4 ms·

I feel like America's big prison problem is rooted on a deeper issue than mismanagement/corruption. The fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a compo

I feel like America's big prison problem is rooted on a deeper issue than mismanagement/corruption. The fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a component of the criminal justice system is erroneous and the big issue here. As long as the country legally recognizes that those who wronged others need to be wronged to "get their just desserts", the prison system will not reform to a sufficient degree as to stop the excessive incarceration and recidivism problem.

bestsolution 4y ago
[flagged]
- Buttons840 4y ago
  And do you acknowledge that sometimes people will be wrongly convicted of those crimes?
  - bestsolution 4y ago
    All you can ever do is the best that you can under the circumstances. Avoiding a wrongful execution is just one goal. Other goals include the ability of the innocent to enjoy life and the need for justice against wrongdoers.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- version_five 4y ago
  > Justice is not done unless people get what is due to them Even if it's momentarily rewarding, I don't think that's useful from a societal perspective. The justice system should focus on minimizing crime - if punishment does that, fine, but any kind of "getting even" just feeds our base instincts and doesn't accomplish anything. Emotion has no place in a justice system.
  - bestsolution 4y ago
    Human sentiments are the the primary driver of human behavior. You get better results out of harnessing those sentiments than by trying to treat people as purely rational machines.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that the system should leverage people's sentiments for the sake of minimizing crime, and not be designed the way human sentiment would want it to be designed (in this case, yours). If retribution turns out not to minimize crime, then there's no place for it in the justice system. So the only question becomes whether or not retribution minimizes crime more than non-retribution methods.
      - bestsolution 4y ago
        It’s not really possible to measure this over the long run. Short and medium term studies show that mass incarceration dramatically reduced crime in the US, mostly by literally removing violent young men from society, but that’s not the main reason why I support strong punishment. The moral decay of a society can take a hundred years to set in, but once the consequences become apparent, it can be too late to do anything about it. There is a lot of wisdom encoded in the ways of the past. Retribution for crimes is a universal institution for a reason.
        bheadmaster 4y ago
        There's also a lot of bullshit encoded in the ways of the past. Just because you like one of them doesn't make it good for the society. And talking about "moral decay" (as if morality was some objective set of rules that society can either follow or not follow, and not a huge continuum of various moral standards of both individuals and societies) makes me quite sure that you're speaking from sentiment, rather than from reason. "It feels right to me, therefore it is right" is not a good argument for convincing anyone of anything. I agree that it's very hard to measure this sort of thing. There are way too many (constantly changing) factors that affect the crime rate, that it's almost impossible to isolate a single cause and measure its effect. However, that should only motivate us to approach the problem even more rigorously, rather than to resort to subjective heuristics.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  Do you believe most of western Europe's vision and implementation of justice is wrong?
- jaapbadlands 4y ago
  If that system kills one innocent person, then it's not worth the dopamine hit that you're chasing in pursuit of "justice".
  - bestsolution 4y ago
    It’s not the chase of a dopamine hit. It’s the goodness and strength of a society that recognizes the power of properly ordered human sentiments.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a component of the criminal justice system is erroneous and the big issue here It's irrational. But probably necessary for broader buy-in. The other purposes for prisons are reformation, incapacitation and deterrence. Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  They're only linked insofar as they both use prisons as "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > only linked insofar as they both use prisons as "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in They're linked in that "a sense of morality transcend[s] immediate self-interest and fear of punishment" [1]. Retribution links the justice system to our sense of morality. That deters crime. The research on punitive damages tends to be more clear-headed than anything I've read on criminal law in this matter [2]. (For example, punitive damages provide "aggrieved parties with an attractive substitute for revenge.") [1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterrence-versus-retribution-debate-meaning-punishment-policy https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterren... [2] https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&=&context=law_facpub&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%25252C33%2526q%253D%252522retribution%252522%252Bmonkeys%2526btnG%253D#search=%22retribution%20monkeys%22 https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&...
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  > Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked. This is very much not the case. "Deterrence" solely operates on future actors. "Retribution" on those who have already transgressed. We know that the vast vast vast majority of crimes are not committed with a cost-benefit analysis. So no matter how badly you punish the criminals will you prevent most crimes. No man willing to kill his cheating wife thinks "Well, I could 15, 17 tops, sure, but 25 is too much. Okay, I need a new plan".
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
[flagged]
michaelsbradley 4y ago
Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord." (Ps 101:8) – Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, 5, n. 4 (1566) – http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual's right to life. In this case it is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of his right to live. – Pius XII, Address to the First International Congress of Histopathology of the Nervous System (14 Sep 1952)
_jewl 4y ago
This is already continuously tried. All it creates is a lack of trust in the justice system. If you remove the ability of the justice system to make the people feel that justice has been served, people will revert to vigilante justice. You need confidence in the system. It's all well and good to say that that's irrational, and has no place in a logical society - but this isn't a logical, rational society. That's why we need a justice system in the first place. Ultimately, until you can change human nature, some amount of tangible consequences that make the victims, their family, and the public at large feel that justice has been served, perpetrators have received appropriate consequences, and vigilante justice is unnecessary. Finally, has the infinite-empathy approach been shown to work anywhere where there is an existing, significant crime problem, and where it's liable to being abused - that is, most of the world? And working is about more than empathy towards violent criminals and the reduction of crime statistics (though anecdotally I doubt it would achieve the latter). Ultimately the justice system's number one priority should be victims, their interests and welfare, and reducing the amount of new ones. Criminals have made their decision; victims are innocent. I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't have issues. I'm not American personally, but it appears to have a lot of problems. However, I don't think incurring consequences for people's actions is the root problem here.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >This is already continuously tried. All it creates is a lack of trust in the justice system. If you remove the ability of the justice system to make the people feel that justice has been served, people will revert to vigilante justice. You need confidence in the system. Sorry, but that's just ignorant. Countries with non-retribution based justice systems fare much better in lower crime than the US. So much better it's not even funny. >I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't have issues. I'm not American personally, but it appears to have a lot of problems. However, I don't think incurring consequences for people's actions is the root problem here. "Incurring conseqeuences" is orthogonal to the issue here. Going to jail and being kept there is already a consequence. The US system turns "inflicting medieval/biblical conditions and systemic revenge" into the consequence.
local_crmdgeon 4y ago
There's a chunk of the population that should be warehoused for the safety of the vast majority. Consider the 327 people that commit 1/3rd of NYC theft (https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/327-crooks-made-up-30-of-shoplifting-arrests-in-2022-nypd/ https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/327-crooks-made-up-30-of-shopl...) or pedophiles. You're never going to fix some people. The world is not as soft as people hope. If the system doesn't provide justice, people will - consider the enormous adoration for Jason Vukovich.
- babelfish 4y ago
  The goals should be rehabilitation, and in the cases you mention, containment. Retribution should NEVER be a goal of the state.
  - local_crmdgeon 4y ago
    Don't state an opinion as fact. There's many examples of the state letting people off, then the family taking matters into their own hands, with public approval. Retribution is important for those who hurt others.
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      > Don't state an opinion as fact. > Retribution is important for those who hurt others. Maybe try to be a little consistent? At least within the bounds of a single three sentence comment.
  - singleshot_ 4y ago
    I’m not sure there is a justification for your point, but I hear the point. The counterpoint is that retribution MUST be a goal of the state, because if the state does not provide a sanitized replacement of what some surviving victims of crime will naturally want to do. Put it this way: if someone killed my son, I would quite naturally want them dead. But then I would be killing someone’s son, and I’m sure you can detect the problem there. If the state provides an implicit contract to everyone that the result of citizen on citizen violence will contain some sanitized version of retribution that substitutes for eye-for-an-eye justice, then overall violence will be reduced by the severance of the cycle.
slibhb 4y ago
I understand that some people are troubled by retributive justice (I am not). But the idea that criminality in the US stems from retributive justice isn't true. Japan has low crime and executes people regularly. Russia has a high crime rate and hasn't executed anyone since the 90s.
bequanna 4y ago
I don’t think retribution is the main goal. The point is to keep demonstrated antisocial people who cause significant disruption and harm in our society in a place where they can’t hurt us.
coldtea 4y ago
Starting life in (or getting eventually out of prison back to) a highly individualistic society, where "you're on your own", and one where gun ownership is trivial, doesn't help either.

bestsolution 4y ago

[flagged]

Buttons840 4y ago
And do you acknowledge that sometimes people will be wrongly convicted of those crimes?
- bestsolution 4y ago
  All you can ever do is the best that you can under the circumstances. Avoiding a wrongful execution is just one goal. Other goals include the ability of the innocent to enjoy life and the need for justice against wrongdoers.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
version_five 4y ago
> Justice is not done unless people get what is due to them Even if it's momentarily rewarding, I don't think that's useful from a societal perspective. The justice system should focus on minimizing crime - if punishment does that, fine, but any kind of "getting even" just feeds our base instincts and doesn't accomplish anything. Emotion has no place in a justice system.
- bestsolution 4y ago
  Human sentiments are the the primary driver of human behavior. You get better results out of harnessing those sentiments than by trying to treat people as purely rational machines.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that the system should leverage people's sentiments for the sake of minimizing crime, and not be designed the way human sentiment would want it to be designed (in this case, yours). If retribution turns out not to minimize crime, then there's no place for it in the justice system. So the only question becomes whether or not retribution minimizes crime more than non-retribution methods.
    - bestsolution 4y ago
      It’s not really possible to measure this over the long run. Short and medium term studies show that mass incarceration dramatically reduced crime in the US, mostly by literally removing violent young men from society, but that’s not the main reason why I support strong punishment. The moral decay of a society can take a hundred years to set in, but once the consequences become apparent, it can be too late to do anything about it. There is a lot of wisdom encoded in the ways of the past. Retribution for crimes is a universal institution for a reason.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
        There's also a lot of bullshit encoded in the ways of the past. Just because you like one of them doesn't make it good for the society. And talking about "moral decay" (as if morality was some objective set of rules that society can either follow or not follow, and not a huge continuum of various moral standards of both individuals and societies) makes me quite sure that you're speaking from sentiment, rather than from reason. "It feels right to me, therefore it is right" is not a good argument for convincing anyone of anything. I agree that it's very hard to measure this sort of thing. There are way too many (constantly changing) factors that affect the crime rate, that it's almost impossible to isolate a single cause and measure its effect. However, that should only motivate us to approach the problem even more rigorously, rather than to resort to subjective heuristics.
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
Do you believe most of western Europe's vision and implementation of justice is wrong?
jaapbadlands 4y ago
If that system kills one innocent person, then it's not worth the dopamine hit that you're chasing in pursuit of "justice".
- bestsolution 4y ago
  It’s not the chase of a dopamine hit. It’s the goodness and strength of a society that recognizes the power of properly ordered human sentiments.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a component of the criminal justice system is erroneous and the big issue here It's irrational. But probably necessary for broader buy-in. The other purposes for prisons are reformation, incapacitation and deterrence. Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked.

EMIRELADERO 4y ago
They're only linked insofar as they both use prisons as "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > only linked insofar as they both use prisons as "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in They're linked in that "a sense of morality transcend[s] immediate self-interest and fear of punishment" [1]. Retribution links the justice system to our sense of morality. That deters crime. The research on punitive damages tends to be more clear-headed than anything I've read on criminal law in this matter [2]. (For example, punitive damages provide "aggrieved parties with an attractive substitute for revenge.") [1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterrence-versus-retribution-debate-meaning-punishment-policy https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterren... [2] https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&=&context=law_facpub&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%25252C33%2526q%253D%252522retribution%252522%252Bmonkeys%2526btnG%253D#search=%22retribution%20monkeys%22 https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&...
Pet_Ant 4y ago
> Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked. This is very much not the case. "Deterrence" solely operates on future actors. "Retribution" on those who have already transgressed. We know that the vast vast vast majority of crimes are not committed with a cost-benefit analysis. So no matter how badly you punish the criminals will you prevent most crimes. No man willing to kill his cheating wife thinks "Well, I could 15, 17 tops, sure, but 25 is too much. Okay, I need a new plan".

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

[flagged]

michaelsbradley 4y ago

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord." (Ps 101:8) – Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, 5, n. 4 (1566) – http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual's right to life. In this case it is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of his right to live. – Pius XII, Address to the First International Congress of Histopathology of the Nervous System (14 Sep 1952)

_jewl 4y ago

This is already continuously tried. All it creates is a lack of trust in the justice system. If you remove the ability of the justice system to make the people feel that justice has been served, people will revert to vigilante justice. You need confidence in the system. It's all well and good to say that that's irrational, and has no place in a logical society - but this isn't a logical, rational society. That's why we need a justice system in the first place. Ultimately, until you can change human nature, some amount of tangible consequences that make the victims, their family, and the public at large feel that justice has been served, perpetrators have received appropriate consequences, and vigilante justice is unnecessary. Finally, has the infinite-empathy approach been shown to work anywhere where there is an existing, significant crime problem, and where it's liable to being abused - that is, most of the world? And working is about more than empathy towards violent criminals and the reduction of crime statistics (though anecdotally I doubt it would achieve the latter). Ultimately the justice system's number one priority should be victims, their interests and welfare, and reducing the amount of new ones. Criminals have made their decision; victims are innocent. I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't have issues. I'm not American personally, but it appears to have a lot of problems. However, I don't think incurring consequences for people's actions is the root problem here.

coldtea 4y ago
>This is already continuously tried. All it creates is a lack of trust in the justice system. If you remove the ability of the justice system to make the people feel that justice has been served, people will revert to vigilante justice. You need confidence in the system. Sorry, but that's just ignorant. Countries with non-retribution based justice systems fare much better in lower crime than the US. So much better it's not even funny. >I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't have issues. I'm not American personally, but it appears to have a lot of problems. However, I don't think incurring consequences for people's actions is the root problem here. "Incurring conseqeuences" is orthogonal to the issue here. Going to jail and being kept there is already a consequence. The US system turns "inflicting medieval/biblical conditions and systemic revenge" into the consequence.

local_crmdgeon 4y ago

There's a chunk of the population that should be warehoused for the safety of the vast majority. Consider the 327 people that commit 1/3rd of NYC theft (https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/327-crooks-made-up-30-of-shoplifting-arrests-in-2022-nypd/ https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/327-crooks-made-up-30-of-shopl...) or pedophiles. You're never going to fix some people. The world is not as soft as people hope. If the system doesn't provide justice, people will - consider the enormous adoration for Jason Vukovich.

babelfish 4y ago
The goals should be rehabilitation, and in the cases you mention, containment. Retribution should NEVER be a goal of the state.
- local_crmdgeon 4y ago
  Don't state an opinion as fact. There's many examples of the state letting people off, then the family taking matters into their own hands, with public approval. Retribution is important for those who hurt others.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    > Don't state an opinion as fact. > Retribution is important for those who hurt others. Maybe try to be a little consistent? At least within the bounds of a single three sentence comment.
- singleshot_ 4y ago
  I’m not sure there is a justification for your point, but I hear the point. The counterpoint is that retribution MUST be a goal of the state, because if the state does not provide a sanitized replacement of what some surviving victims of crime will naturally want to do. Put it this way: if someone killed my son, I would quite naturally want them dead. But then I would be killing someone’s son, and I’m sure you can detect the problem there. If the state provides an implicit contract to everyone that the result of citizen on citizen violence will contain some sanitized version of retribution that substitutes for eye-for-an-eye justice, then overall violence will be reduced by the severance of the cycle.

slibhb 4y ago

I understand that some people are troubled by retributive justice (I am not). But the idea that criminality in the US stems from retributive justice isn't true. Japan has low crime and executes people regularly. Russia has a high crime rate and hasn't executed anyone since the 90s.

bequanna 4y ago

I don’t think retribution is the main goal. The point is to keep demonstrated antisocial people who cause significant disruption and harm in our society in a place where they can’t hurt us.

coldtea 4y ago

Starting life in (or getting eventually out of prison back to) a highly individualistic society, where "you're on your own", and one where gun ownership is trivial, doesn't help either.