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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
by 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 agoYou'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 agoTo clarify, how would you suggest we factor in the non-monetary harm caused to a mugging victim?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tropo 7y agoIt 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...