9 ms·

I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. Somewhere the scales must be balanced, and if not in

by lldbg 6y ago

I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. Somewhere the scales must be balanced, and if not in prisons, where then? Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? That is not to say that prisons should be blind to the fact that inmates will eventually be released. There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?

veryfancy 6y ago
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Yes.
barrkel 6y ago
What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me. Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view. Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.
- slibhb 6y ago
  > What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me. It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds. > Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view. It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".
  - barrkel 6y ago
    Sure, it's not a closed question. I'm mostly pointing out, as an example, the fact that society operates the mechanics of justice these days, it is the interests of society that are paramount. Making individuals whole is a part of that, but avoiding repetition is also vital, or else the punishment plays a part in causing crime later.
    - slibhb 6y ago
      In my opinion you vastly overestimate your ability to answer questions like "what are the interests of society?" and "what causes crime?"
      - barrkel 6y ago
        I don't think I have the ability. I can, however, say with a some certainty that retribution is not principal component of justice, because a moment's consideration shows more considerations at play. Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.
        slibhb 6y ago
        Things haven't moved on. All modern justice systems continue to be based on retribution. They seek to punish the guilty (proportionally to their crimes) and to exonerate the innocent. It's all well and good to argue "this punishment is too severe, it does not fit the crime". But to argue that "the world has moved on" from retributive justice is just naivete. If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant: > Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  > Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals. In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc). Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.
  - InfiniteRand 6y ago
    I think this actually varies a lot across cultures, although one common principle, historically at least, is that justice is less deadly for the rich than it is for the poor. For instance, the concept of blood money reduces the punishment of murder to a fine
alpha_squared 6y ago
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life. If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.
- lldbg 6y ago
  I don't think I advocated that all sentences should be for life, and I don't get how you got to there from what I wrote.
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    You were complaining that inmates would deign to find work after being incarcerated. > Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".
    - lldbg 6y ago
      I was not complaining about anything. They aren't ex-felons, after they are released, they are felons. I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...
      - pwinnski 6y ago
mmcgaha 6y ago
I can empathize with how you feel (even how a victim could feel) but a public good will come from teaching prisoners a skill so they don't have to victimize someone else when they get out.
- lldbg 6y ago
  You never _have_ to victimize someone, no matter your circumstances.
echlebek 6y ago
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.
titzer 6y ago
I can't think of anything more cruel and worse for society as a whole than to permanently damage some people because it feels vaguely cathartic and might serve as a "warning" to others.
rendall 6y ago
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Heck yeah! If civil penalties have been assessed, how else are they going to get paid? Crazy how most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape
- ralusek 6y ago
  What's crazy is that you think that most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape.
  - rendall 6y ago
    HN is marvelous, in that even the slightest hyperbole will be pointed out as incorrect. By "marvelous" of course I mean tedious
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I don’t think your prior post falls into category of “even the slightest hyperbole”.
      - rendall 6y ago
        Marvelous
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? It was not until now that I came to realize that everyone in American prisons are actually there for assault. The mind reels.
- Layke1123 6y ago
  I upvoted you, but I want to make sure my reasons for doing so are accurate. This was sarcasm, yes? It might not be so obvious if others read through this so just want to clarify.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I was drily sarcastic yes, as it is obvious that very few people are in prison for assault any argument that makes an appeal to the emotions with the phrasing used is somewhat deserving of being punctured. I thought my response good at indicating the absurdity.
    - Layke1123 6y ago
      Oh absolutely. I loved it. Just wanted to make sure anyone else who read it was unsure that my comment would remove all doubt.
- lldbg 6y ago
  Nowhere did I make that claim.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    By stating your hypothetical "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" you made a condition only sometimes encountered - violent crime - a reason to treat all criminals worse. I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing. And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it. The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.
adamc 6y ago
I am interested in whether there is any actual evidence retribution works, in terms of recidivism. My first guess would be that the awful experiences in prison just fuck up people more.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Your first guess is borne out by the recidivism rate, which is in the high-80s nationwisde.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If a group with a prior criminal behavior rate of near 100% has that rate reduced to 87%, is that evidence that prison is fucking them up even more? (I think prison probably is fucking people up more, but a mere citation of high recidivism rate isn’t evidence of that to me, given the prior.)
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Given that some percentage of people in jail or prison are there for the crime of possessing drugs, something which college students seem to do regularly without consequences, I'm not really surprised that those people don't re-offend. One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there. Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.
ericd 6y ago
Some people think it's to get them to stop doing bad things to other people, not to get even.
UncleMeat 6y ago
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.
zamalek 6y ago
I say this knowing full-well that I might seek retribution if something awful were to ever happen to me or my loved ones, but: > I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with. However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation. American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.
benlivengood 6y ago
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Would the assaulted be happier having to work to support the attacker for the rest of their life?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Some people are quite obviously unfit to participate in free society. Society has to deal with them one way or another. (I’m not claiming that it’s as many as we have incarcerated now, but it’s patently not “zero people”.)
pwinnski 6y ago
> There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch? Yes, nobody should go hungry. Not in prison, not out of prison, nowhere.
- lldbg 6y ago
  Okay, thats nice. Do you think anyone here on HN is in favour of people going hungry? And by a free lunch, I meant the idiomatic expression.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    It sure seems like some people on this page are very much in favor of people who've committed crimes going hungry, even after they serve their sentences. Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them. Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!

by lldbg 6y ago

veryfancy 6y ago

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Yes.

barrkel 6y ago

What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me. Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view. Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.

slibhb 6y ago
> What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me. It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds. > Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view. It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".
- barrkel 6y ago
  Sure, it's not a closed question. I'm mostly pointing out, as an example, the fact that society operates the mechanics of justice these days, it is the interests of society that are paramount. Making individuals whole is a part of that, but avoiding repetition is also vital, or else the punishment plays a part in causing crime later.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    In my opinion you vastly overestimate your ability to answer questions like "what are the interests of society?" and "what causes crime?"
    - barrkel 6y ago
      I don't think I have the ability. I can, however, say with a some certainty that retribution is not principal component of justice, because a moment's consideration shows more considerations at play. Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.
      - slibhb 6y ago
        Things haven't moved on. All modern justice systems continue to be based on retribution. They seek to punish the guilty (proportionally to their crimes) and to exonerate the innocent. It's all well and good to argue "this punishment is too severe, it does not fit the crime". But to argue that "the world has moved on" from retributive justice is just naivete. If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant: > Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.
ndiscussion 6y ago
> Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals. In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc). Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.
- InfiniteRand 6y ago
  I think this actually varies a lot across cultures, although one common principle, historically at least, is that justice is less deadly for the rich than it is for the poor. For instance, the concept of blood money reduces the punishment of murder to a fine

alpha_squared 6y ago

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life. If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.

lldbg 6y ago
I don't think I advocated that all sentences should be for life, and I don't get how you got to there from what I wrote.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  You were complaining that inmates would deign to find work after being incarcerated. > Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".
  - lldbg 6y ago
    I was not complaining about anything. They aren't ex-felons, after they are released, they are felons. I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...
    - pwinnski 6y ago

mmcgaha 6y ago

I can empathize with how you feel (even how a victim could feel) but a public good will come from teaching prisoners a skill so they don't have to victimize someone else when they get out.

lldbg 6y ago
You never _have_ to victimize someone, no matter your circumstances.

echlebek 6y ago

> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.

titzer 6y ago

I can't think of anything more cruel and worse for society as a whole than to permanently damage some people because it feels vaguely cathartic and might serve as a "warning" to others.

rendall 6y ago

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Heck yeah! If civil penalties have been assessed, how else are they going to get paid? Crazy how most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape

ralusek 6y ago
What's crazy is that you think that most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape.
- rendall 6y ago
  HN is marvelous, in that even the slightest hyperbole will be pointed out as incorrect. By "marvelous" of course I mean tedious
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I don’t think your prior post falls into category of “even the slightest hyperbole”.
    - rendall 6y ago
      Marvelous

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? It was not until now that I came to realize that everyone in American prisons are actually there for assault. The mind reels.

Layke1123 6y ago
I upvoted you, but I want to make sure my reasons for doing so are accurate. This was sarcasm, yes? It might not be so obvious if others read through this so just want to clarify.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I was drily sarcastic yes, as it is obvious that very few people are in prison for assault any argument that makes an appeal to the emotions with the phrasing used is somewhat deserving of being punctured. I thought my response good at indicating the absurdity.
  - Layke1123 6y ago
    Oh absolutely. I loved it. Just wanted to make sure anyone else who read it was unsure that my comment would remove all doubt.
lldbg 6y ago
Nowhere did I make that claim.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  By stating your hypothetical "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" you made a condition only sometimes encountered - violent crime - a reason to treat all criminals worse. I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing. And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it. The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.

adamc 6y ago

I am interested in whether there is any actual evidence retribution works, in terms of recidivism. My first guess would be that the awful experiences in prison just fuck up people more.

pwinnski 6y ago
Your first guess is borne out by the recidivism rate, which is in the high-80s nationwisde.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If a group with a prior criminal behavior rate of near 100% has that rate reduced to 87%, is that evidence that prison is fucking them up even more? (I think prison probably is fucking people up more, but a mere citation of high recidivism rate isn’t evidence of that to me, given the prior.)
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Given that some percentage of people in jail or prison are there for the crime of possessing drugs, something which college students seem to do regularly without consequences, I'm not really surprised that those people don't re-offend. One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there. Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.

ericd 6y ago

Some people think it's to get them to stop doing bad things to other people, not to get even.

UncleMeat 6y ago

> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.

zamalek 6y ago

I say this knowing full-well that I might seek retribution if something awful were to ever happen to me or my loved ones, but: > I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with. However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation. American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.

benlivengood 6y ago

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job? Would the assaulted be happier having to work to support the attacker for the rest of their life?

sokoloff 6y ago
Some people are quite obviously unfit to participate in free society. Society has to deal with them one way or another. (I’m not claiming that it’s as many as we have incarcerated now, but it’s patently not “zero people”.)

pwinnski 6y ago

> There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch? Yes, nobody should go hungry. Not in prison, not out of prison, nowhere.

lldbg 6y ago
Okay, thats nice. Do you think anyone here on HN is in favour of people going hungry? And by a free lunch, I meant the idiomatic expression.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  It sure seems like some people on this page are very much in favor of people who've committed crimes going hungry, even after they serve their sentences. Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them. Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!