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A recent tragic event: Mother accused of killing three children in Massachusetts
The Culture War angle: Following this event some TikTok accounts have released videos in support of the mother and voicing concern over mothers and their mental health, leading to discussion. Examples: https://postimg.cc/NKpX61ty, https://postimg.cc/vxT8d6jK, https://postimg.cc/CnnyNC9w, https://postimg.cc/8FvttKzK, https://postimg.cc/TK6wKhWK, https://postimg.cc/K3cXXSKv
Considering the nature of the crime I find the wording in the TikTok's off putting. This isn't phrased as something the mother, Lindsay Clancy 'did'. It's something that 'happened to her' and that she 'needs support'.
On a tangential note: This reminds me of an older sex war question surrounding female violence towards children and how women are treated in society. Specifically the terminology of SIDS. Sudden Infrant Death Syndrome. Which became a notable issue when multiple women who murdered their own children ended up, after a few years, being released scot-free. Neven Sesardić, a Croatian philosopher, wrote a very interesting article published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Specifically relating to Sally Clark, a woman in the UK who was accused of murdering two of her children, and some relevant statistical analysis that cast aspersions on the validity of SIDS as it was relied on by expert witnesses to defend Clark in court. Along with leveraging statistical critiques against the Royal Statistical Society.
The tangential relevance here is whether or not Lindsay Clancy will be afforded similar legal leniency on top of everything else. Though with the hellish nature of the crime, one could only really hope for punishments that far exceed all the comforts that a lifetime in a women's prison will afford her.
However terrible this crime is, I'm not sure she should be imprisoned.
Consider the multiple punishment purposes: (1) incapacitation, (2) deterrence, (3) restitution, (4) rehabilitation and (5) vengeance.
Incapacitation seems insignificant. Family annihilators do not necessarily kill people outside the family, especially not for a time after the event. It is very unlikely that social care will allow her to start a new family with children. Can such a crazy criminal commit other crimes because of their insanity or lack of impulse control? Again, I will say that this is unlikely, from the stories of other family annihilators who were often completely normal until they were suddenly not.
Deterrence is unlikely. Would any punishment stop someone from doing something so crazy? I would emphasize that she was crazy when she murdered her children and was immune to reason or consequences. Deterrence works against rational actors, not literal crazy dogs. There is even a case for wandering towards the penalty side to prevent feigned unreason, but she literally murdered her children. It's as crazy and irrational as possible.
Restitution is irrelevant without significant advances in biotechnology.
Rehabilitation is similar to incapacitation: she will not have a similar opportunity, so rehabilitation (even if it works, which can not be slightly assumed) does not matter.
I see vengeance as a subtype of deterrence that our evolutionary environment has integrated deep into our minds. There may be a pro-social reason to punish criminals even if it does not serve any of the above rational purposes. It can bind the public and signal a commitment to deterrence. But I do not believe that we are already in our evolutionary environment, and its adaptations are no longer necessarily adaptation to civilized people. When there is a conflict between deeply illegible emotions and reasonable thought, we should pay respect to our emotions but not allow them to govern us entirely.
It sounds cold, but one of the people the most damaged by it is herself. No one feels the loss of a child more than his parent. And her genes will not pass on to the next generation, which is a double incapacitating and deterrent effect. I won’t get as far as TikTokkers and say she deserves compassion—she is a terrible, bad being. But I will say that I am not at all sure what purpose a further punishment is for.
Not to dogpile, but all of this presupposes that there are no "bad" people, only bad actions, and that nobody would rationally choose to commit an evil act (let's lay aside how unevenly applied these ideas are based on the racial/sexual attributes of the person in question). I reject this premise, and so it makes complete sense to me to inflict vengeance on her so that at least some imperfect justice can be achieved. There is a cosmic disharmony due to her actions that must be corrected. This is an idea that comes naturally to all people (just watch how children behave when arguing or fighting) and is only deadened or destroyed by the WEIRD education system. I want her to be punished not because it's good for her, but because she must suffer in return for the suffering and evil she caused. Deterrence and rehabilitation might be an added bonus, but it should definitely a secondary aim.
Also: obligatory short C.S. Lewis essay on rehabilitative justice
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Permanent exile at the minimum. Crazy people really don't have a place in polite society- doubly so if it wasn't caused by legitimate mental illness because "depraved heart" isn't something you can fix with pills- and demonstrating that you're sufficiently boundary-blind that you think "I'll wait for my husband to leave, and then I'll kill all my kids" is ever a valid course of action to take means that you don't belong.
Now, exile has some practical problems in modern times- namely, that virtually all land on Earth is owned by someone- so you'd have to stake out a plot of land on which you can confine exile-ees (we usually call these "prisons in Scandinavia"). It doesn't need to prevent them from leading an otherwise normal life after that (though they shouldn't reproduce, and should be segregated by sex to prevent that)- we don't need to stop them from pursuing goals/doing anything else with their lives, or subject them to 20 years of functionally unpaid hard labor in a concrete sardine can- but we do need them away from everyone else so they can't kill us again given they've demonstrated the stark inability to stop themselves from killing us in the first place. There's no difference between them and a hostile invader at that point, and if they break exile (note that this isn't "leaves the country") the penalty should be the same for both, as it would be were the murderer trying to kill you per the natural right of self-defense.
They broke trust in an extremely fundamental way, and must stay out- an exclusion zone is just the natural consequence of humankind now unable to use "punishment is to return to the state of nature" for a bunch of mostly self-imposed reasons.
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What does this mean?
You are then suggesting that she spend the rest of her life in a mental institution? That doesn't seem significantly different than prison to me. Prison with better healthcare.
people committing crimes do consider the possibility of themselves being caught. For example, that is why she waited until her husband left, she was aware that if her husband caught her strangling her three children to death their would be consequences to those actions, like not being able to kill her children. If people believe they can strangle their children to death and get out of it because a doctor diagnosed them with psychosis, there will be less of a deterrence to killing their children.
you are assuming that because she killed only children, and only her children after her pregnancy, that she is only capable or willing to kill that specific category of people after her pregnancy. If I were to commit a complete genocide of a race/ethnicity/religion you can say the same argument for me, no point in rehabilitation as they are all dead.
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I am aware that she is not going to do this again, but something just doesn’t sit right with allowing her to get away with killing her children.
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Have you seen the documentary Dear Zachary? This was almost exactly the reasoning used when keeping Shirley Turner out of prison after murdering her boyfriend, that she was unlikely to hurt anyone else. Of course she went on to kill her son.
Point being, people doing this are sufficiently abnormal that trying to predict their future behavior and saying “She would never do this again” seems really really unwise.. There is no way you can convince me that Bayes doesn’t say she has a far higher risk of murdering again than an average woman. She has done a couple lifetimes worth of damage already, what is the benefit of keeping her free? Just lock her up, throw away the key and we never have to worry about her again
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