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Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive

Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool, particularly when the subject has neither committed physical violence nor poses such a threat to others. Surely you clever people can think of forms of punishment/deterrence less destructive to both the individual and society as a whole.

Silhouette 13y ago
Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool We aren't reaching for it casually. Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended, and regard an attack on our privacy with the same seriousness that we would regard an attack on our physical person. Which is more of a danger to me, someone who punches me in the face on their drunk night out and gives me a bloody lip and a bit of pain for a few hours, or someone who betrays confidences that may have lifelong implications for my employability, insurance premiums and credit levels, ability to travel freely, and for that matter my self-respect and basic human dignity, before you even get to the kinds of more extreme and very physical dangers that could be posed by invasions of privacy if we consider the lessons of history?
- ataggart 13y ago
  >Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended The severity of a punishment can be tuned separately from the form of punishment. Imprisonment is not appropriate merely by dint of your emotional reaction to the crime itself. >Which is more of a danger to me... Sufficient to warrant throwing them in a cage, being brutalized by actually violent criminals, imposing a direct cost burden on society, and also indirectly by depriving society of that individual's productivity? Probably neither.
  - pasbesoin 13y ago
    Financial penalties have a long record of poor influence toward desired, legal behaviour. Further, they tend to simply be, sooner or later, passed on to the customers or clients who in many cases are the original wronged. Those individuals actually responsible for the sanctioned behaviour are not or only weakly punished and perhaps influenced against its repetition. As an individual, one could well go to prison for such misbehaviour. Corporate and government employment should not serve as an impenetrable shield and dilution of responsibility against such eventuality. Incarceration is often described as having two goals: Punishment for crimes committed, and mitigation against such crimes. For the latter, both by actual restraint and by aversion to the potential results. It seems that stronger aversion is needed; we have a systemic problem with recurrence -- often by the same parties -- of this behaviour.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    We could debate the relative effectiveness of different forms of penalty, and the relative importance of punishment/deterrent, ongoing protection, and rehabilitation, but I'm not sure this is the forum for it. However, let me be clear: if the facts in this case really are as I've seen reported, then I have no problem with taking people who did this, throwing them in a cage, and depriving society of their "productivity" for a while. As far as I'm concerned, that kind of productivity is about as welcome as the banking executives who command "competitive compensation packages" for running their organisations into the ground or the politicians who once elected proceed to legislate for the highest bidder.
DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
Poor record keeping is essentially providing blackmail material on thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or occasionally millions of people. We put blackmailers in to jail, and we should put people who provide enough sensitive material to blackmail an entire city in to jail as well.
cabalamat 13y ago
> Surely you clever people can think of forms of punishment/deterrence less destructive to both the individual and society as a whole. OK, how about getting all their personal information and putting it on a public website?
blueskin_ 13y ago
What they did is destructive to individual privacy and liberty. This may be a strange concept to you, but you can commit a crime non-physically. After all, lots of people think bankers should be arrested for having traded bad debt and precipitating the recession.

Silhouette 13y ago

Taking a sentient human being and throwing them in a cage is a profoundly violent act. I find it troubling that you guys so casually reach for it as a punitive tool We aren't reaching for it casually. Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended, and regard an attack on our privacy with the same seriousness that we would regard an attack on our physical person. Which is more of a danger to me, someone who punches me in the face on their drunk night out and gives me a bloody lip and a bit of pain for a few hours, or someone who betrays confidences that may have lifelong implications for my employability, insurance premiums and credit levels, ability to travel freely, and for that matter my self-respect and basic human dignity, before you even get to the kinds of more extreme and very physical dangers that could be posed by invasions of privacy if we consider the lessons of history?

ataggart 13y ago
>Some of us consider privacy a fundamental value that must be defended The severity of a punishment can be tuned separately from the form of punishment. Imprisonment is not appropriate merely by dint of your emotional reaction to the crime itself. >Which is more of a danger to me... Sufficient to warrant throwing them in a cage, being brutalized by actually violent criminals, imposing a direct cost burden on society, and also indirectly by depriving society of that individual's productivity? Probably neither.
- pasbesoin 13y ago
  Financial penalties have a long record of poor influence toward desired, legal behaviour. Further, they tend to simply be, sooner or later, passed on to the customers or clients who in many cases are the original wronged. Those individuals actually responsible for the sanctioned behaviour are not or only weakly punished and perhaps influenced against its repetition. As an individual, one could well go to prison for such misbehaviour. Corporate and government employment should not serve as an impenetrable shield and dilution of responsibility against such eventuality. Incarceration is often described as having two goals: Punishment for crimes committed, and mitigation against such crimes. For the latter, both by actual restraint and by aversion to the potential results. It seems that stronger aversion is needed; we have a systemic problem with recurrence -- often by the same parties -- of this behaviour.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  We could debate the relative effectiveness of different forms of penalty, and the relative importance of punishment/deterrent, ongoing protection, and rehabilitation, but I'm not sure this is the forum for it. However, let me be clear: if the facts in this case really are as I've seen reported, then I have no problem with taking people who did this, throwing them in a cage, and depriving society of their "productivity" for a while. As far as I'm concerned, that kind of productivity is about as welcome as the banking executives who command "competitive compensation packages" for running their organisations into the ground or the politicians who once elected proceed to legislate for the highest bidder.

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago

Poor record keeping is essentially providing blackmail material on thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or occasionally millions of people. We put blackmailers in to jail, and we should put people who provide enough sensitive material to blackmail an entire city in to jail as well.

cabalamat 13y ago

> Surely you clever people can think of forms of punishment/deterrence less destructive to both the individual and society as a whole. OK, how about getting all their personal information and putting it on a public website?

blueskin_ 13y ago

What they did is destructive to individual privacy and liberty. This may be a strange concept to you, but you can commit a crime non-physically. After all, lots of people think bankers should be arrested for having traded bad debt and precipitating the recession.