6 ms·

I remember reading an article/study that said we think we punish for deterrence, but we mostly punish out of spite. edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/

I remember reading an article/study that said we think we punish for deterrence, but we mostly punish out of spite. edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-its-about-spite https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...

dartos 3y ago
What’s the difference?
- mlyle 3y ago
  Deterrence makes someone not want to commit the crime because of fear of the consequences. Retribution ("spite") is about getting even. Rehabilitation is about making it so that the person is less likely to offend again when released and more likely to be of positive value to society. Removal is about locking someone up so they cannot do more crimes. A good prison system should balance all four.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment) and it seems like something where people would bring in a ton of bias.
    - rustcleaner 3y ago
      Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        Recidivism was something I wondered about for a second, but I think it is not what we’re looking for. I think the theory of deterrence is specifically that punishing crimes harshly will make other members of society less willing to commit crimes. Recidivism is a failure of rehabilitation, not deterrence, right? It also seems like the population of ex-criminals couldn’t be representative of the population as a whole, right? (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not correct, I can’t prove a negative, but the burden of proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I think).
        mlyle 3y ago
        > (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not correct, I can’t prove a negative, but the burden of proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I think). There are absolutely times that I do not speed because I am concerned about the consequences of getting caught. There are absolutely students in the school where I teach who follow given rules not because they agree with them, but because they are deterred by consequences. They refrain from climbing the volleyball net not from moral agreement, but because it will get them in trouble. It's better for people to not commit crimes because they agree on the morals and principles involved... but if people don't agree or have a moment of weakness, the consequences are still influential.
        bee_rider 3y ago
        These are just anecdotes, which are fine for informal conversations like this, but hopefully you’d be a little more rigorous if you were seriously proposing a course of action for the justice system. In the case of students, they seem to try and cheat sometimes, so the deterrence doesn’t seem very effective. Anyway, the negative consequence is very disperse (it hurts the reputation of the school if they get through without learning anything). The main bad result falls on them (they waste thousands of dollars to intentionally avoid learning). They also might fail the final, not as a punishment, but as a natural result of not learning the material. In the case of speeding, everyone here speeds. The flow of traffic is always 5-10 over the speed limit here. People are intentionally breaking the posted speed limit to go the safer speed (going the speed limit here impedes the flow of traffic and makes a more dangerous situation for everyone). I think it is more of an informal decision making process—people just follow the herd—but it is a funny example!
  - jimkleiber 3y ago
    I really appreciate how you mapped out those four concepts and the language you used for them, I feel a lot more clear on it. Thank you.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Thank you!
Galacta7 3y ago
Retribution shouldn't be the driving force, but I can understand it from a societal standpoint. Victims and the families of the victims will want to see a punishment applied for the harm they've suffered. It's in the state's interest to make sure that it's not excessively applied, but to degree there's a mix of correction and retribution that has to be taken into account at sentencing. One person's spite is another's justice. I think that if too many people see retribution as no longer being applied, some people will start to take matters into their own hands to seek vengeance. The state has an interest in preventing that and assuring retribution is applied as evenly as possible, and counterbalanced by other mitigating factors (e.g. the degree of offense, the circumstances under which it occurred, likelihood of reoffending, penitence of the guilty, etc.).
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I find your points quite interesting. If I'm understanding correctly, that if the victims, families of victims, or frankly, anyone who feels pain and wants to seek retribution, don't believe that the retribution is sufficient, then they may take action into their own hands. I witnessed this living in Tanzania, where if people didn't trust the police to arrest and punish someone who stole, sometimes the people would track down and seek mob justice (violence?) against the person who stole. So if the government would take a true rehabilitative approach, and maybe arrest people but treat them well, try to help them so they don't do the same behaviors in the future, a percentage of the population might see that as insufficient and take retribution into their own hands. You've helped me realize why I've actually shifted my professional focus from wanting to change politics to wanting to change culture. Seems a lot of being in government is doing what the people want, and if the people want retribution, then the government has to follow it. I hope for (and am working towards) a world in which we help people know our pain not by trying to cause the same pain to them, but by expressing our pain to them with more granularity, because the pain they'd feel as a result of retribution will never be the exact same pain we feel, as our contexts are way too complex to replicate exactly. I really appreciate your comment, thank you for helping me think more deeply about this.
  - bombcar 3y ago
bartread 3y ago
I think both of those are flawed views. Not necessarily mistaken, but incomplete. One of the key reasons we imprison people is to prevent them from doing further harm to society: i.e., we put them in prison for our benefit, not theirs. It's definitely good if they're rehabilitated along the way, but rehabilitation isn't necessary for their imprisonment to be a net benefit to society.
- johnisgood 3y ago
  Any thoughts on victimless crimes?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    What is a victimless crime? Speeding? Even though excessive speed is strongly correlated with crash deaths? Fraud? The money comes from somewhere; someone is harmed by it (Pratchett's Going Postal has a good line on it - "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
    - hackable_sand 3y ago
      Littering and...?
  - jimkleiber 3y ago
    I think it depends on how we define victim, and especially how direct and tangible the harm needs to be to be considered a victim. But maybe it also has to do with whether people feel victimized. If no one felt victimized, would we punish? So I imagine it's probably a combination of who feels victimized and who society believes should feel victimized. Because as others may respond, white-collar crime has people who get harmed as a result of the actions, even if it's not as obvious as the person directly punching them in the face. One could argue that even the fact of breaking the law can harm those who went through great lengths to not break the law.
recursive 3y ago
If you do something for spite, does that mean it's not deterrent?
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I'll try to find the article, I think the point was that we think we are being violent to others with a conscious intention of trying to prevent future violence, but that most of the time we are doing it with the intention of them knowing our current pain that we think they caused to us, not really thinking much about the future. So if the spite causes people to feel sufficiently afraid to do the action in the future, maybe it deters people from acting that way? edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-its-about-spite https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...
rootusrootus 3y ago
IMO an important component of punishment is convincing society that justice has been served. Too light a punishment, and vigilantism will become prevalent.
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  Your comment and another above has me thinking that it's almost like vicarious punishment. "If you don't punch them, I will, so you better punch them hard enough."
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    It makes sense. We empower the government to act on our behalf, including with violence. Arguably it is one of the fundamental reasons for government to exist.
    - jimkleiber 3y ago
      And I wonder if certain calculations, like preventing vigilantism, tend to act on the behalf of not the majority of a population but an extreme few. Or in other words, if 95% of the population support an idea but 5% violently opposes it, does the government cater more to the 95% or 5%? At what point are government officials afraid that the 5% will commit violent acts against society or them and their loved ones and therefore cater to their perspective more than the majority?

dartos 3y ago

What’s the difference?

mlyle 3y ago
Deterrence makes someone not want to commit the crime because of fear of the consequences. Retribution ("spite") is about getting even. Rehabilitation is about making it so that the person is less likely to offend again when released and more likely to be of positive value to society. Removal is about locking someone up so they cannot do more crimes. A good prison system should balance all four.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment) and it seems like something where people would bring in a ton of bias.
  - rustcleaner 3y ago
    Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Recidivism was something I wondered about for a second, but I think it is not what we’re looking for. I think the theory of deterrence is specifically that punishing crimes harshly will make other members of society less willing to commit crimes. Recidivism is a failure of rehabilitation, not deterrence, right? It also seems like the population of ex-criminals couldn’t be representative of the population as a whole, right? (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not correct, I can’t prove a negative, but the burden of proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I think).
      - mlyle 3y ago
        > (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not correct, I can’t prove a negative, but the burden of proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I think). There are absolutely times that I do not speed because I am concerned about the consequences of getting caught. There are absolutely students in the school where I teach who follow given rules not because they agree with them, but because they are deterred by consequences. They refrain from climbing the volleyball net not from moral agreement, but because it will get them in trouble. It's better for people to not commit crimes because they agree on the morals and principles involved... but if people don't agree or have a moment of weakness, the consequences are still influential.
        bee_rider 3y ago
        These are just anecdotes, which are fine for informal conversations like this, but hopefully you’d be a little more rigorous if you were seriously proposing a course of action for the justice system. In the case of students, they seem to try and cheat sometimes, so the deterrence doesn’t seem very effective. Anyway, the negative consequence is very disperse (it hurts the reputation of the school if they get through without learning anything). The main bad result falls on them (they waste thousands of dollars to intentionally avoid learning). They also might fail the final, not as a punishment, but as a natural result of not learning the material. In the case of speeding, everyone here speeds. The flow of traffic is always 5-10 over the speed limit here. People are intentionally breaking the posted speed limit to go the safer speed (going the speed limit here impedes the flow of traffic and makes a more dangerous situation for everyone). I think it is more of an informal decision making process—people just follow the herd—but it is a funny example!
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I really appreciate how you mapped out those four concepts and the language you used for them, I feel a lot more clear on it. Thank you.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Thank you!

Galacta7 3y ago

Retribution shouldn't be the driving force, but I can understand it from a societal standpoint. Victims and the families of the victims will want to see a punishment applied for the harm they've suffered. It's in the state's interest to make sure that it's not excessively applied, but to degree there's a mix of correction and retribution that has to be taken into account at sentencing. One person's spite is another's justice. I think that if too many people see retribution as no longer being applied, some people will start to take matters into their own hands to seek vengeance. The state has an interest in preventing that and assuring retribution is applied as evenly as possible, and counterbalanced by other mitigating factors (e.g. the degree of offense, the circumstances under which it occurred, likelihood of reoffending, penitence of the guilty, etc.).

jimkleiber 3y ago
I find your points quite interesting. If I'm understanding correctly, that if the victims, families of victims, or frankly, anyone who feels pain and wants to seek retribution, don't believe that the retribution is sufficient, then they may take action into their own hands. I witnessed this living in Tanzania, where if people didn't trust the police to arrest and punish someone who stole, sometimes the people would track down and seek mob justice (violence?) against the person who stole. So if the government would take a true rehabilitative approach, and maybe arrest people but treat them well, try to help them so they don't do the same behaviors in the future, a percentage of the population might see that as insufficient and take retribution into their own hands. You've helped me realize why I've actually shifted my professional focus from wanting to change politics to wanting to change culture. Seems a lot of being in government is doing what the people want, and if the people want retribution, then the government has to follow it. I hope for (and am working towards) a world in which we help people know our pain not by trying to cause the same pain to them, but by expressing our pain to them with more granularity, because the pain they'd feel as a result of retribution will never be the exact same pain we feel, as our contexts are way too complex to replicate exactly. I really appreciate your comment, thank you for helping me think more deeply about this.
- bombcar 3y ago

bartread 3y ago

I think both of those are flawed views. Not necessarily mistaken, but incomplete. One of the key reasons we imprison people is to prevent them from doing further harm to society: i.e., we put them in prison for our benefit, not theirs. It's definitely good if they're rehabilitated along the way, but rehabilitation isn't necessary for their imprisonment to be a net benefit to society.

johnisgood 3y ago
Any thoughts on victimless crimes?
- bombcar 3y ago
  What is a victimless crime? Speeding? Even though excessive speed is strongly correlated with crash deaths? Fraud? The money comes from somewhere; someone is harmed by it (Pratchett's Going Postal has a good line on it - "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
  - hackable_sand 3y ago
    Littering and...?
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I think it depends on how we define victim, and especially how direct and tangible the harm needs to be to be considered a victim. But maybe it also has to do with whether people feel victimized. If no one felt victimized, would we punish? So I imagine it's probably a combination of who feels victimized and who society believes should feel victimized. Because as others may respond, white-collar crime has people who get harmed as a result of the actions, even if it's not as obvious as the person directly punching them in the face. One could argue that even the fact of breaking the law can harm those who went through great lengths to not break the law.

recursive 3y ago

If you do something for spite, does that mean it's not deterrent?

jimkleiber 3y ago
I'll try to find the article, I think the point was that we think we are being violent to others with a conscious intention of trying to prevent future violence, but that most of the time we are doing it with the intention of them knowing our current pain that we think they caused to us, not really thinking much about the future. So if the spite causes people to feel sufficiently afraid to do the action in the future, maybe it deters people from acting that way? edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-its-about-spite https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...

rootusrootus 3y ago

IMO an important component of punishment is convincing society that justice has been served. Too light a punishment, and vigilantism will become prevalent.

jimkleiber 3y ago
Your comment and another above has me thinking that it's almost like vicarious punishment. "If you don't punch them, I will, so you better punch them hard enough."
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  It makes sense. We empower the government to act on our behalf, including with violence. Arguably it is one of the fundamental reasons for government to exist.
  - jimkleiber 3y ago
    And I wonder if certain calculations, like preventing vigilantism, tend to act on the behalf of not the majority of a population but an extreme few. Or in other words, if 95% of the population support an idea but 5% violently opposes it, does the government cater more to the 95% or 5%? At what point are government officials afraid that the 5% will commit violent acts against society or them and their loved ones and therefore cater to their perspective more than the majority?