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> As a society, while our ethical ideal is justice, a more practically compelling priority is safety. This word, “wouldn’t,” is not compatible with our sense of

by dcwca 9y ago

> As a society, while our ethical ideal is justice, a more practically compelling priority is safety. This word, “wouldn’t,” is not compatible with our sense of safety Safety is the ethical ideal, not "justice". We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. Edit: I'm Canadian. I know this isn't true today, but I'm glad I said it and am grateful for the replies below. I hope this statement becomes true in America one day.

ingenuous2 9y ago
What is the actual purpose of punishing people for breaking the rules of our society? It could be a mix of justice or safety, but it does set a norm that you will be held responsible for your actions. If you do something bad, there is a reactive action that society builds. After all, TANJ (There Ain't No Justice) in the natural world. Punishing people for breaking laws is one way that society "upgrades" over the natural world.
- dcwca 9y ago
  Why can't I do something bad that only affects me?
  - ingenuous2 9y ago
    For the sake of argument, I can think of a few reasons. One may believe that everyone in a common society is interconnected, so there is no such thing that only affects you. Another reason is that humans are such mimics of each other, that anything you do is likely to make it more likely other people do it. (See suicide rate studies that compare it to media coverage of events.) People are busybodies and like to exert control over each other. It's a power trip.
adamrt 9y ago
> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. If that was true (in the US) then there would be more rehabilitation in prisons, preparing people to reintegrate into society. Instead of we don't and have a 75%+ recidivism rate for state prisons. Also, the war on drugs.
kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness I always thought this was exactly the reasoning behind the death penalty.
civilitty 9y ago
The United States justice system, as well as that of most common wealth countries, is based not on safety or rehabilitation but on vengeance and systemic racism. To claim otherwise, when the United States has institutionalized slavery ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.") and more prisoners per capita or by absolute number than any other country on this planet is naive at best. The overcrowding at every prison, chronic corruption and mismanagement, privatization of the system and unionization of its beneficiaries, and lack of all but the cheapest rehabilitation programs makes it nearly impossible for convicts to reenter society and become productive members. Texas is one of the most egregious examples - especially given that they speed up the appeals process on purpose and have shit for oversight on forensic science in criminal cases. Texas alone has executed over 500 people since 1980, many of them borderline too mentally incompetent to stand trial, let alone face death row. Combine that with a culturally accepted racism among law enforcement, itchy trigger fingers, zero training for how to actually deal with people, and a cultural obsession with violence and you get the United States: a place where entire communities of Latinos and African Americans are decimated because a significant fraction of their working age males are stuck in a tiny cell with nothing to learn except more crime and nothing to do when they get out except more crime. Countries with prison systems that try to rehabilitate, like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., regularly close prisons and they have an amazing track record with recidivism. People like to claim "blah blah homogeneous society blah blah" but the fact is that common wealth countries like to kill and enslave people to punish them - often because they view it as doing "God's work." We do not have justice systems, we have vengeance factories.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  I'm very unimpressed with the US justice system and agree with a lot of what you say. But does this really explain a massively disproportionate homicide rate among certain groups in the US? Sure for lesser or non-crimes like drugs there can be massively unfair, racist enforcement and penalties. For rape, sure, certain groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated? As far as Norway and "blah blah homogenous society" do they not also show a heavy bias in crimes committed by the "non homogenous" population there?
m3rc 9y ago
If that was true we wouldn't have capital punishment at all. Capital punishment is all about revenge, people talk about it in terms of what the perpetrator "deserves". The fact that it's utterly innefective in stopping crimes is only now starting to get figured out and addressed.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  It's entirely effective at stopping future crimes from that particular individual.
  - m3rc 9y ago
    Well then, I guess we should be killing anyone who commits any crime. What a novel idea. i'm sure that will result in a perfectly well adjusted society.
lordnacho 9y ago
> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. Sounds nice, but isn't it a very common motive that the aggrieved want "some sense of fairness" in punishment? You hear it a lot after publicised trials, the relatives will offer their opinion on whether the punishment was appropriate for their loss. Doesn't it seem a little weird that only society's interest is what matters? There's a rather large can of worms in the ideas you speak of. Safety, for instance, is not an obvious thing. Suppose a study comes out identifying that 50% of members of a given group (say geographical, skin color, education, etc) will commit a heinous crime (and 50% is way more than normal in the population). There is no further specific information; as far as members of this group, it's a coin toss. What are we to do? The ones who haven't committed a crime yet are a risk. Can we lock them all up? I doubt it. Here's another interesting one. A study appears in which it is studied what happens to jealousy-murders, eg where a guy finds his wife with another guy and murders them. Lets say the study concludes that once the murders have happened, the murderer is no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime. It's totally safe to let him out now, because it's safety we care about? Seems wrong. But many countries do recognise this kind of enraged murder as a special circumstance in sentencing. Anyway, not saying I have the answers. Ethical questions have been vexing for a long time.
- cgmg 9y ago
  The fact that he murdered his wife is indicative of the fact that he is capable of murdering another person in a fit of rage. Certainly it's not true that "the murderer is no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime."
  - lordnacho 9y ago
    It was the condition of a hypothetical scenario that the study was correct. Obviously. You can discuss what evidence is in the real world, but scenarios are meant to exercise your reasoning powers in the steps beyond what you think the actual facts are. This is no different from thinking about what would happen if you could teleport. The correct answer isn't "but you can't do that".
lisper 9y ago
> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. That might be true in Norway, but it's clearly not true in the U.S. U.S. prisons and prison policies are tacitly designed to make them as miserable as they can be without making it obvious that they are in fact torture chambers. The widespread use of solitary confinement alone, which is now clearly understood to be torture, falsifies your assertion. The death penalty too does nothing to advance public safety. It is vengeance, pure and simple (and very expensive vengeance at that).
- dcwca 9y ago
  Let's get rid of those things then.
_jal 9y ago
This is not true. From a legal standpoint, there are various interlocking justifications - retribution, punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence. We absolutely punish people "because it makes us feel good". That is one explicit goal of legal theories of punishment - retribution is about replacing revenge, so that the state serves as a proxy for our monkey-needs for revenge. In the U.S., things are very much tilted towards making people convicted of wrongdoing suffer. Granted, not as much as some places, but that's hardly anything to be proud of.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  I would add prevention to your list as a primary justification, because people in jail cannot simultaneously be committing crimes on the outside.
gloverkcn 9y ago
This is a nice idea, but it's inaccurate. I sat in a court room during sentencing of a young man for a federal drug offense. He had prior drug offenses. No violent crimes. Right before he got clean, a friend asked him to mail him some drugs. The amount was just enough to qualify as intent to distribute. Mailingnacross state lines made it federal. The friend had been arrested and was given leniency in exchange for turning in someone else. I knew the young man being sentenced. It took two years for him to be picked up. In the two years he had gotten clean, and started a small business that was growing. He had NA spnosors saying he never missed a meeting, drug tests over previous two years showing he was clean, a stack of letters vouching for his current character, and a dozen people in the courtroom who were there for support. He was also given the option of turning someone in, but since he had been clean for 2 years, he didn't know anyone. The judge said that while rehabilitation was part of sentencing, the primary reason for sentencing was for punishment; To set an example and deter future crimes by both the convicted and people in the community. He got 7 years in a federal prison.
- dcwca 9y ago
  I didn't say the system was perfect. We treat drug users as degenerate criminals instead of people with health issues in need of help (in the case of addicts) or as regular people living their lives.

by dcwca 9y ago

ingenuous2 9y ago

What is the actual purpose of punishing people for breaking the rules of our society? It could be a mix of justice or safety, but it does set a norm that you will be held responsible for your actions. If you do something bad, there is a reactive action that society builds. After all, TANJ (There Ain't No Justice) in the natural world. Punishing people for breaking laws is one way that society "upgrades" over the natural world.

dcwca 9y ago
Why can't I do something bad that only affects me?
- ingenuous2 9y ago
  For the sake of argument, I can think of a few reasons. One may believe that everyone in a common society is interconnected, so there is no such thing that only affects you. Another reason is that humans are such mimics of each other, that anything you do is likely to make it more likely other people do it. (See suicide rate studies that compare it to media coverage of events.) People are busybodies and like to exert control over each other. It's a power trip.

adamrt 9y ago

> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. If that was true (in the US) then there would be more rehabilitation in prisons, preparing people to reintegrate into society. Instead of we don't and have a 75%+ recidivism rate for state prisons. Also, the war on drugs.

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago

> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness I always thought this was exactly the reasoning behind the death penalty.

civilitty 9y ago

The United States justice system, as well as that of most common wealth countries, is based not on safety or rehabilitation but on vengeance and systemic racism. To claim otherwise, when the United States has institutionalized slavery ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.") and more prisoners per capita or by absolute number than any other country on this planet is naive at best. The overcrowding at every prison, chronic corruption and mismanagement, privatization of the system and unionization of its beneficiaries, and lack of all but the cheapest rehabilitation programs makes it nearly impossible for convicts to reenter society and become productive members. Texas is one of the most egregious examples - especially given that they speed up the appeals process on purpose and have shit for oversight on forensic science in criminal cases. Texas alone has executed over 500 people since 1980, many of them borderline too mentally incompetent to stand trial, let alone face death row. Combine that with a culturally accepted racism among law enforcement, itchy trigger fingers, zero training for how to actually deal with people, and a cultural obsession with violence and you get the United States: a place where entire communities of Latinos and African Americans are decimated because a significant fraction of their working age males are stuck in a tiny cell with nothing to learn except more crime and nothing to do when they get out except more crime. Countries with prison systems that try to rehabilitate, like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., regularly close prisons and they have an amazing track record with recidivism. People like to claim "blah blah homogeneous society blah blah" but the fact is that common wealth countries like to kill and enslave people to punish them - often because they view it as doing "God's work." We do not have justice systems, we have vengeance factories.

MichaelGG 9y ago
I'm very unimpressed with the US justice system and agree with a lot of what you say. But does this really explain a massively disproportionate homicide rate among certain groups in the US? Sure for lesser or non-crimes like drugs there can be massively unfair, racist enforcement and penalties. For rape, sure, certain groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated? As far as Norway and "blah blah homogenous society" do they not also show a heavy bias in crimes committed by the "non homogenous" population there?

m3rc 9y ago

If that was true we wouldn't have capital punishment at all. Capital punishment is all about revenge, people talk about it in terms of what the perpetrator "deserves". The fact that it's utterly innefective in stopping crimes is only now starting to get figured out and addressed.

sokoloff 9y ago
It's entirely effective at stopping future crimes from that particular individual.
- m3rc 9y ago
  Well then, I guess we should be killing anyone who commits any crime. What a novel idea. i'm sure that will result in a perfectly well adjusted society.

lordnacho 9y ago

> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. Sounds nice, but isn't it a very common motive that the aggrieved want "some sense of fairness" in punishment? You hear it a lot after publicised trials, the relatives will offer their opinion on whether the punishment was appropriate for their loss. Doesn't it seem a little weird that only society's interest is what matters? There's a rather large can of worms in the ideas you speak of. Safety, for instance, is not an obvious thing. Suppose a study comes out identifying that 50% of members of a given group (say geographical, skin color, education, etc) will commit a heinous crime (and 50% is way more than normal in the population). There is no further specific information; as far as members of this group, it's a coin toss. What are we to do? The ones who haven't committed a crime yet are a risk. Can we lock them all up? I doubt it. Here's another interesting one. A study appears in which it is studied what happens to jealousy-murders, eg where a guy finds his wife with another guy and murders them. Lets say the study concludes that once the murders have happened, the murderer is no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime. It's totally safe to let him out now, because it's safety we care about? Seems wrong. But many countries do recognise this kind of enraged murder as a special circumstance in sentencing. Anyway, not saying I have the answers. Ethical questions have been vexing for a long time.

cgmg 9y ago
The fact that he murdered his wife is indicative of the fact that he is capable of murdering another person in a fit of rage. Certainly it's not true that "the murderer is no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime."
- lordnacho 9y ago
  It was the condition of a hypothetical scenario that the study was correct. Obviously. You can discuss what evidence is in the real world, but scenarios are meant to exercise your reasoning powers in the steps beyond what you think the actual facts are. This is no different from thinking about what would happen if you could teleport. The correct answer isn't "but you can't do that".

lisper 9y ago

> We don't punish people because it makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the good of society. That might be true in Norway, but it's clearly not true in the U.S. U.S. prisons and prison policies are tacitly designed to make them as miserable as they can be without making it obvious that they are in fact torture chambers. The widespread use of solitary confinement alone, which is now clearly understood to be torture, falsifies your assertion. The death penalty too does nothing to advance public safety. It is vengeance, pure and simple (and very expensive vengeance at that).

dcwca 9y ago
Let's get rid of those things then.

_jal 9y ago

This is not true. From a legal standpoint, there are various interlocking justifications - retribution, punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence. We absolutely punish people "because it makes us feel good". That is one explicit goal of legal theories of punishment - retribution is about replacing revenge, so that the state serves as a proxy for our monkey-needs for revenge. In the U.S., things are very much tilted towards making people convicted of wrongdoing suffer. Granted, not as much as some places, but that's hardly anything to be proud of.

Simon_says 9y ago
I would add prevention to your list as a primary justification, because people in jail cannot simultaneously be committing crimes on the outside.

gloverkcn 9y ago

This is a nice idea, but it's inaccurate. I sat in a court room during sentencing of a young man for a federal drug offense. He had prior drug offenses. No violent crimes. Right before he got clean, a friend asked him to mail him some drugs. The amount was just enough to qualify as intent to distribute. Mailingnacross state lines made it federal. The friend had been arrested and was given leniency in exchange for turning in someone else. I knew the young man being sentenced. It took two years for him to be picked up. In the two years he had gotten clean, and started a small business that was growing. He had NA spnosors saying he never missed a meeting, drug tests over previous two years showing he was clean, a stack of letters vouching for his current character, and a dozen people in the courtroom who were there for support. He was also given the option of turning someone in, but since he had been clean for 2 years, he didn't know anyone. The judge said that while rehabilitation was part of sentencing, the primary reason for sentencing was for punishment; To set an example and deter future crimes by both the convicted and people in the community. He got 7 years in a federal prison.

dcwca 9y ago
I didn't say the system was perfect. We treat drug users as degenerate criminals instead of people with health issues in need of help (in the case of addicts) or as regular people living their lives.