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Our system isn't really punitive or rehabilitative, though we pay lip service to both. (truly punitive would involve torture, and truly rehabilitative is simply

• MrsPeaches 7y ago
  This is an interesting thought though the math in final sentence feels off.
  • jackfoxy 7y ago
    we reduce muggings by 80% of that individual's potential to commit muggings
    • tropo 7y ago
      Yes. We also keep other individuals in prison. If they are similar (once per week, 80% in prison) then the 80% applies in general. The numbers vary and the specific values are unimportant to understanding the basic idea. The point is that keeping criminals away from victims is how we actually reduce crime.
• dunstad 7y ago
  Gonna be honest, it doesn't sound like you have a lot of relevant experience on the effects of incarceration. I'm no expert either, but prison is a lot more than just making sure people can't commit crimes. I also think reasonable people could disagree about whether the treatment of some of our prisoners constitutes torture or not.
• dfsegoat 7y ago
  How about $10-13k in fees / mandatory education classes for a DUI in California? That is pretty punitive AND crippling. The classes are given by for profit companies. Also does nothing to stop the small percentage of hardcore repeat dui offenders. They still find a way to drive.
  • crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    > How about $10-13k in fees / mandatory education classes for a DUI in California? That is pretty punitive AND crippling. Slate Star Codex talks about that in their Moloch article. Long story short, no politician can be for the reduction of these sorts of things. The first one that tries will be lambasted in public when someone who did less fees or less 'for-profit training' has another bender and kills little Timmy. Sentencing will always go up, unless acted upon by actors who aren't subject to voting forces. So will fees and fines and plenty of other torturous actions.
  • iso1631 7y ago
    If those fees were linked to wealth or income that would seem reasonable. $10k is going to really cause problems for an average person, for a holywood superstar though it should be more like $1m A firefighter who's DUI because they had a couple of beers on a Friday night, then got called to hospital 50 miles away because their daughter had just been stabbed, and instinctively jumped in his car to get there asap, shouldn't be treated in the same way as a $900k/year architect who's been guzzling champagne at a product launch after launch party, then drives their $400k car 3 miles home
• shakna 7y ago
  > truly punitive would involve torture And it does. Methods like solitary do classify as torture under international laws. The not approved, but still happens, "code red"s that get employed by both staff and inmates, are very clearly torturous. Slave labor, could also classify as torture. Especially when those meager wages are decimated by the basic costs of things. Such as the per-minute charges to read free ebooks that has been rolling out, or the ridiculous charges to connect by phone or email to anyone not living in the same hell that you are - something that has been shown to help the mental state of the incarcerated.
  • robert_foss 7y ago
    Yeah, this really gets me. How can a civilized society allow for systematic torture of people. The two are mutually exclusive.
  • souprock 7y ago
    Anything other than solitary is torture. Exposure to other criminals is cruel. Having a cellmate who could kill you in your sleep is especially shocking; sleep deprivation is unquestionably torture.
    • shakna 7y ago
      Solitary confinement increases the chance of heart attack, hypertension and stroke by 30% [0]. That's because it is a stressful environment that people are not meant to function in. That's 30% up when compared to those prisoners who might be fearing that their cell might kill them. Solitary is more stressful than that environment, objectively. [0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-comparison-solitary-confinement-prison-health/ https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...
      • souprock 7y ago
        The study applies to "a third of individuals in solitary confinement". I guess those were the extroverts. What about the other two thirds of individuals in solitary confinement? It seems likely that those people don't support the desired conclusion. Whatever the case may be, there is also the matter of them being a bad influence on each other.
• anarchodev 7y ago
  Our system does involve torture.
• dx87 7y ago
  I've read that another reason is to try and get people who are a bad influence out of the area. For example, some parts of Baltimore are so bad that there is almost no chance for kids growing up to have a life not influenced by violence, so they just try and lock people up as long as possible so they won't be a negative influence on the people in the area. Trying to rehabilitate them would probably be pointless because they are going to go back to live in the same shitty situation that led them to a life of crime in the first place. It'd be like sending an alcoholic or drug addict who just finished rehab right back to the same people and circumstances that made them need rehab.
  • HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Honestly, the situation in too many places- okay, one is one too many, so way too many places- is like taking someone home from rehab and dropping them off at a liquor store.
  • derefr 7y ago
    It's too bad there's no free land to exile people to any more. (I mean, we could build walled-off exile colonies inland, but that'd be pretty dystopian, unless they could somehow get from there to other countries that aren't exiling them.)
• abeppu 7y ago
  This seems like it's missing the punitive character of imprisonment. But even ignoring the suffering inflicted by the prison system, both on the incarcerated person and their family, your example should make us ask -- when does it even make sense to put a person in prison to remove the opportunity to do crime? How much do you think a person takes per mugging? People don't carry that much cash these days -- suppose one mugging gets you $100 (seems high). Apparently the cost of keeping someone in prison varies by a lot from state to state, but an average value is around $33k, which comes out to around ~$630 per week -- i.e. we're likely paying more to keep your hypothetical criminal in prison than they would cause in crime on the outside. And when you look at stuff like drug crimes, it gets hard to even figure out what the actual cost to society is for the crime -- but we put a lot of people in prison. Even if you disregard the suffering inflicted by incarceration, even if innocent people are never convicted, sometimes prison is a bad deal for _everyone_. Also, > truly rehabilitative is simply impossible How did you reach that conclusion? Surely such a broad statement deserves some support. https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends/price-of-prisons-2015-state-spending-trends-prison-spending https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...
  • tropo 7y ago
    The harm of a mugging is far in excess of the money taken. Start with PTSD. The victim might never feel safe again. The victim might have many years of waking up in a panic from a recurring nightmare. Muggings cause violence. The mugger threatens it. The victim doesn't know if payment will appease the mugger. Both the mugger and the victim may initiate actual violence. They and the bystanders can end up maimed or dead. Muggings cause people to prefer commuting all alone in SUVs. You could say that this has a cost in smog, road repair, road widening, and the price placed on safe commuting. Safety becomes something you have to pay for, and not everybody can afford it. Walkable neighborhoods can not exist if muggers are free to operate.
    • abeppu 7y ago
      You're really fixated on your hypothetical habitual mugger. By appealing to some unquantifiable suffering on the part of the victim, you seem to want readers to accept an implicit claim that any cost to imprison a person, for any duration, under any conditions must be acceptable and justified. Prisoners also are victims, and suffer trauma. It seems roughly 1/5 male inmates are assaulted by guards, and roughly the same number are assaulted by other prisoners. And then there's sexual assault, which has glaring gaps in reporting. I think there's an obvious question we should be asking here -- when does incarceration cause more violence than it prevents? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/attacks-and-assaults-behind-bars-cca-private-prisons/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/attacks-and-ass...
• danans 7y ago
  > truly punitive would involve torture, and truly rehabilitative is simply impossible Wait, the only true punishment is to torture someone, and it is impossible to help someone move away from a life of crime? What system of belief is that derived from, because it doesn't derive from any modern rights-based cultural or legal tradition. The world is full of examples of people who didn't commit crimes after receiving mild punishment, and were successfully rehabilitated away from crime.
  • iguy 7y ago
    I think the charitable reading of GP is that revenge/rehabilition/removal are the three possible objectives, for which the purest forms would be something like torture / re-education / exile. Every real system is some mix of these functions. We don't want to do torture, but we do talk about retribution, a bit. Perfect repair is unattainable, but we do talk a lot about rehabilitation. We don't talk much about removal, but (GP argues) this is in fact a rather large part of what our system is actually designed to do.
    • danans 7y ago
      > Perfect repair is unattainable It is unattainable because "perfect" is undefined for both the imprisoned and free people. Arguments involving the idea of achieving perfect rehabilitation are the enemy of the good in this case. It's just as pointless to talk about perfectly repairing prisoners as it is to talk about perfectly repairing any of us. We're all variously damaged goods. I agree with the GP that the system is designed for removal, but disagree that a system geared towards rehabilitation is impossible, if only by the existence proof provided by the number of people who have been rehabilitated to the point that they are no longer a danger to themselves and society. I'm not sure what the GP thinks is the value that torture brings to the discussion, at least in societies that presume to operate on a foundation of human rights. Torture is literally psychopathic behavior, itself warranting punishment by removal via imprisonment. And with some notable and terrible exceptions, our laws back that up.
      • Natsu 7y ago
• climate_realist 7y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted, what you say is literally the thinking behind current criminal justice in the US. The idea is that the person is completely evil and the only thing is to stop them from following their nature is long term incapacitation. I think this fundamental fact about how the system is structured and how the people in it think is really lost on people pushing reform. Getting literally millions of state and federal employees to change their beliefs on this is something that will happen over generations, not with the passing of a few laws. This philosophy is cooked in for some decades to come, unfortunately.
• lb1lf 7y ago
  > ...truly rehabilitative is simply impossible -While comparing the US to Norway is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, I'd like to point out that our (vee-eery rehabilitation-oriented) correctional system does have one of the lowest recidivism rates world-wide, at approx. 20%. (This is an overall value; I assume there are significant differences between various kinds of crime, but couldn't find any statistics) Almost from the day your sentencing starts, the prison staff cooperate with social services to ease your return to society - inmates are offered education or vocational training. As your release draws nearer, security is lowered if you've behaved reasonably well - to the extent that many prisoners serve the last part of their term in halfway houses where they need to observe a curfew, but are allowed to leave in the daytime to apply for jobs, go to work or school; you may also have visits from family or (I believe, vetted!) friends in evenings - all to make the transition as gentle as possible. There's no such thing as truly rehabilitative for a group - had it been, recidivism would be zero - but for many individuals, I believe a more rehabilitation-oriented correctional system may be just what they need to turn their lives around and become productive members of society. I believe this approach is strongly beneficial both to the imprisoned individual as well as to society as a whole.
• bildung 7y ago
  The underlying assumption of the incapacitation argument is that people can't change. Which evidently is wrong as other countries achieve much lower recidivism rates. This essentially moral assumption (that people are inherently good/evil) is shared with the punitive approach. If a country actually wants to lower crime, bank robbers and muggings, the empirical evidence clearly points in one direction: A focus on rehabilitation, and in the long run lowering of inequality through wealth redistribution. The latter isn't really plausible at first glance, but has been a stable observation for decades. Example source: https://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime%26Inequality.pdf https://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime%26In...