4 ms·

What will future generations do with people who kill other people?

• TheFreim 4y ago
  That's really the issue with calling incarceration wrong generally. I'd understand someone opposing it for all crimes and proposing alternative punishments depending on the situation but it seems that there are going to be situations where it's immoral /not/ to lock someone in prison.
  • int_19h 4y ago
    The immoral part is when you lock someone up as a punishment. If we did this to ensure safety for everyone else, we'd only lock up people who are actually likely to commit another crime, and then only for as long as that remains true. Notions like "if you do X, the minimum sentence is Y", which are kinda fundamental to how we run our justice system, are not compatible with that.
    • TheFreim 4y ago
      > The immoral part is when you lock someone up as a punishment. I guess this is where the fundamental disagreement is located. I don't see anything immoral about locking someone up for committing certain crimes any more than its immoral for a parent to confine a child to a room or take away something according to the "crime".
      • int_19h 4y ago
        Well, yes, it's the difference between punitive vs restorative justice. But the thing about prisons is that they aren't good as a punishment, either. Indeed, they came about as a supposedly "corrective" alternative to the more punitive approach. In practice, to punish someone by locking them up, you have to make the terms so long that the effects linger in their lives long after. Furthermore, locking random people up with career criminals for long periods of time is a wonderful way to turn them into the same. If we really just want to punish people, let's bring back corporal punishment and be done with it. Ah, but that's considered barbaric - and yet somehow locking someone up for years is not?..