So what would you do with people like Josef Fritzl? He (most likely) can't be rehabilitated, and there isn't any way to apply the "retribution" formula to any kind of punishment other than the death penalty, which generally isn't practiced over here. And, many would argue, it would be a pointless gesture to begin with.
I agree that in some cases rehabilitation could work wonders, but I do think it's overly idealistic to expect it solve more problems than incarceration does, on the whole.
Cherrn on
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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.
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.
I have a massive problem with economic contribution being the chief measure of human worth, too. You're a hair's breadth away from arguing that PWD be put down like animals so they don't fuck things up for the rest of us.
There is a reason we don't have the victim choose the method of punishment. As much as supporting and helping the victims and their loved ones cope with what happened must be important to us, so must we defend against rash, emotional bloodlust clouding our justice system.
It should be said I rather reject the notion of justice as well. It, too, seems rooted in moral accounting the same way punishment is (two sides of the same coin, in many ways).
Now, rejecting justice doesn't mean rejecting morality, but rather rejecting the idea that justice is something that can be or should be achieved. I think the scales lady justice holds rather embody what justice is about -- balancing moral actions. Which, again, is basically the exact type of metaphorical reasoning I am arguing against.
There is a reason we don't have the victim choose the method of punishment. As much as supporting and helping the victims and their loved ones cope with what happened must be important to us, so must we defend against rash, emotional bloodlust clouding our justice system.
It should be said I rather reject the notion of justice as well. It, too, seems rooted in moral accounting the same way punishment is (two sides of the same coin, in many ways).
Now, rejecting justice doesn't mean rejecting morality, but rather rejecting the idea that justice is something that can be or should be achieved. I think the scales lady justice holds rather embody what justice is about -- balancing moral actions. Which, again, is basically the exact type of metaphorical reasoning I am arguing against.
The phrase 'rejecting justice' is throwing me, FWIW. Changing what justice means in concrete terms isn't rejecting it, and you're arguing for the former.
Murder and rape are horribly wrong things to do to another person, no matter what kind of philisophical dancing someone tries to make it seem false. One completely ends the human experience against that person's will, the other can cause severe emotional and psychological damage to a person that they may never recover from.
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.
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
King Riptor on
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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 don't consider American prisons modern at all. America is an old-fashioned country with dated ideas about justice. I would rather consider Western European prisons modern than the US.
I do realise this kind of makes our discussion impossible, but I can't step over the fact that justice and punishment in America are so extremely different from the ways it is set up is Western European countries.
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.
First of course you'd have to prove that punishing the offender in a sufficiently painful manner actually results in any significant different 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.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
I'm actually anti-death penalty and don't support physical violence against the offenders. But I do think the punishment of locking them away is important both as a method of keeping them off the streets and a way to give the victim some sort of piece of mind. The victim deserves to know that the person that did this to them has been caught and punished. If the rapist isn't punished, then the person who is raped has to live with the constant fear that she may be attacked by this rapist again. Not to mention the feeling of powerlessness and unimportance a victim can feel if the person that violated them like this is just allowed to get away with it.
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.
First of course you'd have to prove that punishing the offender in a sufficiently painful manner actually results in any significant different 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.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
I'm actually anti-death penalty and don't support physical violence against the offenders. But I do think the punishment of locking them away is important both as a method of keeping them off the streets and a way to give the victim some sort of piece of mind. The victim deserves to know that the person that did this to them has been caught and punished. If the rapist isn't punished, then the person who is raped has to live with the constant fear that she may be attacked by this rapist again. Not to mention the feeling of powerlessness and unimportance a victim can feel if the person that violated them like this is just allowed to get away with it.
Peachy, but that phenom is far more often caused by lack of conviction and even arrest than insufficient sentence length. And also has nothing to do with severity of treatment while incarcerated.
I have a massive problem with economic contribution being the chief measure of human worth, too. You're a hair's breadth away from arguing that PWD be put down like animals so they don't fuck things up for the rest of us.
Hardly. It's just an easy example of what society loses when we incarcerate which many people respond to. Simply persuasion.
Anyway, Persons with disabilities have well-being, don't they? Therefore, isn't any action that minimizes or destroys their well-being immoral, under my model? Aren't I indeed advocating for a system in which we don't have to use immoral behavior to balance moral books, but can instead just practice maximally moral behavior at all times?
If our aim is seamless morality, then we aim to essentially achieve maximum and complete well-being. A lofty, even unrealistic goal, surely, but one which clearly discourages us from destroying the well-being of human beings.
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.
First of course you'd have to prove that punishing the offender in a sufficiently painful manner actually results in any significant different 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.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
I'm actually anti-death penalty and don't support physical violence against the offenders. But I do think the punishment of locking them away is important both as a method of keeping them off the streets and a way to give the victim some sort of piece of mind. The victim deserves to know that the person that did this to them has been caught and punished. If the rapist isn't punished, then the person who is raped has to live with the constant fear that she may be attacked by this rapist again. Not to mention the feeling of powerlessness and unimportance a victim can feel if the person that violated them like this is just allowed to get away with it.
I'll agree that sentences for sexual assualts are laughably short.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
But, I think most of those arguing for rehab agree with this, so I'm not sure why you are arguing?
Edit: I certainly agree. I definitely don't think we should be like "Oops, sentence is up and you're still unrepentant rapist scum. Maybe next time you get locked up for rape we'll manage to fix you, eh?"
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
So you want our society to act like the deviants?
I'm not saying that. It's because we don't act like them that any punishment they recieve should be considered fair.
King Riptor on
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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.
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),
Oh, sure, I mean rape culture is a big factor, no doubt. However, again, worth noting that a vast majority of criminals in America are non-violent offenders, let alone sexual offenders, and, once again, I have never ruled out incarceration, even incarceration for life, in any of my posts. Merely that it should be used not in the mindset of punishment, but in the mindset of maximizing well-being.
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).
Yes, prison rape and the cavalier attitude most Americans have towards it is a prime example of how we feel that criminals "deserve" what's coming to them, societally.
Also, I feel currently that what we call rehab is far from the potential of what rehabilitation might someday mean.
You say revenge. I say helping the victims recover from the mental damage that was inflicted upon them.
Sorry, can you cite some evidence that punishment of criminals heals the souls of crime victims? Or even something showing that a lack of sufficiently mean punishment hampers healing?
Also, please explain how punishment of criminals helps murder victims?
I'm not saying it's an instant cure-all, but I am saying that it helps. The person who had his house broken into is going to feel safer and more secure if he knows the person who did it has been caught and punished, and the risk of him coming back has been greatly reduced. The same things apply to more extreme crimes, like rape.
In the case of murder, it's the ones closest to the victim, and hell, basically everyone that lives in the area, that has to deal with the fear, helplessness, and paranoia and the knowledge that the muderer is still out there, unpunished.
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
So you want our society to act like the deviants?
I'm not saying that. It's because we don't act like them that any punishment they recieve should be considered fair.
It's only if we treat them justly and with respect to their basic rights that we can be considered fair.
Any other method is simply an excuse to treat people cruelly for our satisfaction.
There is a reason we don't have the victim choose the method of punishment. As much as supporting and helping the victims and their loved ones cope with what happened must be important to us, so must we defend against rash, emotional bloodlust clouding our justice system.
It should be said I rather reject the notion of justice as well. It, too, seems rooted in moral accounting the same way punishment is (two sides of the same coin, in many ways).
Now, rejecting justice doesn't mean rejecting morality, but rather rejecting the idea that justice is something that can be or should be achieved. I think the scales lady justice holds rather embody what justice is about -- balancing moral actions. Which, again, is basically the exact type of metaphorical reasoning I am arguing against.
The phrase 'rejecting justice' is throwing me, FWIW. Changing what justice means in concrete terms isn't rejecting it, and you're arguing for the former.
I think the concept of "justice" as articulated in western society necessitates notions tied to moral accounting, like deserving punishment. Justice is not served when someone goes free, or when someone innocent is locked up, because the moral books haven't been balanced -- not because society is worse off (though, of course, this is the implication in all moral accounting, it is rarely explicit and often the link is tenuous at best)
Deterrence is never going to be a complete solution to crime, because crime isn't rational. There are very few crimes committed for which the reward is in any way proportional to the possible penalty, even without the desire many have to make U.S. laws more draconian. In some third world countries they maim and execute people for comparatively trivial crimes (or, things that are not crimes at all in the west), and yet, they still have offenders who brave these penalties.
We're always going to need prisons because we need a safe, withdrawn place to put people while we figure out how effectively they can be rehabilitated and how long it will take. We also need something to do with those people who for whatever reason, cannot be rehabilitated.
But the current U.S. justice system is massively skewed toward the "punishment" side, out of what I can only describe as a cultural obsession with revenge. If a minor thief violates a three strikes law, many U.S. states would rather make him a ward of the taxpayers for dozens of years, rather than attempt to equip him with the tools to live an actual semblance of a productive life. Why? He certainly isn't better off in prison, and we aren't better off paying for him to be there if he can be reformed. And when his sentence ends, and he emerges having spent a huge portion of his (probably young) life in prison, what do you suppose happens next?
edit: before someone points it out, I think this rationale is equally valid for violent criminals.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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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.
First of course you'd have to prove that punishing the offender in a sufficiently painful manner actually results in any significant different 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.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
I'm actually anti-death penalty and don't support physical violence against the offenders. But I do think the punishment of locking them away is important both as a method of keeping them off the streets and a way to give the victim some sort of piece of mind. The victim deserves to know that the person that did this to them has been caught and punished. If the rapist isn't punished, then the person who is raped has to live with the constant fear that she may be attacked by this rapist again. Not to mention the feeling of powerlessness and unimportance a victim can feel if the person that violated them like this is just allowed to get away with it.
Peachy, but that phenom is far more often caused by lack of conviction and even arrest than insufficient sentence length. And also has nothing to do with severity of treatment while incarcerated.
I think we might be arguing two different things. I'm not really arguing in favor of poor treatment of prisoners and stuff like that. I'm just arguing against the extreme "no one should be punished" mentality. I'm in favor of criminals being caught and punished, and one of the reasons is because doing so helps the victims cope. That's all.
EDIT: The reason I don't think muderers and rapists shouldn't be let out until rehabbed or proven not guilty is more about public safety than the victim. I guess I didn't really make that clear.
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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Peachy, but that phenom is far more often caused by lack of conviction and even arrest than insufficient sentence length.
And also has nothing to do with severity of treatment while incarcerated.
I feel these pieces conflict.
If the first is true, then prison effects some change in the rapist, right? Because if sentence length is sufficient (but obviously not life in most states, in most circumstances, and indeed often for rape sentences seem paltry), and rape is endemic due to under-reporting, -arrest, and -conviction (due to societal acceptance, slut-shaming, rape-culture, etc), then it follows that something in the experience of prison prevents re-offense. At least if I'm interpreting that first part correctly, then you seem to be saying if we could lock more of them up, we'd have fewer rapes. Which, again, when you are explicitly accounting for sentence length, means that incarceration stops rape.
Which means the experience of incarceration holds within it something that causes some offenders to reform. If one could isolate that component, or describe the overall environment which causes such a change, and all incarcerations of rapists were designed to maximize this aspect of incarceration, would not the manner and severity of treatment then indeed matter? Maybe I put too much faith in the behaviorist and statistician, and the idea that any behavior that is predictable may be engineered if we can simply identify the variables, but I feel it has a good track record.
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
I think the concept of "justice" as articulated in western society necessitates notions tied to moral accounting, like deserving punishment. Justice is not served when someone goes free, or when someone innocent is locked up, because the moral books haven't been balanced -- not because society is worse off (though, of course, this is the implication in all moral accounting, it is rarely explicit and often the link is tenuous at best)
But society is worse off when an unrepentant criminal goes free, or when an innocent is jailed. It's not some 'concept' of the scales of justice not being balanced that worries people, it's the reality of a criminal walking around or a good man behind bars. You can move all this to the sphere of intellectual concepts or moral accounting if you like, but when a gang of drug dealers are put behind bars people aren't glad because Justice Has Been Served and the Scales Have Been Balanced, they're glad because those guys who made their neighbourhood dangerous are gone.
Murder and rape are horribly wrong things to do to another person, no matter what kind of philisophical dancing someone tries to make it seem false. One completely ends the human experience against that person's will, the other can cause severe emotional and psychological damage to a person that they may never recover from.
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.
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
You haven't really said anything. Again, unless you feel that it is unnecessary to represent your arguments in certain discourses such as through Enlightenment-influenced ideas like rhetoric, logic, reason, and empiricism, due to their problematic ideas about truth and universalism.
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
So you want our society to act like the deviants?
I'm not saying that. It's because we don't act like them that any punishment they recieve should be considered fair.
What defines fairness? I feel you're doing moral accounting here. Are you concerned with maximally increasing individual and societal well-being, or with balancing the moral books? And if the latter, can you defend it as a desirable goal?
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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The Dutch judicial system has an explicit dangerous to society/can't get out until cured process, called "TBS" (Roughly, at will of the state). This program tries actively to rehabilitate criminals, but they cannot get out until they are proven cured.
This creates three further problems:
People who receive this punishment suffer from even greater social stigmas then normal ex-cons, to the point where it is proven increasingly tough to get these people housing, or "halfway houses" where they are supposed to live regular but supervised lives. Communities protest these houses being built / bought, housing agencies refuse these clients etcet. I'm not sure how many of them can ever get a real job, but i'd guess very very few.
On the occasions that the system fails, it creates huge social and political unrest. When such a man murdered a handler during early reintegration a few years back, then a few weeks later another one temporarily escaped, it was a top story for months. Society has real issues accepting this at anything below a utopian 100% succes rate.
These people are incarcerated on the opinion of psychiatrists, and there is some evidence that not all are being treated equally in this regard. There is one known case where a patient who had a relatively minor crime (Something that would've earned them perhaps 2 years in jail if he didn't get TBS) has been in the system since the late '60's, without a right to second opinion. The same doctor keeps turning him down again and again, and he's fucked.
I think the concept of "justice" as articulated in western society necessitates notions tied to moral accounting, like deserving punishment. Justice is not served when someone goes free, or when someone innocent is locked up, because the moral books haven't been balanced -- not because society is worse off (though, of course, this is the implication in all moral accounting, it is rarely explicit and often the link is tenuous at best)
But society is worse off when an unrepentant criminal goes free, or when an innocent is jailed. It's not some 'concept' of the scales of justice not being balanced that worries people, it's the reality of a criminal walking around or a good man behind bars. You can move all this to the sphere of intellectual concepts or moral accounting if you like, but when a gang of drug dealers are put behind bars people aren't glad because Justice Has Been Served and the Scales Have Been Balanced, they're glad because those guys who made their neighbourhood dangerous are gone.
I think you're either under- or over-estimating your fellow citizens, depending on your view of justice.
Also, it's irrelevant to my point what most people think when a local drug dealer gets busted -- because my point specifically deals with my problem with the concept of justice itself, irrelevant of how feverishly it is or isn't supported by the masses.
And I'd say justice doesn't always correspond to societal good or individual good. When a drug user goes to jail, no one really benefits. When we clamor for investigations into Bush era torture, we don't do so because of pragmatic arguments about deterrence, but because we crave justice.
I'd say it is not an insignificant part of the public psyche
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
I said ONE of the reasons. Not the ONLY reason.
So it does help determine the severity, then? You can't have it both ways.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
You seem stuck on the idea that punishment means incarceration, or other literal methods by which we punish people.
But punishment can take innumerable forms -- incarceration and punishment are not the same. Punishment is a moral action, merely enabled by physical tools such as incarceration, spanking, or even beheading.
Punishment necessitates moral accounting.
There should be no punishment in my view, but that does not preclude incarceration.
Also I'm pretty proud of myself for finally coming up with a title attention-grabbing enough to get people to read my wall o' text OP at four in the morning. 8-)
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
I said ONE of the reasons. Not the ONLY reason.
So it does help determine the severity, then? You can't have it both ways.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. *sigh*
I originally responded to someone who asked what "punishment for the sake of punishment" does. I gave a few answers, the one currently being discussed was one of them. All I'm saying is that helping the mental state of the victim is ONE of the ways that punishment of the criminal can have a positive effect. I did not nor have ever said that any of these things are a gauge as to what the punishment should be, and how severe it should be.
I think you're either under- or over-estimating your fellow citizens, depending on your view of justice.
And you're over-intellectualising it (also, talking about 'the masses' raises my hackles - try 'people'). My example was about people local to the crime feeling the practical benefits of criminals being incarcerated. Are you really arguing that they appreciate the concept of justice being served more than they appreciate getting gang-bangers off their street?
Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
I said ONE of the reasons. Not the ONLY reason.
So it does help determine the severity, then? You can't have it both ways.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. *sigh*
I originally responded to someone who asked what "punishment for the sake of punishment" does. I gave a few answers, the one currently being discussed was one of them. All I'm saying is that helping the mental state of the victim is ONE of the ways that punishment of the criminal can have a positive effect. I did not nor have ever said that any of these things are a gauge as to what the punihment should be, and how severe it should be.
Even if you do believe that punishment is worthy for it's own sake, we need metrics that determine what the appropriate punishment for a crime is. Helping the victim reach closure is either a part of one of those metrics, or it isn't.
edit to finish thought: and if it's not, what does it matter if it's in this discussion or not?
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
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Also, I don't think the mental status of the victim should have much bearing on a criminal trial. There is a reason criminal matters (at least in the U.S.) are adjudicated as People v. (Criminal), rather than as a contest between two individuals.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
I said ONE of the reasons. Not the ONLY reason.
So it does help determine the severity, then? You can't have it both ways.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. *sigh*
I originally responded to someone who asked what "punishment for the sake of punishment" does. I gave a few answers, the one currently being discussed was one of them. All I'm saying is that helping the mental state of the victim is ONE of the ways that punishment of the criminal can have a positive effect. I did not nor have ever said that any of these things are a gauge as to what the punihment should be, and how severe it should be.
Even if you do believe that punishment is worthy for it's own sake, we need metrics that determine what the appropriate punishment for a crime is. Helping the victim reach closure is either a part of one of those metrics, or it isn't.
Sure, agreed. But that's not what I was arguing about. I was arguing against the notion that punishment doesn't do anything constructive.
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I agree that in some cases rehabilitation could work wonders, but I do think it's overly idealistic to expect it solve more problems than incarceration does, on the whole.
I have a massive problem with economic contribution being the chief measure of human worth, too. You're a hair's breadth away from arguing that PWD be put down like animals so they don't fuck things up for the rest of us.
It should be said I rather reject the notion of justice as well. It, too, seems rooted in moral accounting the same way punishment is (two sides of the same coin, in many ways).
Now, rejecting justice doesn't mean rejecting morality, but rather rejecting the idea that justice is something that can be or should be achieved. I think the scales lady justice holds rather embody what justice is about -- balancing moral actions. Which, again, is basically the exact type of metaphorical reasoning I am arguing against.
What would be moral in that situation?
I'd say imprisoning these deviants is going easy on them. We're still applying human rights and morality to people that have taken it upon themselves to strip others of that exact same thing.
I do realise this kind of makes our discussion impossible, but I can't step over the fact that justice and punishment in America are so extremely different from the ways it is set up is Western European countries.
In the case of murder and rape, I don't think they should be let out of jail at all, unless they are proved to be innocent or succesfully rehabbed.
I'm actually anti-death penalty and don't support physical violence against the offenders. But I do think the punishment of locking them away is important both as a method of keeping them off the streets and a way to give the victim some sort of piece of mind. The victim deserves to know that the person that did this to them has been caught and punished. If the rapist isn't punished, then the person who is raped has to live with the constant fear that she may be attacked by this rapist again. Not to mention the feeling of powerlessness and unimportance a victim can feel if the person that violated them like this is just allowed to get away with it.
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Peachy, but that phenom is far more often caused by lack of conviction and even arrest than insufficient sentence length. And also has nothing to do with severity of treatment while incarcerated.
Hardly. It's just an easy example of what society loses when we incarcerate which many people respond to. Simply persuasion.
Anyway, Persons with disabilities have well-being, don't they? Therefore, isn't any action that minimizes or destroys their well-being immoral, under my model? Aren't I indeed advocating for a system in which we don't have to use immoral behavior to balance moral books, but can instead just practice maximally moral behavior at all times?
If our aim is seamless morality, then we aim to essentially achieve maximum and complete well-being. A lofty, even unrealistic goal, surely, but one which clearly discourages us from destroying the well-being of human beings.
I'll agree that sentences for sexual assualts are laughably short.
So you want our society to act like the deviants?
But, I think most of those arguing for rehab agree with this, so I'm not sure why you are arguing?
Edit: I certainly agree. I definitely don't think we should be like "Oops, sentence is up and you're still unrepentant rapist scum. Maybe next time you get locked up for rape we'll manage to fix you, eh?"
I'm not saying that. It's because we don't act like them that any punishment they recieve should be considered fair.
This I can get behind.
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Oh, sure, I mean rape culture is a big factor, no doubt. However, again, worth noting that a vast majority of criminals in America are non-violent offenders, let alone sexual offenders, and, once again, I have never ruled out incarceration, even incarceration for life, in any of my posts. Merely that it should be used not in the mindset of punishment, but in the mindset of maximizing well-being.
Yes, prison rape and the cavalier attitude most Americans have towards it is a prime example of how we feel that criminals "deserve" what's coming to them, societally.
Also, I feel currently that what we call rehab is far from the potential of what rehabilitation might someday mean.
I'm not saying it's an instant cure-all, but I am saying that it helps. The person who had his house broken into is going to feel safer and more secure if he knows the person who did it has been caught and punished, and the risk of him coming back has been greatly reduced. The same things apply to more extreme crimes, like rape.
In the case of murder, it's the ones closest to the victim, and hell, basically everyone that lives in the area, that has to deal with the fear, helplessness, and paranoia and the knowledge that the muderer is still out there, unpunished.
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It's only if we treat them justly and with respect to their basic rights that we can be considered fair.
Any other method is simply an excuse to treat people cruelly for our satisfaction.
I think the concept of "justice" as articulated in western society necessitates notions tied to moral accounting, like deserving punishment. Justice is not served when someone goes free, or when someone innocent is locked up, because the moral books haven't been balanced -- not because society is worse off (though, of course, this is the implication in all moral accounting, it is rarely explicit and often the link is tenuous at best)
We're always going to need prisons because we need a safe, withdrawn place to put people while we figure out how effectively they can be rehabilitated and how long it will take. We also need something to do with those people who for whatever reason, cannot be rehabilitated.
But the current U.S. justice system is massively skewed toward the "punishment" side, out of what I can only describe as a cultural obsession with revenge. If a minor thief violates a three strikes law, many U.S. states would rather make him a ward of the taxpayers for dozens of years, rather than attempt to equip him with the tools to live an actual semblance of a productive life. Why? He certainly isn't better off in prison, and we aren't better off paying for him to be there if he can be reformed. And when his sentence ends, and he emerges having spent a huge portion of his (probably young) life in prison, what do you suppose happens next?
edit: before someone points it out, I think this rationale is equally valid for violent criminals.
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I think we might be arguing two different things. I'm not really arguing in favor of poor treatment of prisoners and stuff like that. I'm just arguing against the extreme "no one should be punished" mentality. I'm in favor of criminals being caught and punished, and one of the reasons is because doing so helps the victims cope. That's all.
EDIT: The reason I don't think muderers and rapists shouldn't be let out until rehabbed or proven not guilty is more about public safety than the victim. I guess I didn't really make that clear.
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I feel these pieces conflict.
If the first is true, then prison effects some change in the rapist, right? Because if sentence length is sufficient (but obviously not life in most states, in most circumstances, and indeed often for rape sentences seem paltry), and rape is endemic due to under-reporting, -arrest, and -conviction (due to societal acceptance, slut-shaming, rape-culture, etc), then it follows that something in the experience of prison prevents re-offense. At least if I'm interpreting that first part correctly, then you seem to be saying if we could lock more of them up, we'd have fewer rapes. Which, again, when you are explicitly accounting for sentence length, means that incarceration stops rape.
Which means the experience of incarceration holds within it something that causes some offenders to reform. If one could isolate that component, or describe the overall environment which causes such a change, and all incarcerations of rapists were designed to maximize this aspect of incarceration, would not the manner and severity of treatment then indeed matter? Maybe I put too much faith in the behaviorist and statistician, and the idea that any behavior that is predictable may be engineered if we can simply identify the variables, but I feel it has a good track record.
I'm not really saying that the mental damage to the victim should play a role in the severity of the punishment...I'm more saying that it is one of the reasons there should be a punishment at all.
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But society is worse off when an unrepentant criminal goes free, or when an innocent is jailed. It's not some 'concept' of the scales of justice not being balanced that worries people, it's the reality of a criminal walking around or a good man behind bars. You can move all this to the sphere of intellectual concepts or moral accounting if you like, but when a gang of drug dealers are put behind bars people aren't glad because Justice Has Been Served and the Scales Have Been Balanced, they're glad because those guys who made their neighbourhood dangerous are gone.
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You haven't really said anything. Again, unless you feel that it is unnecessary to represent your arguments in certain discourses such as through Enlightenment-influenced ideas like rhetoric, logic, reason, and empiricism, due to their problematic ideas about truth and universalism.
What defines fairness? I feel you're doing moral accounting here. Are you concerned with maximally increasing individual and societal well-being, or with balancing the moral books? And if the latter, can you defend it as a desirable goal?
So, if the victim's mental state wasn't harmed by the crime, or if the victim doesn't care if the criminal is imprisoned (or doesn't want them imprisoned), does it follow that there should be no punishment?
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This creates three further problems:
I think you're either under- or over-estimating your fellow citizens, depending on your view of justice.
Also, it's irrelevant to my point what most people think when a local drug dealer gets busted -- because my point specifically deals with my problem with the concept of justice itself, irrelevant of how feverishly it is or isn't supported by the masses.
And I'd say justice doesn't always correspond to societal good or individual good. When a drug user goes to jail, no one really benefits. When we clamor for investigations into Bush era torture, we don't do so because of pragmatic arguments about deterrence, but because we crave justice.
I'd say it is not an insignificant part of the public psyche
I said ONE of the reasons. Not the ONLY reason.
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So it does help determine the severity, then? You can't have it both ways.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
You seem stuck on the idea that punishment means incarceration, or other literal methods by which we punish people.
But punishment can take innumerable forms -- incarceration and punishment are not the same. Punishment is a moral action, merely enabled by physical tools such as incarceration, spanking, or even beheading.
Punishment necessitates moral accounting.
There should be no punishment in my view, but that does not preclude incarceration.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. *sigh*
I originally responded to someone who asked what "punishment for the sake of punishment" does. I gave a few answers, the one currently being discussed was one of them. All I'm saying is that helping the mental state of the victim is ONE of the ways that punishment of the criminal can have a positive effect. I did not nor have ever said that any of these things are a gauge as to what the punishment should be, and how severe it should be.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
also wait till tomorrow morning when medo gets ahold of this thread
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
And you're over-intellectualising it (also, talking about 'the masses' raises my hackles - try 'people'). My example was about people local to the crime feeling the practical benefits of criminals being incarcerated. Are you really arguing that they appreciate the concept of justice being served more than they appreciate getting gang-bangers off their street?
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Even if you do believe that punishment is worthy for it's own sake, we need metrics that determine what the appropriate punishment for a crime is. Helping the victim reach closure is either a part of one of those metrics, or it isn't.
edit to finish thought: and if it's not, what does it matter if it's in this discussion or not?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Sure, agreed. But that's not what I was arguing about. I was arguing against the notion that punishment doesn't do anything constructive.
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