4 ms·

I don't know, ask his victim

kbenson 6y ago
Even were the victim alive, we are not a society that encourages the victim to dictate the punishment, nor allow the victim to carry out the punishment, so what would the victim's thoughts matter? As much as it's presented otherwise, punishment western democracies is first and foremost a method of deterrence for the good of all, not for the satisfaction of those harmed.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
If you are not sentencing someone to life in jail or the death penalty, then you can't treat a prisoner bad enough to cause lasting damage because they will rejoin society at some point. This is irrespective of the victim's thoughts; if I get violently robbed and society + a judge has decided that's worth 10 years in jail, then that's what it is. If you think prisoners deserve absolutely nothing to the point of causing psychological or physical harm then you are saying the crime they committed is worth life in prison or the death penalty. This is assuming a functioning justice system.
danShumway 6y ago
You could excuse literally any punishment with that line of reasoning. It's nonsensical, designed to appeal to emotion instead of presenting a coherent, logical approach to sentencing. At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve.
- chmod775 6y ago
  > It's nonsensical, designed to appeal to emotion instead of presenting a coherent, logical approach to sentencing. That's the thing though. Sentencing in the US is driven by emotions. That's how they like it. That's what they want. Nobody cares about what's best for society. Nobody cares about having five times the recidivism rate and the highest prison population in the world. What they do want is satisfy their base urge for revenge. And they're pretty good at that. Different goals, different outcomes.
- slibhb 6y ago
  > At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve. To me, these two things are the same. I want to live in a society where people are held responsible for their actions. If they commit a crime, they should be punished in proportion to their crime. This is a kind of humanism because it respects individuals' freedom of choice (i.e. you choose to commit a crime...or not). To be concerned "whether or not people are getting what they deserve" is the definition of justice. And it goes both ways: if the punishment is too severe, too random, or inflicted on the innocent, that is also a problem.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions. Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are in when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet. Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them.
    - slibhb 6y ago
      > Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions. If we grant humans responsibility then this is not true. If we jail someone for knocking over a liquor store and then he gets out 5 years later and kills an old lady, the responsibility for those crimes is his. Not "society's," not "the criminal justice system's," only his. My argument is that humans can make choices and therefore we are responsible for our actions. You argument is that humans cannot make choices, we are rag dolls tossed around by fate (or whichever system you feel like attacking). > Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet. > Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them. Talking about "prisoners who haven't been properly rehabilitated" makes my skin crawl. Criminals are human beings and you don't have a right to mold them according to your whims just because they broke the law. You only have a right to punish them in proportion to their crime, nothing more or less. You believe that through empirical and rational reasoning you can "rehabilitate" criminals in order to reduce crime. I don't think this is true. I think your perspective is driven by emotion, a distaste for punishment, and a sense that the downtrodden are always right. But even if it is true, I'm against it on humanistic grounds. A society where criminals are punished proportionally to their crimes is an end in itself.
nickelcitymario 6y ago
It's not about him. It's about us, as a society. When we imprison someone, we take ownership and responsibility for their well-being. To be clear, we can decide, as the responsibility holders over their well-being, that we believe they should be treated like garbage. Right or wrong, we have that ability and there is no higher authority than society itself to determine if that's right or wrong. Although I have a strong opinion about what is or isn't an appropriate punishment, we absolutely should not be basing our decisions on the feelings of the victim. Putting aside that the victim is dead and can't express how they feel about it, this is no way to run a law-based society. If I commit a crime, and someone else commits an identical crime, surely we can agree that the punishment -- whatever it may be -- should be the same (or at least equivalent). It shouldn't vary based on who the victim is or how the victim may feel about it.

Even were the victim alive, we are not a society that encourages the victim to dictate the punishment, nor allow the victim to carry out the punishment, so what would the victim's thoughts matter? As much as it's presented otherwise, punishment western democracies is first and foremost a method of deterrence for the good of all, not for the satisfaction of those harmed.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

If you are not sentencing someone to life in jail or the death penalty, then you can't treat a prisoner bad enough to cause lasting damage because they will rejoin society at some point. This is irrespective of the victim's thoughts; if I get violently robbed and society + a judge has decided that's worth 10 years in jail, then that's what it is. If you think prisoners deserve absolutely nothing to the point of causing psychological or physical harm then you are saying the crime they committed is worth life in prison or the death penalty. This is assuming a functioning justice system.

danShumway 6y ago

You could excuse literally any punishment with that line of reasoning. It's nonsensical, designed to appeal to emotion instead of presenting a coherent, logical approach to sentencing. At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve.

chmod775 6y ago
> It's nonsensical, designed to appeal to emotion instead of presenting a coherent, logical approach to sentencing. That's the thing though. Sentencing in the US is driven by emotions. That's how they like it. That's what they want. Nobody cares about what's best for society. Nobody cares about having five times the recidivism rate and the highest prison population in the world. What they do want is satisfy their base urge for revenge. And they're pretty good at that. Different goals, different outcomes.
slibhb 6y ago
> At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve. To me, these two things are the same. I want to live in a society where people are held responsible for their actions. If they commit a crime, they should be punished in proportion to their crime. This is a kind of humanism because it respects individuals' freedom of choice (i.e. you choose to commit a crime...or not). To be concerned "whether or not people are getting what they deserve" is the definition of justice. And it goes both ways: if the punishment is too severe, too random, or inflicted on the innocent, that is also a problem.
- danShumway 6y ago
  Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions. Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are in when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet. Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    > Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions. If we grant humans responsibility then this is not true. If we jail someone for knocking over a liquor store and then he gets out 5 years later and kills an old lady, the responsibility for those crimes is his. Not "society's," not "the criminal justice system's," only his. My argument is that humans can make choices and therefore we are responsible for our actions. You argument is that humans cannot make choices, we are rag dolls tossed around by fate (or whichever system you feel like attacking). > Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet. > Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them. Talking about "prisoners who haven't been properly rehabilitated" makes my skin crawl. Criminals are human beings and you don't have a right to mold them according to your whims just because they broke the law. You only have a right to punish them in proportion to their crime, nothing more or less. You believe that through empirical and rational reasoning you can "rehabilitate" criminals in order to reduce crime. I don't think this is true. I think your perspective is driven by emotion, a distaste for punishment, and a sense that the downtrodden are always right. But even if it is true, I'm against it on humanistic grounds. A society where criminals are punished proportionally to their crimes is an end in itself.

nickelcitymario 6y ago

It's not about him. It's about us, as a society. When we imprison someone, we take ownership and responsibility for their well-being. To be clear, we can decide, as the responsibility holders over their well-being, that we believe they should be treated like garbage. Right or wrong, we have that ability and there is no higher authority than society itself to determine if that's right or wrong. Although I have a strong opinion about what is or isn't an appropriate punishment, we absolutely should not be basing our decisions on the feelings of the victim. Putting aside that the victim is dead and can't express how they feel about it, this is no way to run a law-based society. If I commit a crime, and someone else commits an identical crime, surely we can agree that the punishment -- whatever it may be -- should be the same (or at least equivalent). It shouldn't vary based on who the victim is or how the victim may feel about it.