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I consider myself a generalist. More specifically, I try to find patterns in one part of reality which are replicated elsewhere, in order to understand reality better. I filed “criminal law” under “science” in my mind when I recognized the epistemological similarities between falsification in science and “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal laws.
My belief in “beyond a reasonable doubt” was somewhat shaken by having watched the TV series “Bull”. However, I was fairly confident that American law, by and large, gets it right. Until today, when I ran across this article on LessWrong. Basically, there are so many confounders in most experiments that actually learning something new is unlikely if the experiment is made to test one variable.
If criminal law and science are twin methods of knowing, both based on eliminating all reasonable doubt, I no longer have faith in the death penalty except in the most absolutely obvious and clear-cut of non-cherrypicked cases.
Criminal justice reform can be somewhat of a snarl phrase because it’s generally used by people who seem to not believe in prison as a concept, or more charitably, are blank statists enough that they believe almost everyone can and should be rehabilitated with enough time and effort.
I’m not really in that camp and think we can and should lock people up for as long as we need if they’re violent menaces to others. That said, prison conditions in the US are appalling and I get extremely uncomfortable when people righteously gloat about how a criminal will be violently raped in prison as retribution for his crimes.
Someone who goes to prison for a minor or nonviolent offense often finds himself joining up with a prison gang just to have protection. Once you’re out, your criminal record hurts your employment chances, but it’s okay because you just networked with a group of hardened criminals… it’s like we designed the system to both maximize suffering and crime.
I’ve seen a few suggestions for reform on here that I really like. One was from a rather controversial user who used to post here named Penpractice, who suggested public corporal punishment instead of jail time for minor offenses. Basically, humiliate and let the criminal resume his life, rather then send him to prison to meet worse criminals.
I like this idea, but since I don’t believe the optics of this could survive for a minute in the US, a better solution came from 2cimirafa, who basically said “keep violent offenders in prison until they’re 60 and give them fast food and video games to keep them humanely fat and sedated.” If that could survive the inevitable Republican swipe of “Democrats want to buy Playstations for every felon in prison” it seems to be a good idea. Keeping violent offenders comfortable and sedated and off the streets should cut down on violence for prison guards, less hardened prisoners they would prey on, and of course the average person.
Obviously, both ideas would take a lot of work from concept to execution, but they seem a lot better than the current system.
I also think the people who valorize prison rape are doing a bad thing.
Because the brutal parts of prison life are "technically not supposed to happen," we get to have our cake and eat it, too, with regards to sentencing people to tortures and feeling innocent about it. It is, at the least, not in-line with most people's professed ideals, I think.
In my view, effective self-defense is a natural right, and any reasonable approach to imprisonment abridges that right pretty harshly. I am not therefore opposed to imprisonment! There are contexts where natural rights may be properly abridged, and this is one of them.
However, you can't abridge a natural right without consequences, and in this instance, I believe that the state takes on the moral responsibility for the prisoner's defense, since the state has so sharply limited his ability to provide that for himself. The state--and in a democracy, the people--can't shirk this moral responsibility by just shrugging and saying, "shit happens." The state should prevent prison rape where and when it can, in balance with its other responsibilities, and punish the inevitable failures.
How would that reasoning not lead to getting rid of jails completely? You could similarly argue that if the state takes away someone's freedom, they are obliged to provide him with freedom.
(If your answer is that the state only needs to provide some, but not as much as it took away, that would affect your original argument too.)
Imprisonment, as a punishment, is intended to restrict a prisoner's ability to commit crimes, by separating him from the rest of society and putting him under the supervision of guards. This is a direct, and intended, removal of liberty.
However, there are also second-order effects, that are not intended, but are--practically speaking--inevitable. One of those is the limitation on the prisoner's right of effective self-defense. This limitation isn't justified by the standard philosophical defenses of imprisonment-as-punishment, so in my view, the state needs to step in to replace what it has taken without justification.
More precisely, I'm arguing that if the state takes away someone's freedom without justification, they are obliged to provide him with something in exchange. In this case, if you remove someone's right to effective self defense without justification for removing that right specifically, then you're obliged to step in and make a reasonable effort to provide protection.
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Well imagine if someone raped and killed your mother, wife and daughter, and then proceeded to laugh at you for the next thirty years, eating Big Macs and playing video games all the while
Would you be okay with this kind of "justice"?
Thing is, some crimes are in fact heinous and must be punished by long imprisonment with dismal conditions (and that only because we can't trust the state with the death penalty). The others probably shouldn't be jailable offences to begin with.
I was a bit unclear with the "until they're 60" line I was quoting, but I'm fully for locking that type of offender up for the rest of their natural life with no chance of parole. If I related to the victims, I would probably want blood, but there are other considerations beyond personal satisfaction. Locking him up this way ensures he's never able to harm an innocent citizen again and lowers the likelihood of him person harming the people who have to live with or guard him in prison. In a world where we could 100% verify guilt without bias, I have no issue with the death penalty, but for practical reasons I'm against it.
How should we punish comparatively minor offenses? I think we should come down hard on crimes that don't produce a body like thievery and armed robbery since they lower trust and make people feel unsafe, even if the objective harm they have is minor compared to some white-collar crimes. Just because I don't want those people around doesn't mean I want them to face constant prison violence, though.
None of those are minor crimes. Indeed, white collar crimes are the type that have the least intuitive reason for actually jailing them, because sullying their reputation is enough to prevent their repeat. Theft is a serious crime prone to repeating, which is why incapacitation via jailing is appropriate.
I'd presume a large part of the point of jailing white-collar criminals is to prevent first offenses.
Some split between deterrence and punishment is likely. You can see rhetorically, there is often heavy emphasis on punishment.
It's possible that we acquired the punishment adaptation to maximize the deterrence fitness.
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People bring up the discrepancy in sentencing between white collar and blue collar crimes as a flaw in the justice system all the time and I've literally never heard this counterargument. And I have no idea why, because it makes perfect sense and reading it made me do a 180 from tentatively against this apparent double standard to tentatively in favor of it.
This is one of the best compliments I've gotten on here, thanks!
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The term you're looking for in the philosophy of punishment is "incapacitation"--making the criminal incapable of repeating his crime. Imprisonment gets there by putting physical separation between the criminal and his potential victims.
I'd be surprised if they didn't also cover deterrence, both general and specific?
And after 20 years they are middle-aged. Definitely not impossible to commit crimes of violence any more (and if the original crime was against a small child or an elderly person, sure, this does not apply) but if they hang around any criminal elements in an attempt to, say, get an illegal handgun or fence some goods, they are likely to just become another victim.
Yes, incapacitation no longer applies as a justification when the circumstances aren't met. Imprisonment meets the incapacitation justification for the duration of the imprisonment, but not afterwards. Capital punishment meets the incapacitation justification permanently, as can various forms of maiming in the cases of specific crimes.
If reality is a rich tapestry, philosophy often involves taking a microscopic look at one of the threads. This is one of those cases. If you're looking to make policy, you should definitely consider way more factors than whether a specific type of punishment meets a specific philosophical justification!
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I wouldn't describe the Christian God as "retributive."
If a Christian man murders 12 Muslims and repents afterwards, does the Christian man go to Heaven while the Muslims burn in Hell? That's not "retribution" and not even "mercy", it's abominable behavior of an unjust and arbitrary tyrant.
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God is also responsible for making the criminal in such a way that they would be inclined to commit heinous crimes...
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Well just fine the criminal, you generally wouldn’t mind if someone stole 1000$ from you and then had to return 2000$.
In case of failed serious violent crimes, maybe indeed the video game prison.
Generally speaking people steal money because they don't have any of it. You may as well just put them in prison straight away and save the court the paperwork and time.
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