It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
Spacekungfuman is an objectivist. The difference is pretty much nil.
It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
I disagree really strongly. I am only concerned with people that follow the laws, and believe that they should not be hurt or inconvenienced by those who break them. I like 3 strike rules quite a bit because they stop law breakers from hurting law abiding citizens. And really, what is the defense for why someone should break the law three times? Stealing a mouthful of bread is sympathetic and all, but why should the baker be hurt because the thief's family is starving? He didn't cause them to starve. He just wants to bake and sell his bread and is just minding his own business.
It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
I disagree really strongly. I am only concerned with people that follow the laws, and believe that they should not be hurt or inconvenienced by those who break them. I like 3 strike rules quite a bit because they stop law breakers from hurting law abiding citizens. And really, what is the defense for why someone should break the law three times? Stealing a mouthful of bread is sympathetic and all, but why should the baker be hurt because the thief's family is starving? He didn't cause them to starve. He just wants to bake and sell his bread and is just minding his own business.
Proportional justice. The severity of the punishment should follow the severity of the crime. Life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread is not proportional or equatable.
Regardless of whether you think our laws are enforced as deterrence, correction, or something else, you should also consider the costs that all law-abiding citizens pay when someone breaks the law and is punished.
One guy steals a pair of jeans, and instead of suffering whatever penalty petty theft is, he is put in prison for life. And who pays for his prison sentence, for the rest of his life? The tax payers.
I don't think a lot of people think about the cost that society pays for the 3 Strike Rule.
It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
I disagree really strongly. I am only concerned with people that follow the laws, and believe that they should not be hurt or inconvenienced by those who break them. I like 3 strike rules quite a bit because they stop law breakers from hurting law abiding citizens. And really, what is the defense for why someone should break the law three times? Stealing a mouthful of bread is sympathetic and all, but why should the baker be hurt because the thief's family is starving? He didn't cause them to starve. He just wants to bake and sell his bread and is just minding his own business.
Proportional justice. The severity of the punishment should follow the severity of the crime. Life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread is not proportional or equatable.
I don't believe in proportionality. Probably not the best place to discuss this though.
Regardless of whether you think our laws are enforced as deterrence, correction, or something else, you should also consider the costs that all law-abiding citizens pay when someone breaks the law and is punished.
One guy steals a pair of jeans, and instead of suffering whatever penalty petty theft is, he is put in prison for life. And who pays for his prison sentence, for the rest of his life? The tax payers.
I don't think a lot of people think about the cost that society pays for the 3 Strike Rule.
As you will recall, I am in the "not just about society" camp when it comes to punishment. That a punishment is expensive does not mean that it is not deserved, or that it should not be levied. It's really expensive to jail murderers and child rapists for life too. Should we not do it because of the cost?
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
So if someone breaks any law whatsoever, any punishment delivered is a suitable one in your eyes? No such thing as a punishment that is too cruel for an infraction too small?
Out of curiosity have you ever broken the law? Even traffic violations?
First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations.
Okay, that's great, except that there are plenty of cases where people commit crimes in order to be sent to jail so that they don't have to worry about where to get a hot meal and bed. Where people say that they don't really want to commit crimes, but they don't have see any other alternative for themselves but to live in jail.
And I ask you, if that's someone's outlook on life, where they figure that they're used to institution life already and are fine with it, and all they have to do is take a candy bar to get sent back for life (because of 3 Strikes) how is that not abusing the system in their own favor?
In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
How does disproportionate justice set out guideposts for acceptable behavior?
Maybe that's not the question I should ask first. You consider the law to be guideposts for acceptable behavior. What is the purpose of punishment then, if proportionality doesn't matter?
In fact, if proportionality doesn't matter, why don't we just assign the death penalty for all crimes? Tell you what, that would result in a big drop in crime!
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
Not all laws are just and not all crimes are active acts. I don't want to get off on a tangent about this though, so...
Can you not see my viewpoint where putting people away for life for petty crimes hurts innocent people, from the perspective of raising society's burden to fund the prison system?
@Sammy
Okay, I read your edited post. Am I correct in reading that your opposition is based wholly or mostly on the existence of prejudice, principally racial, and how such a system might be used to exacerbate existing problems? Basically, are you just opposed to the practical execution of such a system, or are you opposed to the philosophy of it, as well? Because I'm perfectly prepared to admit that it might be a horrible system in practice - I tend to be woefully optimistic about my species' ability to not fuck up everything it touches.
It's the legal analogue of eugenics to my mind. I think it is philosophically laudable but impossible to implement in a world inhabited by living, breathing human beings in a way that wouldn't be substantially worse than what we have already and that would directly contradict the idea of "Equal Protection Under Law." Which is, itself, a very difficult ideal to approach, but we get a whole hell of a lot closer without nearly so much mess.
Even in an abstracted presentation, the flaws are apparent after only a little consideration. Let's go back to your hypothetical. Let's say there were three partners. One was killed during the robbery. One went on to become the teacher you describe. On went to college but received an academic suspension because he partied too much as a freshman, and he ended up as a fry cook at Wendy's.
Both men are caught on the same day 10 years later.
How would you prosecute each partner? To what extent are you willing to base your prosecutorial discretion on the question of whether Defendant B did knowingly and willfully party just a little bit too hard when he was 19 years old, a year after the crime but nine years before his arrest?
Even when you leave out the question of race, it is a terrible way to run a legal system.
How diligent are we being, here? Say a cop is sitting on the side of the road. A guy drives past him at 1 mph past the speed limit. Is it wrong for the cop to decide it's not worth pursuing him? If a cop pulls you over for any traffic infraction, is it basically wrong for him to not give you a ticket at that point?
Also, if I were to answer your question as a matter of philosophical ideal, I would probably let off both the teacher and the fry cook, assuming both of them have managed to remain lawful over the same time period. The teacher hypothetical was more establish that there would be a net social harm in throwing the guy in prison, but really, I'm of the opinion that our legal system should be basically rehabilitative rather than punitive. I think throwing some people in prison is necessary, but I think throwing them in prison should be a means and not an end. Housing someone in a little box for ten years doesn't, in itself, actually accomplish anything positive. It might be rehabilitative (though probably not in our country) and it might just be a way to get a dangerous person away from others, but I don't think the punishment benefits anyone.
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.
@Sammy
Okay, I read your edited post. Am I correct in reading that your opposition is based wholly or mostly on the existence of prejudice, principally racial, and how such a system might be used to exacerbate existing problems? Basically, are you just opposed to the practical execution of such a system, or are you opposed to the philosophy of it, as well? Because I'm perfectly prepared to admit that it might be a horrible system in practice - I tend to be woefully optimistic about my species' ability to not fuck up everything it touches.
It's the legal analogue of eugenics to my mind. I think it is philosophically laudable but impossible to implement in a world inhabited by living, breathing human beings in a way that wouldn't be substantially worse than what we have already and that would directly contradict the idea of "Equal Protection Under Law." Which is, itself, a very difficult ideal to approach, but we get a whole hell of a lot closer without nearly so much mess.
Even in an abstracted presentation, the flaws are apparent after only a little consideration. Let's go back to your hypothetical. Let's say there were three partners. One was killed during the robbery. One went on to become the teacher you describe. On went to college but received an academic suspension because he partied too much as a freshman, and he ended up as a fry cook at Wendy's.
Both men are caught on the same day 10 years later.
How would you prosecute each partner? To what extent are you willing to base your prosecutorial discretion on the question of whether Defendant B did knowingly and willfully party just a little bit too hard when he was 19 years old, a year after the crime but nine years before his arrest?
Even when you leave out the question of race, it is a terrible way to run a legal system.
How diligent are we being, here? Say a cop is sitting on the side of the road. A guy drives past him at 1 mph past the speed limit. Is it wrong for the cop to decide it's not worth pursuing him? If a cop pulls you over for any traffic infraction, is it basically wrong for him to not give you a ticket at that point?
Also, if I were to answer your question as a matter of philosophical ideal, I would probably let off both the teacher and the fry cook, assuming both of them have managed to remain lawful over the same time period. The teacher hypothetical was more establish that there would be a net social harm in throwing the guy in prison, but really, I'm of the opinion that our legal system should be basically rehabilitative rather than punitive. I think throwing some people in prison is necessary, but I think throwing them in prison should be a means and not an end. Housing someone in a little box for ten years doesn't, in itself, actually accomplish anything positive. It might be rehabilitative (though probably not in our country) and it might just be a way to get a dangerous person away from others, but I don't think the punishment benefits anyone.
A police officer who sees a driver go by at what his radar gun clocks at 1 mph over the limit should keep in mind that his radar gun might not be calibrated to measure within a single MPH, and it's also possible that the driver's speedometer could very easily be off by a single MPH, and the driver is convinced that he is at or under the limit. Considering this, he will probably wait for a clearcut case where someone is 10 mph over like every other traffic cop instead of being a prat about it.
In the case of a lot of police departments, there is a code of conduct (often in state law or municipal code) that specifically require an officer to issue a summons or make an arrest if he has probable cause to do so for most misdemeanors, felonies and serious traffic infractions specifically to avoid people getting preferential treatment based on who they are rather than what they've done. In some cases they are allowed to issue written warnings in lieu of a summons in those cases where the officer doesn't feel that it's appropriate (a mistake instead of reckless disregard, commonly) but this is usually done so that at least the warning is documented for other officers in the same state running that license in the future.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
As I understand it, the 'he was sentenced to death because he stole $1.95' is mostly propaganda that was used by political opponents of the governor at the time. His actual crime was choking the victim, attempting to rape her and threatening to kill her - he was sentenced with burglarizing the home because it carried the harshest possible penalty of the crimes he was charged with.
I'd say its kind of wierd that petty theft is the most harshly punished of those charges... but then again these days pirating a 99 cent song can have a punishment harsher than manslaughter.
Burglary / common law crimes are weird like that that. Under the old English common law system, burglary is, specifically: The unlawful (1) breaking and entering (2) of the dwelling-house of another (3) in the night time (4) with the intent to commit a larceny or any other felony therein. It's also considered to be an "inherently dangerous" felony.
Odd to see they added the redundant "at night" to their statute; I'm taking it to mean they have a modern statute (and this is common) which abolishes the "nighttime" element, and makes the nighttime element into what is essentially "aggravated burglary." Still, it's never a capital offense without more.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
So if someone breaks any law whatsoever, any punishment delivered is a suitable one in your eyes? No such thing as a punishment that is too cruel for an infraction too small?
Out of curiosity have you ever broken the law? Even traffic violations?
Yes and yes. But I would not ever break a law if the punishment was that harsh. Who would speed if the penalty was getting you liscense take. From you forever in strike 3?
First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations.
Okay, that's great, except that there are plenty of cases where people commit crimes in order to be sent to jail so that they don't have to worry about where to get a hot meal and bed. Where people say that they don't really want to commit crimes, but they don't have see any other alternative for themselves but to live in jail.
And I ask you, if that's someone's outlook on life, where they figure that they're used to institution life already and are fine with it, and all they have to do is take a candy bar to get sent back for life (because of 3 Strikes) how is that not abusing the system in their own favor?
In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
How does disproportionate justice set out guideposts for acceptable behavior?
Maybe that's not the question I should ask first. You consider the law to be guideposts for acceptable behavior. What is the purpose of punishment then, if proportionality doesn't matter?
In fact, if proportionality doesn't matter, why don't we just assign the death penalty for all crimes? Tell you what, that would result in a big drop in crime!
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
Not all laws are just and not all crimes are active acts. I don't want to get off on a tangent about this though, so...
Can you not see my viewpoint where putting people away for life for petty crimes hurts innocent people, from the perspective of raising society's burden to fund the prison system?
We can't base the rule on outliers. But if we are confident enough in the verdict, I have no problem with harsher sentences than life in prison. All I care about is creating a world where people who follow the rules don't have to deal with people who do not. Crimes against property are perhaps my favorite example. If I own a warehouse, I should be able to count on the fact that the warehouse will not be vandalized. If some kid comes and spray paints his name on it, now I am stuck with the cost and hassle of clean up. I know a lot of people would say "he is just a kid being a kid" but there is no valid reason that he should deface my property, so once he does it, all I am concerned with is making sure he does not do so again. You may say life in prison is harsh for graffiti, and it certainly is, but I am not moved much by his plight. All he had to do was not spray paint on the warehouse. That seems like the most reasonable demand we can make on someone to me.
Aggregating and dispersing costs is one of the functions of a society. It is unjust for a lone baker to bear the costs of a starving family, but it is not unjust for society as a whole to pay to feed them. Similarly, it is better to incarcerate a criminal and have society bear a diffuse cost than it is to leave him free to visit larger costs on discrete individuals IMO.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Lemme amend my early post. There are plenty of sadists who indulge their pleasures in a safe, sane, and consensual environment with there partners.
The same cannot be said of objectivists.
I am neither a sadist nor an objectivist. I just believe that no one has to commit crimes, and the ease of not committing crimes means that anyone who chooses to commit them deserves whatever punishment they receive. The only injustice is in letting the innocent man be hurt by criminals who selfishly put themselves ahead of the in innocent.
Lemme amend my early post. There are plenty of sadists who indulge their pleasures in a safe, sane, and consensual environment with there partners.
The same cannot be said of objectivists.
I am neither a sadist nor an objectivist. I just believe that no one has to commit crimes, and the ease of not committing crimes means that anyone who chooses to commit them deserves whatever punishment they receive. The only injustice is in letting the innocent man be hurt by criminals who selfishly put themselves ahead of the in innocent.
So the phrase "cruel and unusual punishment" means nothing to you, then.
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
So if someone breaks any law whatsoever, any punishment delivered is a suitable one in your eyes? No such thing as a punishment that is too cruel for an infraction too small?
Out of curiosity have you ever broken the law? Even traffic violations?
Yes and yes. But I would not ever break a law if the punishment was that harsh. Who would speed if the penalty was getting you liscense take. From you forever in strike 3?
First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations.
Okay, that's great, except that there are plenty of cases where people commit crimes in order to be sent to jail so that they don't have to worry about where to get a hot meal and bed. Where people say that they don't really want to commit crimes, but they don't have see any other alternative for themselves but to live in jail.
And I ask you, if that's someone's outlook on life, where they figure that they're used to institution life already and are fine with it, and all they have to do is take a candy bar to get sent back for life (because of 3 Strikes) how is that not abusing the system in their own favor?
In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
How does disproportionate justice set out guideposts for acceptable behavior?
Maybe that's not the question I should ask first. You consider the law to be guideposts for acceptable behavior. What is the purpose of punishment then, if proportionality doesn't matter?
In fact, if proportionality doesn't matter, why don't we just assign the death penalty for all crimes? Tell you what, that would result in a big drop in crime!
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
Not all laws are just and not all crimes are active acts. I don't want to get off on a tangent about this though, so...
Can you not see my viewpoint where putting people away for life for petty crimes hurts innocent people, from the perspective of raising society's burden to fund the prison system?
We can't base the rule on outliers. But if we are confident enough in the verdict, I have no problem with harsher sentences than life in prison. All I care about is creating a world where people who follow the rules don't have to deal with people who do not. Crimes against property are perhaps my favorite example. If I own a warehouse, I should be able to count on the fact that the warehouse will not be vandalized. If some kid comes and spray paints his name on it, now I am stuck with the cost and hassle of clean up. I know a lot of people would say "he is just a kid being a kid" but there is no valid reason that he should deface my property, so once he does it, all I am concerned with is making sure he does not do so again. You may say life in prison is harsh for graffiti, and it certainly is, but I am not moved much by his plight. All he had to do was not spray paint on the warehouse. That seems like the most reasonable demand we can make on someone to me.
Aggregating and dispersing costs is one of the functions of a society. It is unjust for a lone baker to bear the costs of a starving family, but it is not unjust for society as a whole to pay to feed them. Similarly, it is better to incarcerate a criminal and have society bear a diffuse cost than it is to leave him free to visit larger costs on discrete individuals IMO.
You sneer down your nose at the "law-breakers." You wish for life sentences for children for non-violent offenses. With a wave of your hand you dismiss any value to society a "law-breaker" might have.
Yet you admit that you too are a "law-breaker", that you willingly break your oh so sacred rules. You're no different than the vandal, the thief. You break the rules and the people who do not have to deal with you.
Now, you presumably feel that you yourself are a positive contributor to society not like those dirty law-breakers over there in the corner, but the reality is you're just like them, you just can't see it. That does in fact seem to be the primary problem. You're an otherwise intelligent person, but you seem to have either an inability or a complete unwillingness to empathize with your fellow man.
Maybe you're not an objectivist. But you seem unable to comprehend that shades of gray exist @Spacekungfuman. And for that, you will always be a silly goose.
Out of interest, are you equally vehement towards white collar crime? Should not all the bankers/Wall Street honchos not be imprisoned for life for hurting untold numbers of people through their machinations? If not, why not? Arguably these people have hurt far more people, in a far more severe way than the vast majority of minor offenders currently in prison, yet they walk free due to technicalities, bribery, having lobbied the laws to their favor, circumventing the system that was supposed to protect the society from their ilk in the first place.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Lemme amend my early post. There are plenty of sadists who indulge their pleasures in a safe, sane, and consensual environment with there partners.
The same cannot be said of objectivists.
I am neither a sadist nor an objectivist. I just believe that no one has to commit crimes, and the ease of not committing crimes means that anyone who chooses to commit them deserves whatever punishment they receive. The only injustice is in letting the innocent man be hurt by criminals who selfishly put themselves ahead of the in innocent.
So the phrase "cruel and unusual punishment" means nothing to you, then.
I don't think that very long jail sentences, universally applied, would be cruel or unusual. While I don't care about proportionality, I also don't think we should just torture people for sport or punish blood relations too. I just don't want criminals hurting innocent people.
Yes, it is. This thread was made by me to discuss the morality of the law when applied to crimes that occurred decades ago. Despite your fucked up philosophies objections, I think that that's perfectly fine to discuss in this thread.
Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
So if someone breaks any law whatsoever, any punishment delivered is a suitable one in your eyes? No such thing as a punishment that is too cruel for an infraction too small?
Out of curiosity have you ever broken the law? Even traffic violations?
Yes and yes. But I would not ever break a law if the punishment was that harsh. Who would speed if the penalty was getting you liscense take. From you forever in strike 3?
First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations.
Okay, that's great, except that there are plenty of cases where people commit crimes in order to be sent to jail so that they don't have to worry about where to get a hot meal and bed. Where people say that they don't really want to commit crimes, but they don't have see any other alternative for themselves but to live in jail.
And I ask you, if that's someone's outlook on life, where they figure that they're used to institution life already and are fine with it, and all they have to do is take a candy bar to get sent back for life (because of 3 Strikes) how is that not abusing the system in their own favor?
In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
How does disproportionate justice set out guideposts for acceptable behavior?
Maybe that's not the question I should ask first. You consider the law to be guideposts for acceptable behavior. What is the purpose of punishment then, if proportionality doesn't matter?
In fact, if proportionality doesn't matter, why don't we just assign the death penalty for all crimes? Tell you what, that would result in a big drop in crime!
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
Not all laws are just and not all crimes are active acts. I don't want to get off on a tangent about this though, so...
Can you not see my viewpoint where putting people away for life for petty crimes hurts innocent people, from the perspective of raising society's burden to fund the prison system?
We can't base the rule on outliers. But if we are confident enough in the verdict, I have no problem with harsher sentences than life in prison. All I care about is creating a world where people who follow the rules don't have to deal with people who do not. Crimes against property are perhaps my favorite example. If I own a warehouse, I should be able to count on the fact that the warehouse will not be vandalized. If some kid comes and spray paints his name on it, now I am stuck with the cost and hassle of clean up. I know a lot of people would say "he is just a kid being a kid" but there is no valid reason that he should deface my property, so once he does it, all I am concerned with is making sure he does not do so again. You may say life in prison is harsh for graffiti, and it certainly is, but I am not moved much by his plight. All he had to do was not spray paint on the warehouse. That seems like the most reasonable demand we can make on someone to me.
Aggregating and dispersing costs is one of the functions of a society. It is unjust for a lone baker to bear the costs of a starving family, but it is not unjust for society as a whole to pay to feed them. Similarly, it is better to incarcerate a criminal and have society bear a diffuse cost than it is to leave him free to visit larger costs on discrete individuals IMO.
You sneer down your nose at the "law-breakers." You wish for life sentences for children for non-violent offenses. With a wave of your hand you dismiss any value to society a "law-breaker" might have.
Yet you admit that you too are a "law-breaker", that you willingly break your oh so sacred rules. You're no different than the vandal, the thief. You break the rules and the people who do not have to deal with you.
Now, you presumably feel that you yourself are a positive contributor to society not like those dirty law-breakers over there in the corner, but the reality is you're just like them, you just can't see it. That does in fact seem to be the primary problem. You're an otherwise intelligent person, but you seem to have either an inability or a complete unwillingness to empathize with your fellow man.
Well, a key part of any judicial system is making sure we have the right laws. I don't think that existing 3 strike laws extend to things like speeding or jay walking, not do u think they should. Crimes against persons and property are what I think should count. The serial graffiti artist is deserving of harsh punishment, but not the serial loiterer IMO. Once the graffito is on the wall, the harm is done. Not so with the loiterer, who simply must be told to move on.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Out of interest, are you equally vehement towards white collar crime? Should not all the bankers/Wall Street honchos not be imprisoned for life for hurting untold numbers of people through their machinations? If not, why not? Arguably these people have hurt far more people, in a far more severe way than the vast majority of minor offenders currently in prison, yet they walk free due to technicalities, bribery, having lobbied the laws to their favor, circumventing the system that was supposed to protect the society from their ilk in the first place.
White collar crime, yes. Same punishments. But the stuff at the end about regulatory capture and lobbying is not illegal. Technically legal actions are legal actions, full stop. If you don't like that outcome, you need to change the law.
You know, it is possible to break a law by accident. Or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get falsely accused.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
@spacekungfuman: And you don't have any problems with the fact that it's much more feasible for strong, rich lobbies to change laws than for those at the bottom of the economic ladder?
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
There is a real problem with making it policg to let a person go because the crime is old; it implies that if you avoid getting caught, justice will never catch up to you.
as bad as "making an example" sounds, considering only villains in movies use the phrase, if you find a murderer and let them go because they were able to evade arrest for long enough to raise a family, it tells other potential criminals that its fine to commit any crime if they can avoid arrest for 10 years.
Go in, get the girl, kill the dragon. What's so hard about that? ... Oh, so THAT'S what a dragon looks like.
I'm fairly sure you do care about proportionality in one direction. That is to say, you would probably be upset by a punishment you felt was too lenient.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
You know, it is possible to break a law by accident. Or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get falsely accused.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
Here is the question I always raise and no one ever answers: why isn't the answer to any punishment that the kid can just not do the graffiti. Let's put systemic problems with put current judicial system asside, since we are talking about the role of punishment in a legal system, not neccesarily practical solutions under the current system. In fact, lets posit perfect arbitrators that can always discern the truth of a situation, and perfect rules that include all reasonable exceptions, like self defense, damaging property to avoid hurting or killing someone, etc. So we know who commits crimes and what those crimes are with absolute certainty, and we also know whether the act properly falls into an exception. When criminal x goes and does graffiti, why would we think that any punishment is too harsh. All he has to do is not do graffiti, and there is no chance that the punishment will fall on an innocent man.
As an aside, "we might punish an innocent man" is a pretty poor reason to moderate punishments. Better to get your justice system working in such a way that innocent men are rarely convicted than to hedge all punishments based on the risk of innocence (the innocent man would prefer to have a lower chance of being convicted than to have a lighter punishment if he is, and the blame worthiness of the guilty man is not mitigated by the risk that an innocent man may be punished). I also don't think you are correct to say that innocent men are punished often. Prosecutors don't normally take cases that aren't pretty much slam dunks to trial because they care about their win loss percentage more than anything else. The romanticized innocent man getting a full trial and being convicted is quite rare, and the only reason you hear about a fair number is that the total number of people that we jail is so high that the small percentage that are innocent still appears like a large number in isolation.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@spacekungfuman: And you don't have any problems with the fact that it's much more feasible for strong, rich lobbies to change laws than for those at the bottom of the economic ladder?
I never said that, did I? Our laws are what they are and need to be enforced, but that doesn't mean that our system is perfect. Not by a long shot.
Only a child thinks that there are the guilty people and their innocent victims.
Everybody is guilty of something, and everyone is a victim sometimes. Some more than others, on either front. Some people sadly, get more victimised. Some people, sadly, are more guilty.
It's an infantile way of looking at the world, though I take some consolation in it likely being made up to cause offense.
You know, it is possible to break a law by accident. Or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get falsely accused.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
Here is the question I always raise and no one ever answers: why isn't the answer to any punishment that the kid can just not do the graffiti. Let's put systemic problems with put current judicial system asside, since we are talking about the role of punishment in a legal system, not neccesarily practical solutions under the current system. In fact, lets posit perfect arbitrators that can always discern the truth of a situation, and perfect rules that include all reasonable exceptions, like self defense, damaging property to avoid hurting or killing someone, etc. So we know who commits crimes and what those crimes are with absolute certainty, and we also know whether the act properly falls into an exception. When criminal x goes and does graffiti, why would we think that any punishment is too harsh. All he has to do is not do graffiti, and there is no chance that the punishment will fall on an innocent man.
As an aside, "we might punish an innocent man" is a pretty poor reason to moderate punishments. Better to get your justice system working in such a way that innocent men are rarely convicted than to hedge all punishments based on the risk of innocence (the innocent man would prefer to have a lower chance of being convicted than to have a lighter punishment if he is, and the blame worthiness of the guilty man is not mitigated by the risk that an innocent man may be punished). I also don't think you are correct to say that innocent men are punished often. Prosecutors don't normally take cases that aren't pretty much slam dunks to trial because they care about their win loss percentage more than anything else. The romanticized innocent man getting a full trial and being convicted is quite rare, and the only reason you hear about a fair number is that the total number of people that we jail is so high that the small percentage that are innocent still appears like a large number in isolation.
I think no one answers your "why can't people just not do crime" question because it isn't really relevant. You're basically saying "why can't someone just not do a thing that they did?" in a conversation about "what do we do with people who've done bad things?"
I'm not disagreeing with you because we might punish an innocent man, I'm disagreeing because we do, constantly. Positing perfect arbitration is taking all usefulness out of the conversation, because on a large scale we suck pretty hard at determining guilt. The number of innocents convicted is quite a bit higher than you seem to think, and when you're talking about life sentences for everyone then there can be no error. If we don't allow our populace to fuck up in minor ways even once, why on earth would we hold our legal system to a lower standard?
If we had perfect robot justice where no one was ever wrongfully convicted then I'd still find your world completely terrifying, but until justice can be applied evenly across all levels of society (which I hope you agree is not the case now) it's straight-up genocidal to poor folks and minorities.
You know, it is possible to break a law by accident. Or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get falsely accused.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
Here is the question I always raise and no one ever answers: why isn't the answer to any punishment that the kid can just not do the graffiti. Let's put systemic problems with put current judicial system asside, since we are talking about the role of punishment in a legal system, not neccesarily practical solutions under the current system. In fact, lets posit perfect arbitrators that can always discern the truth of a situation, and perfect rules that include all reasonable exceptions, like self defense, damaging property to avoid hurting or killing someone, etc. So we know who commits crimes and what those crimes are with absolute certainty, and we also know whether the act properly falls into an exception. When criminal x goes and does graffiti, why would we think that any punishment is too harsh. All he has to do is not do graffiti, and there is no chance that the punishment will fall on an innocent man.
As an aside, "we might punish an innocent man" is a pretty poor reason to moderate punishments. Better to get your justice system working in such a way that innocent men are rarely convicted than to hedge all punishments based on the risk of innocence (the innocent man would prefer to have a lower chance of being convicted than to have a lighter punishment if he is, and the blame worthiness of the guilty man is not mitigated by the risk that an innocent man may be punished). I also don't think you are correct to say that innocent men are punished often. Prosecutors don't normally take cases that aren't pretty much slam dunks to trial because they care about their win loss percentage more than anything else. The romanticized innocent man getting a full trial and being convicted is quite rare, and the only reason you hear about a fair number is that the total number of people that we jail is so high that the small percentage that are innocent still appears like a large number in isolation.
I remember listening to a two-part series on This American Life about a high school in Chicago that had something like 30 shootings of current or recent students over a one year period. One of the things that stuck with me was this idea that for the students of that school, being a gang member was literally mandatory. The nature and structure of the gangs in the area is such that you are a de facto member of whatever gang controls the street you live on. You can try to minimize your participation in gang-related activities, but in order to get to school you may need to pass through "hostile" territory, and doing so alone puts you at serious risk because rival gangs will not treat you as a non-combatant even if you see yourself that way. And if you know that you have to rely on gang members around you for protection, you might feel obliged in a fairly immediate and significant way to ingratiate yourself to them.
It's easy to look at some crimes--lots even--where there appears to be a significant element of personal choice at play and assume that all criminal activity is as easily avoided by simply electing to not act. But I think sometimes the universe doesn't present an optimal array of choices to a person.
You know, it is possible to break a law by accident. Or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get falsely accused.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
Here is the question I always raise and no one ever answers: why isn't the answer to any punishment that the kid can just not do the graffiti. Let's put systemic problems with put current judicial system asside, since we are talking about the role of punishment in a legal system, not neccesarily practical solutions under the current system. In fact, lets posit perfect arbitrators that can always discern the truth of a situation, and perfect rules that include all reasonable exceptions, like self defense, damaging property to avoid hurting or killing someone, etc. So we know who commits crimes and what those crimes are with absolute certainty, and we also know whether the act properly falls into an exception. When criminal x goes and does graffiti, why would we think that any punishment is too harsh. All he has to do is not do graffiti, and there is no chance that the punishment will fall on an innocent man.
As an aside, "we might punish an innocent man" is a pretty poor reason to moderate punishments. Better to get your justice system working in such a way that innocent men are rarely convicted than to hedge all punishments based on the risk of innocence (the innocent man would prefer to have a lower chance of being convicted than to have a lighter punishment if he is, and the blame worthiness of the guilty man is not mitigated by the risk that an innocent man may be punished). I also don't think you are correct to say that innocent men are punished often. Prosecutors don't normally take cases that aren't pretty much slam dunks to trial because they care about their win loss percentage more than anything else. The romanticized innocent man getting a full trial and being convicted is quite rare, and the only reason you hear about a fair number is that the total number of people that we jail is so high that the small percentage that are innocent still appears like a large number in isolation.
So let's look at a hypothetical omniscient justice system that can guarantee with absolute certainty that someone who vandalizes a building is not only the person who did it, but also isn't some sort of an exception...say, someone tagging a 'warning: don't enter' sign, or the owner of the building or something like that. The only people who are convicted are absolutely, without 100% guilty of the crime.
Let's not get into the controversy over the deterrence effect with respect to harsh punishments - let's not even include that in our calculus. Let's also acknowledge that 'not committing the crime' is only an option prior to the commission of the crime, which is now long past.
So, we're sitting here, and we've got a kid that is absolutely, 100% guilty without question of tagging someone's building. No extenuating circumstances, just some kid being a complete fuckwad. Well, let's look at the crime that was committed. He caused at most a couple hundred dollars in damage, probably not enough for the owner of the building to bother filing an insurance claim. The problem is easily remedied - a little bit of work and nobody will ever know the kid tagged the building. Nobody was hurt - there won't be any emotional or physical scars.
The cost to society as a whole is negligible - the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of the kid who tagged the building alone is likely far more than the cost to simply clean up the graffiti - probably orders of magnitude more. As a lawyer you certainly understand the concept of damages, and if the owner of that building were to take the kid to court he likely would be reimbursed his cleanup costs and maybe - it's a stretch - but maybe some punitive damages. Everything is now fixed and good.
So, why should even more costs be socialized because of one individual's private property? Everything is fixed and done. The kid will be fined and potentially liable for the costs of the damage he caused assuming the owner bothers to pursue it. Again, why should society suffer more costs - paying thousands of dollars to imprison the kid, suffering the social costs of potentially turning a kid who vandalized a building into a criminal, and tying up resources that could be used to investigate and prosecute people who commit real crimes that hurt people.
Now, I'd say I would support requiring vandals to dedicate X hours of community service to cleaning up graffiti, or even contribute to a civic fund / insurance policy so to speak that people whose property is vandalized can make claims against. But prison? That's a disservice to everyone.
By the same logic you are using to defend heavily punishing the vandal, a case could be made for revoking the driver's licenses of anyone who is caught speeding or violating traffic laws. A case could be made for imprisoning anyone who commits an error on their taxes. Hell, how about immediately disbarring any lawyer who files a frivolous lawsuit or makes a preventable error in a filing?
All of those punishments are ridiculous because punishments should be proportional for the crime that is committed. The total cost of a given crime can be a nebulous thing, but society should always attempt to align punishments proportionally with the harm of the crime that was committed. That harm may be to an individual or to society as a whole, but if the harm, in any foreseeable case to society from a punishment far surpasses the harm of the crime AND any future crime that would reasonably be prevented by that punishment, that punishment greatly needs to be re-evaluated.
That's not even getting into the issues of prosecutorial and investigative discretion which - for social reasons - means that a person from a minority group who commits vandalism is far more likely to be investigated and prosecuted for the act.
EDIT - and I'm even including considerations in our omniscient justice system even for the situations grouch mentioned where there really isn't a reasonable aspect of 'choice' in committing some forms of crime.
I guess I just don't really understand why crimes against property deserve sentences equivalent to sentencing for ending the life of a human being. They are two entirely separate levels of severity. To say that tagging a wall deserves a life sentence is basically saying that doing some reversible damage to property is the same social ill as murdering something. Are our views of reality really that different?
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It's not even remotely tenable to pretend that three strikes is anything but a horrendous miscarriage of literally any system of philosophy or morals you've chosen, unless you're a sadist.
Spacekungfuman is an objectivist. The difference is pretty much nil.
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I disagree really strongly. I am only concerned with people that follow the laws, and believe that they should not be hurt or inconvenienced by those who break them. I like 3 strike rules quite a bit because they stop law breakers from hurting law abiding citizens. And really, what is the defense for why someone should break the law three times? Stealing a mouthful of bread is sympathetic and all, but why should the baker be hurt because the thief's family is starving? He didn't cause them to starve. He just wants to bake and sell his bread and is just minding his own business.
Proportional justice. The severity of the punishment should follow the severity of the crime. Life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread is not proportional or equatable.
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One guy steals a pair of jeans, and instead of suffering whatever penalty petty theft is, he is put in prison for life. And who pays for his prison sentence, for the rest of his life? The tax payers.
I don't think a lot of people think about the cost that society pays for the 3 Strike Rule.
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I don't believe in proportionality. Probably not the best place to discuss this though.
Not the baker's responsibility. It's society's failing. Why should one man bear the cost?
As you will recall, I am in the "not just about society" camp when it comes to punishment. That a punishment is expensive does not mean that it is not deserved, or that it should not be levied. It's really expensive to jail murderers and child rapists for life too. Should we not do it because of the cost?
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Ok then. I have two reqsons for not caring about proportionality. First, rule breaker should not profit from their violations. In a nutshell, the law sets out guideposts for acceptable behavior. You may drive on the right side of the road but not the left. If people drive on the left when it benefits them and don't get punished, then the law abiding citizen is worse off than the rule breaker. Over time, the impetus to follow the rules wears down and we lose those guideposts and the ability to predict others behavior and plan accordingly. Proportionality should not matter because we should want people to follow the rules, and all that matters re: rule breakers is that they are punished.
Second, but related, I think that hurting an innocent person is a blameworthy act. Whether that harm is punching them, stabbing them or doing graffiti on their building, you are making them worse off for your own selfish reasons. I think that is deserving of punishment, and I can't think of a good defense for why it should not be because everyone can avoid the punishment by not engaging in crime. It is incredibly easy not to steal, vandalize, assault, kill, rape etc. There is basically nothing easier than not committing crimes because all you need to do is not act.
So if someone breaks any law whatsoever, any punishment delivered is a suitable one in your eyes? No such thing as a punishment that is too cruel for an infraction too small?
Out of curiosity have you ever broken the law? Even traffic violations?
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Okay, that's great, except that there are plenty of cases where people commit crimes in order to be sent to jail so that they don't have to worry about where to get a hot meal and bed. Where people say that they don't really want to commit crimes, but they don't have see any other alternative for themselves but to live in jail.
And I ask you, if that's someone's outlook on life, where they figure that they're used to institution life already and are fine with it, and all they have to do is take a candy bar to get sent back for life (because of 3 Strikes) how is that not abusing the system in their own favor?
How does disproportionate justice set out guideposts for acceptable behavior?
Maybe that's not the question I should ask first. You consider the law to be guideposts for acceptable behavior. What is the purpose of punishment then, if proportionality doesn't matter?
In fact, if proportionality doesn't matter, why don't we just assign the death penalty for all crimes? Tell you what, that would result in a big drop in crime!
Not all laws are just and not all crimes are active acts. I don't want to get off on a tangent about this though, so...
Can you not see my viewpoint where putting people away for life for petty crimes hurts innocent people, from the perspective of raising society's burden to fund the prison system?
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How diligent are we being, here? Say a cop is sitting on the side of the road. A guy drives past him at 1 mph past the speed limit. Is it wrong for the cop to decide it's not worth pursuing him? If a cop pulls you over for any traffic infraction, is it basically wrong for him to not give you a ticket at that point?
Also, if I were to answer your question as a matter of philosophical ideal, I would probably let off both the teacher and the fry cook, assuming both of them have managed to remain lawful over the same time period. The teacher hypothetical was more establish that there would be a net social harm in throwing the guy in prison, but really, I'm of the opinion that our legal system should be basically rehabilitative rather than punitive. I think throwing some people in prison is necessary, but I think throwing them in prison should be a means and not an end. Housing someone in a little box for ten years doesn't, in itself, actually accomplish anything positive. It might be rehabilitative (though probably not in our country) and it might just be a way to get a dangerous person away from others, but I don't think the punishment benefits anyone.
The same cannot be said of objectivists.
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A police officer who sees a driver go by at what his radar gun clocks at 1 mph over the limit should keep in mind that his radar gun might not be calibrated to measure within a single MPH, and it's also possible that the driver's speedometer could very easily be off by a single MPH, and the driver is convinced that he is at or under the limit. Considering this, he will probably wait for a clearcut case where someone is 10 mph over like every other traffic cop instead of being a prat about it.
In the case of a lot of police departments, there is a code of conduct (often in state law or municipal code) that specifically require an officer to issue a summons or make an arrest if he has probable cause to do so for most misdemeanors, felonies and serious traffic infractions specifically to avoid people getting preferential treatment based on who they are rather than what they've done. In some cases they are allowed to issue written warnings in lieu of a summons in those cases where the officer doesn't feel that it's appropriate (a mistake instead of reckless disregard, commonly) but this is usually done so that at least the warning is documented for other officers in the same state running that license in the future.
"I will look like a complete sadist if I expound on this, better leave it alone. Wooh, that was close, almost blew my cover."
Dude, we already know, lol.
Burglary / common law crimes are weird like that that. Under the old English common law system, burglary is, specifically: The unlawful (1) breaking and entering (2) of the dwelling-house of another (3) in the night time (4) with the intent to commit a larceny or any other felony therein. It's also considered to be an "inherently dangerous" felony.
Odd to see they added the redundant "at night" to their statute; I'm taking it to mean they have a modern statute (and this is common) which abolishes the "nighttime" element, and makes the nighttime element into what is essentially "aggravated burglary." Still, it's never a capital offense without more.
Yes and yes. But I would not ever break a law if the punishment was that harsh. Who would speed if the penalty was getting you liscense take. From you forever in strike 3?
That's a matter of just calibrating the law correctly, much like how there are exceptions to the prohibition on killing for self defense.
We can't base the rule on outliers. But if we are confident enough in the verdict, I have no problem with harsher sentences than life in prison. All I care about is creating a world where people who follow the rules don't have to deal with people who do not. Crimes against property are perhaps my favorite example. If I own a warehouse, I should be able to count on the fact that the warehouse will not be vandalized. If some kid comes and spray paints his name on it, now I am stuck with the cost and hassle of clean up. I know a lot of people would say "he is just a kid being a kid" but there is no valid reason that he should deface my property, so once he does it, all I am concerned with is making sure he does not do so again. You may say life in prison is harsh for graffiti, and it certainly is, but I am not moved much by his plight. All he had to do was not spray paint on the warehouse. That seems like the most reasonable demand we can make on someone to me.
Aggregating and dispersing costs is one of the functions of a society. It is unjust for a lone baker to bear the costs of a starving family, but it is not unjust for society as a whole to pay to feed them. Similarly, it is better to incarcerate a criminal and have society bear a diffuse cost than it is to leave him free to visit larger costs on discrete individuals IMO.
I am neither a sadist nor an objectivist. I just believe that no one has to commit crimes, and the ease of not committing crimes means that anyone who chooses to commit them deserves whatever punishment they receive. The only injustice is in letting the innocent man be hurt by criminals who selfishly put themselves ahead of the in innocent.
So the phrase "cruel and unusual punishment" means nothing to you, then.
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You sneer down your nose at the "law-breakers." You wish for life sentences for children for non-violent offenses. With a wave of your hand you dismiss any value to society a "law-breaker" might have.
Yet you admit that you too are a "law-breaker", that you willingly break your oh so sacred rules. You're no different than the vandal, the thief. You break the rules and the people who do not have to deal with you.
Now, you presumably feel that you yourself are a positive contributor to society not like those dirty law-breakers over there in the corner, but the reality is you're just like them, you just can't see it. That does in fact seem to be the primary problem. You're an otherwise intelligent person, but you seem to have either an inability or a complete unwillingness to empathize with your fellow man.
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And this is why your value system is fundamentally wrong.
But we've danced this dance before and we know how it goes.
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the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Out of interest, are you equally vehement towards white collar crime? Should not all the bankers/Wall Street honchos not be imprisoned for life for hurting untold numbers of people through their machinations? If not, why not? Arguably these people have hurt far more people, in a far more severe way than the vast majority of minor offenders currently in prison, yet they walk free due to technicalities, bribery, having lobbied the laws to their favor, circumventing the system that was supposed to protect the society from their ilk in the first place.
I don't think that very long jail sentences, universally applied, would be cruel or unusual. While I don't care about proportionality, I also don't think we should just torture people for sport or punish blood relations too. I just don't want criminals hurting innocent people.
Well, a key part of any judicial system is making sure we have the right laws. I don't think that existing 3 strike laws extend to things like speeding or jay walking, not do u think they should. Crimes against persons and property are what I think should count. The serial graffiti artist is deserving of harsh punishment, but not the serial loiterer IMO. Once the graffito is on the wall, the harm is done. Not so with the loiterer, who simply must be told to move on.
White collar crime, yes. Same punishments. But the stuff at the end about regulatory capture and lobbying is not illegal. Technically legal actions are legal actions, full stop. If you don't like that outcome, you need to change the law.
I have a lot of philosophical problems with your approach but they've already mostly been covered, so how about the practical reasons what you're saying doesn't work?
Our justice system is kind of shitty. Innocent people are constantly locked up and executed, and you're many times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in your life if you're not white. You're not leery at all of putting a kid in prison for life for tagging your house when it's so easy for that kid to get convicted without even having done anything?
There's also the fact that prisons are fuckin' expensive to run, to the point where locking someone up for twenty years for some piddling little bullshit is really much more harmful to society than the original offense.
There's also also the fact that putting a kid in prison for years because he tagged your house is a fantastic way of turning him into an actual criminal.
The reason you're getting so much flak for this opinion is because it flies in the face of a basic tenet of every just legal system since there have been codified laws. You may not care about a proportional response, but Hammurabi did, and I'd argue he knew what he was doing when he put that bit in there.
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as bad as "making an example" sounds, considering only villains in movies use the phrase, if you find a murderer and let them go because they were able to evade arrest for long enough to raise a family, it tells other potential criminals that its fine to commit any crime if they can avoid arrest for 10 years.
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I'm fairly sure you do care about proportionality in one direction. That is to say, you would probably be upset by a punishment you felt was too lenient.
Here is the question I always raise and no one ever answers: why isn't the answer to any punishment that the kid can just not do the graffiti. Let's put systemic problems with put current judicial system asside, since we are talking about the role of punishment in a legal system, not neccesarily practical solutions under the current system. In fact, lets posit perfect arbitrators that can always discern the truth of a situation, and perfect rules that include all reasonable exceptions, like self defense, damaging property to avoid hurting or killing someone, etc. So we know who commits crimes and what those crimes are with absolute certainty, and we also know whether the act properly falls into an exception. When criminal x goes and does graffiti, why would we think that any punishment is too harsh. All he has to do is not do graffiti, and there is no chance that the punishment will fall on an innocent man.
As an aside, "we might punish an innocent man" is a pretty poor reason to moderate punishments. Better to get your justice system working in such a way that innocent men are rarely convicted than to hedge all punishments based on the risk of innocence (the innocent man would prefer to have a lower chance of being convicted than to have a lighter punishment if he is, and the blame worthiness of the guilty man is not mitigated by the risk that an innocent man may be punished). I also don't think you are correct to say that innocent men are punished often. Prosecutors don't normally take cases that aren't pretty much slam dunks to trial because they care about their win loss percentage more than anything else. The romanticized innocent man getting a full trial and being convicted is quite rare, and the only reason you hear about a fair number is that the total number of people that we jail is so high that the small percentage that are innocent still appears like a large number in isolation.
I never said that, did I? Our laws are what they are and need to be enforced, but that doesn't mean that our system is perfect. Not by a long shot.
Everybody is guilty of something, and everyone is a victim sometimes. Some more than others, on either front. Some people sadly, get more victimised. Some people, sadly, are more guilty.
It's an infantile way of looking at the world, though I take some consolation in it likely being made up to cause offense.
I think no one answers your "why can't people just not do crime" question because it isn't really relevant. You're basically saying "why can't someone just not do a thing that they did?" in a conversation about "what do we do with people who've done bad things?"
I'm not disagreeing with you because we might punish an innocent man, I'm disagreeing because we do, constantly. Positing perfect arbitration is taking all usefulness out of the conversation, because on a large scale we suck pretty hard at determining guilt. The number of innocents convicted is quite a bit higher than you seem to think, and when you're talking about life sentences for everyone then there can be no error. If we don't allow our populace to fuck up in minor ways even once, why on earth would we hold our legal system to a lower standard?
If we had perfect robot justice where no one was ever wrongfully convicted then I'd still find your world completely terrifying, but until justice can be applied evenly across all levels of society (which I hope you agree is not the case now) it's straight-up genocidal to poor folks and minorities.
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I remember listening to a two-part series on This American Life about a high school in Chicago that had something like 30 shootings of current or recent students over a one year period. One of the things that stuck with me was this idea that for the students of that school, being a gang member was literally mandatory. The nature and structure of the gangs in the area is such that you are a de facto member of whatever gang controls the street you live on. You can try to minimize your participation in gang-related activities, but in order to get to school you may need to pass through "hostile" territory, and doing so alone puts you at serious risk because rival gangs will not treat you as a non-combatant even if you see yourself that way. And if you know that you have to rely on gang members around you for protection, you might feel obliged in a fairly immediate and significant way to ingratiate yourself to them.
It's easy to look at some crimes--lots even--where there appears to be a significant element of personal choice at play and assume that all criminal activity is as easily avoided by simply electing to not act. But I think sometimes the universe doesn't present an optimal array of choices to a person.
And 'we might punish an innocent man' is an incredibly good reason for moderating a punishment when those punishments still include death.
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So let's look at a hypothetical omniscient justice system that can guarantee with absolute certainty that someone who vandalizes a building is not only the person who did it, but also isn't some sort of an exception...say, someone tagging a 'warning: don't enter' sign, or the owner of the building or something like that. The only people who are convicted are absolutely, without 100% guilty of the crime.
Let's not get into the controversy over the deterrence effect with respect to harsh punishments - let's not even include that in our calculus. Let's also acknowledge that 'not committing the crime' is only an option prior to the commission of the crime, which is now long past.
So, we're sitting here, and we've got a kid that is absolutely, 100% guilty without question of tagging someone's building. No extenuating circumstances, just some kid being a complete fuckwad. Well, let's look at the crime that was committed. He caused at most a couple hundred dollars in damage, probably not enough for the owner of the building to bother filing an insurance claim. The problem is easily remedied - a little bit of work and nobody will ever know the kid tagged the building. Nobody was hurt - there won't be any emotional or physical scars.
The cost to society as a whole is negligible - the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of the kid who tagged the building alone is likely far more than the cost to simply clean up the graffiti - probably orders of magnitude more. As a lawyer you certainly understand the concept of damages, and if the owner of that building were to take the kid to court he likely would be reimbursed his cleanup costs and maybe - it's a stretch - but maybe some punitive damages. Everything is now fixed and good.
So, why should even more costs be socialized because of one individual's private property? Everything is fixed and done. The kid will be fined and potentially liable for the costs of the damage he caused assuming the owner bothers to pursue it. Again, why should society suffer more costs - paying thousands of dollars to imprison the kid, suffering the social costs of potentially turning a kid who vandalized a building into a criminal, and tying up resources that could be used to investigate and prosecute people who commit real crimes that hurt people.
Now, I'd say I would support requiring vandals to dedicate X hours of community service to cleaning up graffiti, or even contribute to a civic fund / insurance policy so to speak that people whose property is vandalized can make claims against. But prison? That's a disservice to everyone.
By the same logic you are using to defend heavily punishing the vandal, a case could be made for revoking the driver's licenses of anyone who is caught speeding or violating traffic laws. A case could be made for imprisoning anyone who commits an error on their taxes. Hell, how about immediately disbarring any lawyer who files a frivolous lawsuit or makes a preventable error in a filing?
All of those punishments are ridiculous because punishments should be proportional for the crime that is committed. The total cost of a given crime can be a nebulous thing, but society should always attempt to align punishments proportionally with the harm of the crime that was committed. That harm may be to an individual or to society as a whole, but if the harm, in any foreseeable case to society from a punishment far surpasses the harm of the crime AND any future crime that would reasonably be prevented by that punishment, that punishment greatly needs to be re-evaluated.
That's not even getting into the issues of prosecutorial and investigative discretion which - for social reasons - means that a person from a minority group who commits vandalism is far more likely to be investigated and prosecuted for the act.
EDIT - and I'm even including considerations in our omniscient justice system even for the situations grouch mentioned where there really isn't a reasonable aspect of 'choice' in committing some forms of crime.
I guess I just don't really understand why crimes against property deserve sentences equivalent to sentencing for ending the life of a human being. They are two entirely separate levels of severity. To say that tagging a wall deserves a life sentence is basically saying that doing some reversible damage to property is the same social ill as murdering something. Are our views of reality really that different?
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