6 ms·

I don't know if your meaning to say we should do away with criminal sentencing? I would think your not saying that, but just so no one gets the wrong idea. For

by cb18 11y ago

I don't know if your meaning to say we should do away with criminal sentencing? I would think your not saying that, but just so no one gets the wrong idea. For people that commit crimes that are highly disruptive to society, on any level, from assaults to massive ponzi schemes, be these 'not particularly rational' individuals or otherwise, the sentence is a deterrent on the one hand, and on the other hand a deterrent as well, but one with a guarantee, because if they are in jail they are not going to be committing more crimes that are disruptive to society. So the criminal justice system still serves a purpose. If the prospect of jail, or just the desire to be a good human didn't stop someone from impulsively raping or murdering someone, then they belong in jail where they can't act out their impulsive rapes or murders on society at large.

vacri 11y ago
The issue is that criminals for the most part don't think "ah, I can commit this crime, I will 'only' get 5-10 years" and "oh, this crime would be 50 years - in that case I won't do it". Extremely long sentences just don't add much to the mix.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  There's a tremendous body of evidence suggesting the opposite. Maybe not so much for first time offenders, but people with some experience in the criminal justice system are remarkably knowledgeable about the law, sentences, and exactly what consequences will ensue for particular behavior.
  - rl3 11y ago
    How do you reconcile that with a very high recidivism rate?[0] If anything, you're disproving your own argument. [0] http://www.bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm http://www.bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm
    - msandford 11y ago
      > How do you reconcile that with a very high recidivism rate?[0] The upsides to crime for some people are very high, and the downsides of going to prison are again for those people, not all that high. I think that's pretty obvious. The problem is that you're taking the beliefs about prison that you hold and applying them universally. That's not the correct way to look at it. A person with $1mm in the bank is going to look at a Porsche and a Camry very differently than a person with $5k in the bank. A person with a criminal record who understands how stacked against him/her society is, is going to look at crime from a much more calculating position than a person with a spotless one. A person with a spotless record has something to lose by committing a crime; the possibility of losing the spotless record. The person who already has a criminal record has very little to lose at least from a reputational perspective.
      - rl3 11y ago
        I understand your point that a portion of the recidivism is attributable to calculated risk on behalf of career criminals, but I think that in and of itself is a pretty sad state of affairs. >A person with a criminal record who understands how stacked against him/her society is I would argue that society being stacked against convicts is not congruent with the goal of reform. At the risk of "taking the beliefs I hold about prison and applying them universally", I'd say the U.S. criminal justice system today resembles a vindictive meat grinder that excels at taking deeply troubled people and placing them in an environment that's detrimental to their rehabilitation. It's hard to argue in favor of tough sentencing when the correctional system effectively operates as an overflow for other failed systems—be it mental health, political, education, social welfare, or public safety.
        msandford 11y ago
        Yeah I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of tough sentencing, just trying to explain that criminals are still people and still think very, very logically. They just operate from a fact-base that's unfathomable to people who have it pretty good. Very few people wake up and say "How can I totally screw up my life today?" and think of a way, and then execute those plans to knowingly cause themselves harm. Most of the time they just have a very different set of assumptions and givens about life.
- cb18 11y ago
  The issue is that criminals for the most part don't think "ah, I can commit this crime, I will 'only' get 5-10 years" and "oh, this crime would be 50 years - in that case I won't do it". With all respect, I don't see how this sentence is relevant to what I wrote. I get that your trying to use it to support the next sentence, but I don't see how it does that either. Extremely long sentences just don't add much to the mix. They do actually. You can look at the length of a sentence as corresponding roughly to a cost benefit analysis pertaining to the given crime. The cost being the cost to incarcerate the person, and the benefit being the person's inability to commit a similar crime for X number of years. So for really bad crimes that carry a really long sentence, the benefit to society of there not being a potential recurrence of the criminal's acts outweighs the cost of the incarceration.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    FYI, you've written "your" in recent comments when you meant to write "you're". > I would think your not saying that [...] I get that your trying to use it to support the next sentence [...] I offer this feedback in the spirit that writing well is important and valuable to practice.
  - vacri 11y ago
    I don't know if your meaning to say we should do away with criminal sentencing? - sorry, I should have clarified that disposing of excessive sentences does not mean disposing of sentences altogether. > They do actually. The US has extremely long sentences. It has an incredibly high incarceration rate - higher than South Africa in it's apartheid prime, higher than China or Russia ever had, and yet crime there is no better than in it's contemporary developed-nation allies. In fact, for the one crime that is most directly and easily comparable - murder - the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5). The ridiculously long sentences in the US are not making the US any safer than it's contemporaries.
    - cb18 11y ago
      sorry, I should have clarified ok, I see. the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5) What is that a rate of, murders per 100k or something? Maybe the US just has a population and/or conditions that are more prone to committing murder, that doesn't mean the country should scale back it's punishment of murderers. It's highly doubtful that the longer sentence length(is the US's longer on average?) is somehow contributing to a higher murder rate. What did you think about how I described sentence length as being a function of cost-benefit analysis? That isn't to say that I think all sentences are optimum, or even near optimum, some have gotten completely out of whack, or altogether unnecessary, drug crimes for example.

by cb18 11y ago

vacri 11y ago

The issue is that criminals for the most part don't think "ah, I can commit this crime, I will 'only' get 5-10 years" and "oh, this crime would be 50 years - in that case I won't do it". Extremely long sentences just don't add much to the mix.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
There's a tremendous body of evidence suggesting the opposite. Maybe not so much for first time offenders, but people with some experience in the criminal justice system are remarkably knowledgeable about the law, sentences, and exactly what consequences will ensue for particular behavior.
- rl3 11y ago
  How do you reconcile that with a very high recidivism rate?[0] If anything, you're disproving your own argument. [0] http://www.bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm http://www.bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm
  - msandford 11y ago
    > How do you reconcile that with a very high recidivism rate?[0] The upsides to crime for some people are very high, and the downsides of going to prison are again for those people, not all that high. I think that's pretty obvious. The problem is that you're taking the beliefs about prison that you hold and applying them universally. That's not the correct way to look at it. A person with $1mm in the bank is going to look at a Porsche and a Camry very differently than a person with $5k in the bank. A person with a criminal record who understands how stacked against him/her society is, is going to look at crime from a much more calculating position than a person with a spotless one. A person with a spotless record has something to lose by committing a crime; the possibility of losing the spotless record. The person who already has a criminal record has very little to lose at least from a reputational perspective.
    - rl3 11y ago
      I understand your point that a portion of the recidivism is attributable to calculated risk on behalf of career criminals, but I think that in and of itself is a pretty sad state of affairs. >A person with a criminal record who understands how stacked against him/her society is I would argue that society being stacked against convicts is not congruent with the goal of reform. At the risk of "taking the beliefs I hold about prison and applying them universally", I'd say the U.S. criminal justice system today resembles a vindictive meat grinder that excels at taking deeply troubled people and placing them in an environment that's detrimental to their rehabilitation. It's hard to argue in favor of tough sentencing when the correctional system effectively operates as an overflow for other failed systems—be it mental health, political, education, social welfare, or public safety.
      - msandford 11y ago
        Yeah I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of tough sentencing, just trying to explain that criminals are still people and still think very, very logically. They just operate from a fact-base that's unfathomable to people who have it pretty good. Very few people wake up and say "How can I totally screw up my life today?" and think of a way, and then execute those plans to knowingly cause themselves harm. Most of the time they just have a very different set of assumptions and givens about life.
cb18 11y ago
The issue is that criminals for the most part don't think "ah, I can commit this crime, I will 'only' get 5-10 years" and "oh, this crime would be 50 years - in that case I won't do it". With all respect, I don't see how this sentence is relevant to what I wrote. I get that your trying to use it to support the next sentence, but I don't see how it does that either. Extremely long sentences just don't add much to the mix. They do actually. You can look at the length of a sentence as corresponding roughly to a cost benefit analysis pertaining to the given crime. The cost being the cost to incarcerate the person, and the benefit being the person's inability to commit a similar crime for X number of years. So for really bad crimes that carry a really long sentence, the benefit to society of there not being a potential recurrence of the criminal's acts outweighs the cost of the incarceration.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  FYI, you've written "your" in recent comments when you meant to write "you're". > I would think your not saying that [...] I get that your trying to use it to support the next sentence [...] I offer this feedback in the spirit that writing well is important and valuable to practice.
- vacri 11y ago
  I don't know if your meaning to say we should do away with criminal sentencing? - sorry, I should have clarified that disposing of excessive sentences does not mean disposing of sentences altogether. > They do actually. The US has extremely long sentences. It has an incredibly high incarceration rate - higher than South Africa in it's apartheid prime, higher than China or Russia ever had, and yet crime there is no better than in it's contemporary developed-nation allies. In fact, for the one crime that is most directly and easily comparable - murder - the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5). The ridiculously long sentences in the US are not making the US any safer than it's contemporaries.
  - cb18 11y ago
    sorry, I should have clarified ok, I see. the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5) What is that a rate of, murders per 100k or something? Maybe the US just has a population and/or conditions that are more prone to committing murder, that doesn't mean the country should scale back it's punishment of murderers. It's highly doubtful that the longer sentence length(is the US's longer on average?) is somehow contributing to a higher murder rate. What did you think about how I described sentence length as being a function of cost-benefit analysis? That isn't to say that I think all sentences are optimum, or even near optimum, some have gotten completely out of whack, or altogether unnecessary, drug crimes for example.