim to be maximally moral, to maximize well-being, then it follows we must re-examine our system of justice, punishment, and and incarceration to do just that.
But to ever arrive at such a solution, we first have to abandon the concept of deserving punishment. A murderer who can be reformed reliably is better off back in society, producing and consuming, than sucking up tax dollars in prison. Now, the "can be reformed reliably" is a great caveat, no doubt, but the point here is that no matter how heinous a crime, we should only examine how best to re-integrate the criminal to society, as opposed to how best to punish them. Perhaps that means doing away with prisons as we know them entirely, and replacing them with entities more resembling school, rehab, and the therapist's office, though of course still involving incarceration. One can incarcerate prisoners without plunging them into a hell of rape, assault, murder, organized crime, monotony, and intellectual/cultural barrenness. All of which, I would argue, define American prisons as we know them.
To ever solve the prison problem, I would argue, we need to realize that no one deserves punishment. No one. When we think so -- or, more accurately, when we feel so -- we must recognize that this impulse is not grounded in good logic, but rather emotional satisfaction. We must erase moral accounting from our reasoning, and pursue only the policies which increase the public well-being.
There's a West Wing episode where Sam says he wishes that our schools were palaces. It's a bit tangential but Foucault would categorize both the prison and the school as high instruments of the carceral archipelago -- enforcers of social norms -- and if we really care about our society, and, yes, normalizing its citizens to high standards of well-being, perhaps our prisons should be instead palaces as well.
EDIT: To attempt to clear up some early confusion, a few things I wish to stipulate to:
Definitions for this OP:
Morality/Moral Actions: The pursuit of maximal well-being, as evidenced through the fact that humans generally use metaphorical language to discuss morality that is rooted in experiential well-being. E.g., Morality As Wealth, where wealth is experientially linked to well-being, or Morality as Health, where health is experientially linked to well-being, etc.
Moral Accounting: The practice of perceiving immoral actions as moral "debits" and moral actions as moral "credits." This is a mode of reasoning drawn from the Morality as Wealth metaphor, which uses financial logic to explain and inform thinking about morality. The goal is generally to balance the moral books.
Punishment: the practice of a moral authority (such as the courts/police/government) imposing an immoral action (one that minimizes or destroys individual and/or societal well-being) on an offender (someone who breaks societal norms as edified in law), so as to balance the moral books, in the moral accounting mode of reasoning -- that is, for the authority to accrue debits equivalent to the debits of the offender.
(1) Rape and murder are still horribly immoral. Nothing in this post suggests crimes are moral, merely that the concept of punishment (not incarceration, prisons, or all methods of punishment, but the idea of punishment rooted in moral accounting) isn't.
(2) Incarceration is still probably useful, to an extent. For example, if someone is a high-risk to reoffend, and is a murderer, life imprisonment could be argued as an effective measure for increasing the social good without ever using arguments about "deserving" punishment.
(3) A vast majority of crime is not, in fact, rape or murder, and we have good evidence that nonviolent offenders in particular respond very well to rehabilitation.
(4) Prison, as currently conceived in America, does not seem (I would argue) to maximize social good or well-being.
(5) I suppose this might become an argument about what is effective to reduce crime and what isn't, but I am trying to get at something that I feel motivates us much more deeply than this (though, I argue, it shouldn't).
First, some background:
I've been reading the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist. In it, Lakoff examines the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to our politics, and in the process of doing so, examines much of our language. In particular, the way we use language to understand, analyze, and formulate our concepts of morality.
As it turns out, cognitive scientists and linguists have something of a laundry list of the metaphors we use to talk about morality. The reason we use these metaphors is that morality is highly abstract and complex, so we ground our reasoning in metaphors drawn from real experience and physical objects or processes.
One of the most common, pervasive, and persuasive metaphors used is that of Morality as Wealth, in which case we use financial language to describe morality. For example, if I do you a favor, you owe me. If someone saves your life, you ask how you can repay them, you say you're in their debt. Specifically, when talking about criminals, we often talk about paying debts to society, the victims getting what's theirs, etc.
Now, the reason we do this is because wealth is something experiential -- wealth is generally A Good Thing. Wealth is tied directly to well-being by experience. And morality is generally addressed through metaphors drawn from experiential well-being, because morality itself is generally tied to well-being. It can even be described as the promotion of well-being. The reason we use the wealth metaphor has really nothing to do with morality itself, though -- morality is not intrinsically or logically linked to wealth. However, it's an easy, common-sense framework to address a highly complex domain of human thought that addresses something (well-being) that wealth sometimes represents. It's so common-sense because it's rooted in our brains, and how they're built to understand the world. It is not, however, in any way practiced due to the logical or rhetorical merit of the metaphor.
So, let us examine the case of criminality, and the concept of "deserving" something, like punishment. I would venture that the concept of "deserving" is rooted in the financial metaphor of morality. When someone does something bad, in moral accounting (a common extension of the Morality as Wealth metaphor, and form of reasoning drawn from it), they accrue a moral "debit." This is the "debt to society" we often refer to (though moral debits are not always to be paid to the order of society, the reasoning is the same whoever the creditor is).
If we're doing accounting, the goal should be to balance the books, right? Defaulting on your debts has been considered immoral for millennia, and debt itself has been considered immoral in thousands of cultures. So, we can either use retribution -- in which we do something that also warrants a moral debit, to the person who owes us, of equal value ("the punishment must fit the crime") -- or restitution, in which the offender does something that warrants a moral credit of sufficient value to offset their debit (community service).
Now, it should be obvious that all this logic is entirely wrapped up in metaphor. It fits the internal logic of this short-cut to moral reasoning, but we're no longer actually examining morality itself -- how to maximize good and minimize evil, or alternatively, how to maximize well-being and minimize suffering. We've become trapped in this metaphor.
So, if moral accounting has no real intellectual or logical merit, and in no way inevitably or directly results in a maximization of well-being or goodness (and therefore is not inherently moral, and therefore a flawed mode of moral reasoning), then do we not need to reexamine the whole concept of deserving, and of punishment?
If we aim to be maximally moral, to maximize well-being, then it follows we must re-examine our system of justice, punishment, and and incarceration to do just that.
But to ever arrive at such a solution, we first have to abandon the concept of deserving punishment. A murderer who can be reformed reliably is better off back in society, producing and consuming, than sucking up tax dollars in prison. Now, the "can be reformed reliably" is a great caveat, no doubt, but the point here is that no matter how heinous a crime, we should only examine how best to re-integrate the criminal to society, as opposed to how best to punish them. Perhaps that means doing away with prisons as we know them entirely, and replacing them with entities more resembling school, rehab, and the therapist's office, though of course still involving incarceration. One can incarcerate prisoners without plunging them into a hell of rape, assault, murder, organized crime, monotony, and intellectual/cultural barrenness. All of which, I would argue, define American prisons as we know them.
To ever solve the prison problem, I would argue, we need to realize that no one deserves punishment. No one. When we think so -- or, more accurately, when we feel so -- we must recognize that this impulse is not grounded in good logic, but rather emotional satisfaction. We must erase moral accounting from our reasoning, and pursue only the policies which increase the public well-being.
There's a West Wing episode where Sam says he wishes that our schools were palaces. It's a bit tangential but Foucault would categorize both the prison and the school as high instruments of the carceral archipelago -- enforcers of social norms -- and if we really care about our society, and, yes, normalizing its citizens to high standards of well-being, perhaps our prisons should be instead palaces as well.
EDIT: To attempt to clear up some early confusion, a few things I wish to stipulate to:
Definitions for this OP:
Morality/Moral Actions: The pursuit of maximal well-being, as evidenced through the fact that humans generally use metaphorical language to discuss morality that is rooted in experiential well-being. E.g., Morality As Wealth, where wealth is experientially linked to well-being, or Morality as Health, where health is experientially linked to well-being, etc.
Moral Accounting: The practice of perceiving immoral actions as moral "debits" and moral actions as moral "credits." This is a mode of reasoning drawn from the Morality as Wealth metaphor, which uses financial logic to explain and inform thinking about morality. The goal is generally to balance the moral books.
Punishment: the practice of a moral authority (such as the courts/police/government) imposing an immoral action (one that minimizes or destroys individual and/or societal well-being) on an offender (someone who breaks societal norms as edified in law), so as to balance the moral books, in the moral accounting mode of reasoning -- that is, for the authority to accrue debits equivalent to the debits of the offender.
(1) Rape and murder are still horribly immoral. Nothing in this post suggests crimes are moral, merely that the concept of punishment (not incarceration, prisons, or all methods of punishment, but the idea of punishment rooted in moral accounting) isn't.
(2) Incarceration is still probably useful, to an extent. For example, if someone is a high-risk to reoffend, and is a murderer, life imprisonment could be argued as an effective measure for increasing the social good without ever using arguments about "deserving" punishment.
(3) A vast majority of crime is not, in fact, rape or murder, and we have good evidence that nonviolent offenders in particular respond very well to rehabilitation.
(4) Prison, as currently conceived in America, does not seem (I would argue) to maximize social good or well-being.
(5) I suppose this might become an argument about what is effective to reduce crime and what isn't, but I am trying to get at something that I feel motivates us much more deeply than this (though, I argue, it shouldn't).
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Because they're murderers and rapists.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
What good comes from punishment for punishment's sake?
OP I absolutely agree with what you've said. Five stars.
Let's see...
-removal of the dangerous, potentially psycho criminal from society, eliminating the risk that he/she will repeat their crime.
-Giving the victim or the people close to the victim a sense of comfort and safety, helping their emotional stability.
-A deterrent that might hopefully keep some other potential offenders from doing the same thing, out of fear of getting caught and being punished.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
So, what you're saying is that we should reject logic, and the use of scientific policy for the purpose of maximizing good in favor of emotion, essentially? I mean you don't say that literally but it seems to be sort of wrapped up in that post.
Now, I won't necessarily say that's an automatically incorrect view -- Nietzsche would, I'm sure, say something very similar. Hell you've got a fair number of postmodernists to draw from if you want to go start critiquing logic altogether, or the notion of metacognition (which is implicit in my argument, I would think).
I'd be interested to hear a compelling argument about the merits of emotional reasoning, actually. I never have been much for it myself but it can be fun stuff.
Since it costs society a lot of money - and through that progress - to let murder and rape go unchecked we have decided to severely punish people who commit murder and rape. Not because of morality, but because if we do not shit will hit the fan and our progress as a society will be hampered.
No one said those acts aren't horribly immoral. They are.
That doesn't mean punishment is moral, or at least punishment as currently conceived.
Then what is the alternative? Let them go, saying it is also wrong to punish them, hoping they don't do it again?
House them, provide them with basic amenities and care, and let them die of old age.
This is how a civilized and just society should act.
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Life imprisonment is still a viable option, I would think, under my view. It just requires that they not be realistic candidates for rehabilitation. If the risk of rehab outweighs the reward -- if the harm outweighs the well-being -- then it follows that life imprisonment would still be moral.
The point is that, I argue, much of our justice system is rooted in moral accounting. Specifically retribution or restitution.
And before some genius starts rambling on about free choice and making decisions- the ability to make hard or noble or bad decisions- "Strength of Will" so to speak-is just as predetermined by genetics and environment.
Anyways, my stance on this is basically, if a criminal honestly regrets their action, and would take it back, and never make such a decision again, preferably because they are reformed, and maybe because they fear the repercussions, good game. Let them get on with new lives, hopefully lives that are productive because they've been taught a useful skill or something during their rehabilitation.
Whether this is achievable depends on the person, of course-some are psychologically incapable of reformation or fear, I'm sure. Pretty sure studies show that criminal sociopaths are MORE dangerous after 'reformation', but they're a very small minority, both of criminals and of sociopaths. Kill them or something.
Although, just because I think most criminals can and should be reformed if possible doesn't mean I'd lose sleep over their misfortunes, be it execution or prison rape or getting shot robbing a liquor store or whatever. The potential for a good human being isn't the same as a good human being. >_>
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In stated theory. But criminal psychology and our own society seem to say otherwise in practice. Going to prison increases recidivism rates far higher than going to rehab. Criminals who commit crimes with large penalties usually do so (a) as a crime of passion, when deterrence is never thought about, or (b) with a criminal psychology such that the individual believes, quite sincerely, that they'll never be caught, or that the law does not apply to them.
Yes, prisons are supposed deter people, and probably some minimum of punishment is necessary for crimes to deter rational, normalized citizens from criminal activity. However, I would argue that our prisons exceed that minimum routinely, and are really quite ineffective at deterrence. For example, the fact that 1 in 100 (adult) Americans is in prison, and yet our crime rate is generally higher than EU nations.
Now, more police on the streets -- that has been tied to crime reduction, via prevention. People are less likely to offend if more police are on patrol. That seems to function as deterrent. If you want deterrent, spend less money on prisons, which increase likelihood of reoffence, and spend more money on police officers walking beats.
Honestly, I think the emotional comfort and closure the victim/victim's loved ones get is more important. Fuck the rapist. The person he/she raped has been horribly scarred for life and the comfort he or she may get from seeing the attacker punished is a good thing.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Our prison system fails to do this in any cases other than life without parole and death penalty cases, which are both in a tiny minority.
If people who commit crimes are inherently devious, then why don't we lock up all violent offenders for life? The reality is this is another stated purpose of the prison system that is ill-supported by our actual practices. Rapists can get as little as five or seven years. Rather than send them into a place filled with violence, sexual degradation, and more rape, why don't we send them to therapy? Confinement may also be required in the interim, but not the inhuman conditions of the modern American prison.
This has more to do with the insane things the US jails people for and your crazy jails. I would wonder what the murder and crime rate would be if murder and rape were not punished.
I never said get rid of prisons or incarceration. Perhaps I should edit my post further. Still, you'll note it's nowhere in the OP.
It is possible to remove someone from society and prevent repeat offenses without resorting to overly punitive measures. Do you agree that this would be better than just throwing someone in jail?
I'm never sure about your second point. Is the comfort provided to a victim's family by watching a murderer die worth it? Is that emotional satisfaction justifiable?
Probably very high. We can look to pre-modern societies as a guide to this (e.g. Europe in the 1400s). Without modern police forces, legal systems, and standards of incarceration, crime (violent in particular) was very high.
Again, not saying incarceration isn't necessary, but the way we intellectualize it as punishment for a crime is problematic.
You're pulling sociology and state theory together: a government has different reasons for jailing people than we have as individuals. Whereas we like to jail people as a way to feel better and safer, the government jails people to prevent social unrest, loss of capital and possible anarchy.
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Note I never actually made a direct argument about the rights or privileges of the offender. Merely that morality implies maximizing social good/well-being, and our prison system should reflect that morality, unless we decide to throw out morality altogether (many philosophers have made this argument, of course, and I don't reject it out-of-hand).
I would say that the comfort of the victim does not outweigh reducing the rate of violent offense. If, by making prisons more enjoyable, rewarding, comfortable places accompanied by a raft of services like education and therapy, we can reduce criminality overall by a significant extent, I say that clearly outweighs the emotional satisfaction of revenge-hungry victims.
Yes, perhaps.
Also frankly, I don't see how something resembling "school, rehab, and the therapist's office" rules out incarceration, given that school and rehab both hold elements of compulsory attendance (i.e., restricting one's physical movement, possibly against one's will, like prison), and the existence of mental wards and psychiatric hospitals.
I think there is more that defines the modern American prison than incarceration (like, say, institutionalized assault, rape, and murder, and emotional trauma), but I'll edit the OP for clarity regardless.
Edit: I'm not being sarcastic, by the way. I honestly think that 1:It would benefit society more than the current system and 2:It's better for the criminal than the torment of a pseudo-life of repeated incarceration and decent into, if not madness, something similar.
Well foucault would argue differently about both, of course, but I'm not entirely enamored of the man anyway.
Still, I don't think the distinction matters. Those are all fairly reasonable impetus for imprisonment, so long as one can prove that the modern prison system really is the best method for making people safer, or reducing social unrest, loss of capital, and prevention of anarchy.
I'd say look at Baltimore and then try to tell me that the modern prison system actually does those things.
I believe it is. The way I see it, the emotional and psychological state of the person or people victimized is far more important than the criminal's. If you psychologically and emotionally harm someone, then I see nothing wrong with punishing them to try and undo at least some of that harm. It was the criminal who decided to act on his selfish desires, and mess with the victim's head. Therefore I feel the criminal gives up the right to be treated on the same level as the victim.
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I still think there's a solid argument that the death penalty robs the potentially innocent of ever being acquitted, and it's not worth the risk. You can still make that argument under my framework. In fact I think my framework rather lends itself to that argument over the death penalty.
You still have children with no prospects, right? Well, now they have a job for life!
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You say revenge. I say helping the victims recover from the mental damage that was inflicted upon them.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
First of course you'd have to prove that punishing the offender in a sufficiently painful manner actually results in any significant difference in the long-term well-being of the victim. What's the cutoff? How much pain is necessary? How should it be inflicted?
And further, you're forgetting society's stake in all this. We have to spend money to incarcerate the offender, we lose their contribution to GDP, and in all likelihood, according to the stats, we're not really doing anything to prevent this person from reoffending as soon as they're out of jail, whereas rehab might.
argument still stands.
This is, to make an understatement, rather different than all my personal experiences arguing this position in real life or on other boards. I hardly think it would go over very well in SE++, for instance.
Also, please explain how punishment of criminals helps murder victims?
This is pretty specious reasoning. I think the OP is hopelessly naive about the prospects of criminal rehabilitation in most cases (especially since sexual crimes in particular occur in a broader culture of tacit acceptance - society itself needs to change before rehab will stick properly), but I definitely think there's not nearly enough emphasis on criminal rehabilitation in almost any modern justice system you care to name. And far too many justice systems tacitly use prisoners to further punish each other in ways that could never be openly sanctioned by the state (see: prison rape and the hi-larious joke that it seems to be to too many people).