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There's an irony in that we want criminals to reform and rejoin society, yet we arrest them for doing so on their own initiative. He could have continued to co
by curryst 6y ago
There's an irony in that we want criminals to reform and rejoin society, yet we arrest them for doing so on their own initiative. He could have continued to commit crime, leaving a trail of bodies, and he probably wouldn't have been caught yet. He chose to live a quiet life somewhere out of the way and ended up getting caught for trying to be a normal person.
If he were going to continue living a quiet life there til he died, I have to wonder what we've actually gained here. Yes, he did awful things. I'm not denying that, but nothing we do to him is going to change that. I'm not really convinced that cracking down is going to prevent future crime; it doesn't seem to have stopped the mafia thus far. He's not going to talk, the investigators have called out that they can't make inroads because of their brutal code of silence.
The only thing we get out of this is a sadistic pleasure from punishing a man who seems to have reformed. It's justice porn. Why would anyone on the run from a life sentence bother to try to reform then? You may as well stay in the Mafia; there's nothing for you on the outside.
- jrace 6y agoAre you saying that one is free to commit any crime as long as one day they stop and no longer commit crimes? And no punishment or retribution is required?
- szhu 6y agoPunishment is required. However, because we want people to come clean of their own agency (both to make crime-solving take up less public resources, and to make it such that criminals don't have to wait to get caught before becoming productive and non-harmful members of society), we should adjust incentives such that the punishment for coming clean of one's own accord is a little less, and the punishment for getting caught for the same crime is a little more. Maybe it could be implemented as adding an extra punishment for concealing a crime?
- jrace 6y agoI agree, keep in mind this criminal did not come clean on his own accord. There is no indication he would have ever come clean. All we know is that he did non-criminal activities on youtube. For all we know he could have been operating a human-smuggling operation from his current local. Either way he knowingly and purposefully avoided prosecution.
- szhu 6y agoI agree. I think we should incentivize more people like this to come clean rather than spending our own resources having to go out and search for them. I think this will result in more people like him getting the punishment they deserve, and also makes it so that we turn more of these people back into contributing members of society.