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The logic is based on the needs of any society. Every society needs a set of rules which everyone agrees to follow. History shows that the smaller the set of ru

by IsaacL 10y ago

The logic is based on the needs of any society. Every society needs a set of rules which everyone agrees to follow. History shows that the smaller the set of rules, the better, but you need to at least prevent people from infringing the life and liberty of others. The simple reason for retribution is deterrence: there should be a negative incentive to committing crimes. The deeper reason is to make the kind of world people can live in. When everyone sees that criminals are punished, it tells would-be criminals to think twice, and it tells law-abiding citizens that someone is looking out for them. I don't think punishment should be excessively cruel, prison is probably sufficient, and excessive solitary confinement is probably unjustified. But many people on this thread seem to think punishment in general is always unjust. I think the underlying this is the modern belief that no-one is responsible for their actions, and that criminals are the product of social forces who need compassion and understanding. The argument against that is the standard argument against any form of determinism - if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards, who similarly cannot help themselves from punishing criminals, and so should not face moral judgement. It's contradictory to judge judges but forgive criminals.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
I'm actually not arguing for an absence of punishment, but rather against punishments whose only end is retribution. Things like solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, inhumane conditions, forced prison labor and more, all very normalized within the US criminal justice system, are all suspect practices whose only definite result is an increase in suffering. Punishment could be educational and rehabilitative (and still austere and undesirable, without being purposelessly cruel). Deterrence is commonly cited as a justification for retributive justice, but does it actually work that way? We obviously don't have a great control since we've had this system of justice for centuries so it's hard to imagine a radically different system. But the data we do have suggests that increasing the severity of punishments does little to increase the deterrence factor [1]. So we could likely make our criminal system significantly less cruel without reducing the degree of effective deterrence. Also I wasn't arguing for moral judgements of judges and prison guards for working within the current retributive justice regime (though those who wantonly exacerbate the cruelty of the system should certainly be judged for doing so). It's a systemic issue that retribution and cruelty are the implicit end goals of the US criminal justice system. [1]http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7363&context=jclc http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent...
- IsaacL 10y ago
  People do respond to incentives. Deterrence isn't just about the severity of punishments but also the probability of being caught. The US justice system (I'm not an American) seems to have the worst of both worlds were many people evade justice and others are hit with overly harsh sentences. Countries with effective police forces (e.g. Japan, Singapore) have very low crime rates. Rehabilitation makes sense for petty criminals and economic criminals, and possibly "crimes of passion". Some individuals are simply beyond redemption, though. I'd say attempting to "rehabilitate" anyone at category 11 or above on the following scale [1] is an injustice to their victims. People like Charles Manson [2] are capable of retreating into a delusional fantasy world and never acknowledge what they've done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Evil#Scale_and_criminals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Evil#Scale_and_criminals (warning: no graphics, but extremely unpleasant content) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qWLlER1N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qWLlER1N0 (Manson starts one of his monologues at about 8:20)
digler999 10y ago
> if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards, false equivalency. people are determined by very different outside forces, and thats precisely why some people aren't deserving of the same levels of "moral judgement".
- IsaacL 10y ago
  The fundamental point is that if determinism is true then morality is meaningless. I think we have free will. (This will probably be a controversial point on HN so to expand a little: I think consciousness is both non-mystical and non-material - the mind is entirely natural, mind and matter interact, but the mind is not the same as the brain, and is not made of atoms. Qualia and the binding problem [1] cannot be explained in material terms. Furthermore, if our thoughts are merely deterministic neurons firing, then we don't have any reliable knowledge of reality, making any debate meaningless). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem#The_combination_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem#The_combinatio...
  - digler999 10y ago
    nice retreat into philosophical fantasy-land. doesn't do much about reality where crime occurs.
    - IsaacL 10y ago
      Nice response to my argument with insults. Once you're talking about moral judgement and people being determined, you're in philosophical territory. In reality we have free will. If every action was predetermined, there'd be no point judging people.

by IsaacL 10y ago

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago

I'm actually not arguing for an absence of punishment, but rather against punishments whose only end is retribution. Things like solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, inhumane conditions, forced prison labor and more, all very normalized within the US criminal justice system, are all suspect practices whose only definite result is an increase in suffering. Punishment could be educational and rehabilitative (and still austere and undesirable, without being purposelessly cruel). Deterrence is commonly cited as a justification for retributive justice, but does it actually work that way? We obviously don't have a great control since we've had this system of justice for centuries so it's hard to imagine a radically different system. But the data we do have suggests that increasing the severity of punishments does little to increase the deterrence factor [1]. So we could likely make our criminal system significantly less cruel without reducing the degree of effective deterrence. Also I wasn't arguing for moral judgements of judges and prison guards for working within the current retributive justice regime (though those who wantonly exacerbate the cruelty of the system should certainly be judged for doing so). It's a systemic issue that retribution and cruelty are the implicit end goals of the US criminal justice system. [1]http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7363&context=jclc http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent...

IsaacL 10y ago
People do respond to incentives. Deterrence isn't just about the severity of punishments but also the probability of being caught. The US justice system (I'm not an American) seems to have the worst of both worlds were many people evade justice and others are hit with overly harsh sentences. Countries with effective police forces (e.g. Japan, Singapore) have very low crime rates. Rehabilitation makes sense for petty criminals and economic criminals, and possibly "crimes of passion". Some individuals are simply beyond redemption, though. I'd say attempting to "rehabilitate" anyone at category 11 or above on the following scale [1] is an injustice to their victims. People like Charles Manson [2] are capable of retreating into a delusional fantasy world and never acknowledge what they've done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Evil#Scale_and_criminals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Evil#Scale_and_criminals (warning: no graphics, but extremely unpleasant content) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qWLlER1N0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qWLlER1N0 (Manson starts one of his monologues at about 8:20)

digler999 10y ago

> if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards, false equivalency. people are determined by very different outside forces, and thats precisely why some people aren't deserving of the same levels of "moral judgement".

IsaacL 10y ago
The fundamental point is that if determinism is true then morality is meaningless. I think we have free will. (This will probably be a controversial point on HN so to expand a little: I think consciousness is both non-mystical and non-material - the mind is entirely natural, mind and matter interact, but the mind is not the same as the brain, and is not made of atoms. Qualia and the binding problem [1] cannot be explained in material terms. Furthermore, if our thoughts are merely deterministic neurons firing, then we don't have any reliable knowledge of reality, making any debate meaningless). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem#The_combination_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem#The_combinatio...
- digler999 10y ago
  nice retreat into philosophical fantasy-land. doesn't do much about reality where crime occurs.
  - IsaacL 10y ago
    Nice response to my argument with insults. Once you're talking about moral judgement and people being determined, you're in philosophical territory. In reality we have free will. If every action was predetermined, there'd be no point judging people.