4 ms·

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 p

by 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...
  - harimau777 7y ago
    To clarify, how would you suggest we factor in the non-monetary harm caused to a mugging victim?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - tropo 7y ago
    It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. There is no pleasing everybody, and some people can't ever be pleased.
    - shakna 7y ago
      > It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. Solitary confinement is cruel. It isn't protecting one prisoner from another. 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. [0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-comparison-solitary-confinement-prison-health/ https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...
iguy 7y ago
> suppose one mugging gets you $100 ... cost of keeping someone in prison ... around ~$630 per week These aren't useful numbers to compare. Even if the criminal gained zero material value from his crime (say he just enjoys setting cars on fire) the rest of society may be willing to spend a small fortune to stop him from doing so. Even a completely cold-blooded insurance company would be willing to spend money on that.
- abeppu 7y ago
  The relevant value isn't what the criminal gains -- it's what society loses (e.g. the cost of the property damage from burning the car). Yes, the rest of society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice? And is it really to prevent harm (crime)? If the goal is crime prevention, aren't there less extravagant ways of achieving the same impact or better?
  - Natsu 7y ago
    As the earlier poster said, half of the point of prison is that it keeps people out of the general public and thereby temporarily unable to commit crimes against them. Now, we'd certainly like to reform them in prison, but the idea that we can simply, e.g., lift everyone out of poverty and eliminate crime is unrealistic. Certainly, it might remove some portion of crime, but it's not going to stop, say, the serial killers who are primarily motivated by sexual gratification. Dahmer, for example, killed because it gave him a sexual high and he didn't like having anal sex performed on him, so his gay boyfriends didn't work out and he sought to create a zombie who would never leave him via a crude lobotomy technique. I suppose there's some argument that even he reformed in prison--he converted to Christianity and later helped those studying serial killers--but I wonder how many people would have been willing to let him move in next door to test the extent of his reformation had he not died in prison? None of this is to say that prison is good or even desirable. One of the worst things it has done is to create a culture for criminals and criminal gangs and thereby facilitate the growth of criminal organizations. I don't have any grand solutions to any of this, unfortunately, but neither do I believe some of those offered by others.
  - 7y ago
fiblye 7y ago
People carry out muggings with the threat of harming and killing people. A mugging isn’t a mugging unless the person is willing to back up and sometimes follow through with their threats. The punishment for them is high because sometimes people die. Muggings without violence or threats are called pickpocketing. Penalties are far less severe. If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.
- derefr 7y ago
  > If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets. Do you really believe that? I honestly think there's a fundamental difference in character between willingness to commit non-violent crime, and willingness to commit violent crime. One's just selfish, while the other is likely to be negative-sum in utility in a way that makes most people write it off as a fundamentally unsound strategy unless they're true sociopaths.
  - fiblye 7y ago
    There are countries where law enforcement is weak to virtually nonexistent. They’re not desirable living locations by any means. Deterrence is one of the main pillars of law enforcement. There are plenty of people who reach the end of their rope and act out of desperation. Deterrence is something that limits that. There is a point where that effect plateaus and people will take the risk regardless of penalty, but lowering penalties to the point of being worthless does let crime breed. Just look at countries where corruption laws are ignored or unwritten. They’re corrupt. Countries that don’t protect women have more crimes against women. It’s how it goes.
    - saiya-jin 7y ago
      A lot of claims without any evidence... care to provide any? Otherwise you just sound like a person who likes to lock up people as much as possible with hope that everything will be magically allright then. Well, as history shows, crime reduction unfortunately doesn't work like that.
freepor 7y ago
The harm from having your life threatened and losing $10 is much more than $10. I’d vote for a political system where muggers are executed, and so would many others — you won’t find much support for catch and release.
blablablerg 7y ago
Dude have you been every been mugged? I almost have been (ran away before they could corner me), and the damage being done is not about the possessions. It is a scary and even traumatic experience when a group of people follows you and tries to surround you at night when you are alone. It damages your feeling of safety when outside (and I live in a very safe country). It cost me a year to lose my anxiety to go out when darkness sets in, even when just getting groceries. And I sometimes still am paranoid.

by abeppu 7y ago

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...
- harimau777 7y ago
  To clarify, how would you suggest we factor in the non-monetary harm caused to a mugging victim?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tropo 7y ago
  It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. There is no pleasing everybody, and some people can't ever be pleased.
  - shakna 7y ago
    > It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. Solitary confinement is cruel. It isn't protecting one prisoner from another. 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. [0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-comparison-solitary-confinement-prison-health/ https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...

iguy 7y ago

> suppose one mugging gets you $100 ... cost of keeping someone in prison ... around ~$630 per week These aren't useful numbers to compare. Even if the criminal gained zero material value from his crime (say he just enjoys setting cars on fire) the rest of society may be willing to spend a small fortune to stop him from doing so. Even a completely cold-blooded insurance company would be willing to spend money on that.

abeppu 7y ago
The relevant value isn't what the criminal gains -- it's what society loses (e.g. the cost of the property damage from burning the car). Yes, the rest of society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice? And is it really to prevent harm (crime)? If the goal is crime prevention, aren't there less extravagant ways of achieving the same impact or better?
- Natsu 7y ago
  As the earlier poster said, half of the point of prison is that it keeps people out of the general public and thereby temporarily unable to commit crimes against them. Now, we'd certainly like to reform them in prison, but the idea that we can simply, e.g., lift everyone out of poverty and eliminate crime is unrealistic. Certainly, it might remove some portion of crime, but it's not going to stop, say, the serial killers who are primarily motivated by sexual gratification. Dahmer, for example, killed because it gave him a sexual high and he didn't like having anal sex performed on him, so his gay boyfriends didn't work out and he sought to create a zombie who would never leave him via a crude lobotomy technique. I suppose there's some argument that even he reformed in prison--he converted to Christianity and later helped those studying serial killers--but I wonder how many people would have been willing to let him move in next door to test the extent of his reformation had he not died in prison? None of this is to say that prison is good or even desirable. One of the worst things it has done is to create a culture for criminals and criminal gangs and thereby facilitate the growth of criminal organizations. I don't have any grand solutions to any of this, unfortunately, but neither do I believe some of those offered by others.
- 7y ago

fiblye 7y ago

People carry out muggings with the threat of harming and killing people. A mugging isn’t a mugging unless the person is willing to back up and sometimes follow through with their threats. The punishment for them is high because sometimes people die. Muggings without violence or threats are called pickpocketing. Penalties are far less severe. If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

derefr 7y ago
> If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets. Do you really believe that? I honestly think there's a fundamental difference in character between willingness to commit non-violent crime, and willingness to commit violent crime. One's just selfish, while the other is likely to be negative-sum in utility in a way that makes most people write it off as a fundamentally unsound strategy unless they're true sociopaths.
- fiblye 7y ago
  There are countries where law enforcement is weak to virtually nonexistent. They’re not desirable living locations by any means. Deterrence is one of the main pillars of law enforcement. There are plenty of people who reach the end of their rope and act out of desperation. Deterrence is something that limits that. There is a point where that effect plateaus and people will take the risk regardless of penalty, but lowering penalties to the point of being worthless does let crime breed. Just look at countries where corruption laws are ignored or unwritten. They’re corrupt. Countries that don’t protect women have more crimes against women. It’s how it goes.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    A lot of claims without any evidence... care to provide any? Otherwise you just sound like a person who likes to lock up people as much as possible with hope that everything will be magically allright then. Well, as history shows, crime reduction unfortunately doesn't work like that.

freepor 7y ago

The harm from having your life threatened and losing $10 is much more than $10. I’d vote for a political system where muggers are executed, and so would many others — you won’t find much support for catch and release.

blablablerg 7y ago

Dude have you been every been mugged? I almost have been (ran away before they could corner me), and the damage being done is not about the possessions. It is a scary and even traumatic experience when a group of people follows you and tries to surround you at night when you are alone. It damages your feeling of safety when outside (and I live in a very safe country). It cost me a year to lose my anxiety to go out when darkness sets in, even when just getting groceries. And I sometimes still am paranoid.