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Author Topic:   Crime and Punishment
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 31 of 40 (639347)
10-30-2011 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by DC85
10-30-2011 2:52 PM


It doesn't but at the same time... should one go after someone for the sake of revenge of a death or anything else?
Yeah, I think so. Contrary to what people think, revenge usually doesn't cycle. Your brother kills my uncle. I kill your brother.
That's usually the end of it. When you come to kill me, you complain that I killed your brother, I reply that he killed my uncle, and you would usually say "ok, yeah, I guess that's fair. How about you pay me some money and we'll call it a day?" I'm happy to pay because I got something I value - vengeance for my uncle.
This also could be because I tend not to think with emotion... I'm rather "cold"
Fun fact, as an aside - people who can't experience emotions are actually terrible decision-makers. You'd think someone like Spock or Data would be able to make decisions quickly and easily by subtracting the emotion out of it, just a quick comparison between pros and cons, but what we actually find with people who actually have no emotion is that they can't weigh pros and cons because they can't experience how good the pros are and how bad the cons are. And they can't experience the emotion of finality, the experience of actually feeling like you've decided, and as a result they never know when to stop deliberating and actually come to a conclusion.
Like I say, fun fact. We can't actually divorce our reason from our emotion. They don't conflict; they actually work in concert. We can't make decisions, otherwise.
I think the the government would find it in it's best interest to prevent the crime by investing in low income schools and getting people on their feet.
Some number of people are going to commit crimes regardless of how well-educated or high-income they are, that's why there are white-collar criminals. Bernie Madoff didn't scam people out of billions in the single largest theft in recorded history because he went to a bad school or wasn't on his feet. He did it because he was in a position to do it and decided to take advantage of people. Also I don't see how "better schools" or income security would help in the case of the betrayed housewife who shoots her husband and his mistress. I don't see how "better schools" would help with a case like Casey Anthony, who killed her own daughter because she is a sociopath and is therefore unable to form attachments to other people or experience empathy.
I'm not saying better schools can't help, but there will always be people who decide to break the law, or by a poorly-understood mental defect, have no choice but to do so. What do we do with a criminal sociopath who, so far, has resorted only to mild assault? Under your ideal system can we imprison people for crimes we suspect they will commit? That also perverts most people's sense of justice.
Punishing people for doing "bad things" seems like a pointless practice to me.
Well, but again, this emerges as the best strategy in the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by DC85, posted 10-30-2011 2:52 PM DC85 has not replied

Replies to this message:
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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(1)
Message 32 of 40 (639350)
10-30-2011 6:25 PM


I recognise the figure of 70% recidivism. It's the same here in the UK. For all I know it's the same everywhere.
The one thing we DO know is that prison doesn't work. (If we think that it's some kind of solution to re-offending that is.) The one and pretty much only thing we can say on the positive side for prison is that it prevents further crime in the community - but it doesn't prevent crime in the prisons themselves.
The sad fact is that the prison population isn't made up of murderers and rapists, it's mostly full of the illiterate, mentally ill and drug addicted. It isn't a deterrent because those that end up there don't have the mental capacity to imagine being caught or don't care if they are.
The truth is, we just don't know how else to deal with the problem.
As an aside and as an outsider, looking at how the US deals with its criminals seems mediaeval which sadly we seem to be following..

Replies to this message:
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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 33 of 40 (639390)
10-31-2011 7:56 AM
Reply to: Message 31 by crashfrog
10-30-2011 3:13 PM


Yeah, I think so. Contrary to what people think, revenge usually doesn't cycle. Your brother kills my uncle. I kill your brother.
That's usually the end of it. When you come to kill me, you complain that I killed your brother, I reply that he killed my uncle, and you would usually say "ok, yeah, I guess that's fair. How about you pay me some money and we'll call it a day?" I'm happy to pay because I got something I value - vengeance for my uncle.
Obviously, this bears no relation to how things are done in modern, centralised societies, and I'm going to need some evidence that it's the standard way of doing things for people in general. We do know of family feuds and vendettas that have continued for decades or even centuries, historically. Wikipedia's article on Feuds claims:
quote:
Vendetta is still practiced in some areas in France (especially Corsica), Italy (especially Sicily, Sardinia, Campania, Calabria, Apulia and other areas of Southern Italy),[12] in Mani and Crete (Greece),[13][14] among Kurdish clans in Iraq and Turkey,[15][16][17] in northern Albania, among Pashtuns in Afghanistan,[18] among Serb tribes in Montenegro,[19] Somali clans,[20] among the Berbers of Algeria,[21] over land in Nigeria,[22] in India, between rival tribes in the north-east Indian state of Assam,[23] among rival clans in China[24] and Philippines,[25] among the Arab Bedouins and Arab tribes inhabiting the mountains of Yemen and between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq,[26] in southern Ethiopia,[27][28] among the highland tribes of New Guinea,[29] in Svaneti, in the mountainous areas of Dagestan, many northern areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan, a number of republics of the northern Caucasus and essentially among Chechen teips where those seeking retribution do not accept or respect the local law enforcement authority. Vendettas are generally abetted by a perceived or actual indifference on the part of local law enforcement.[citation needed]
In rural Yemen, state authority is weak, and disputes between tribes are frequently solved through violence.[30]
In Albania, the blood feud has returned in rural areas after more than 40 years of being abolished by Albanian communists led by Enver Hoxha. More than 5,500 Albanian families are currently engaged in blood feuds. There are now more than 20,000 men and boys who live under an ever-present death sentence because of blood feuds. Since 1992, at least 10,000 Albanians have been killed due to blood feuds.[31]
I haven't had the time to go to all these sources to find details, but I had a brief look into the accounts of 'ndo' feuds in the Phillipines, where there are hundreds still ongoing, despite conflict-resolution work which includes, in some cases, the paying of blood money.
Well, but again, this emerges as the best strategy in the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.
That something works as the best strategy in an idealised game-theory situation, with very few players, might mean it would be the best strategy in a small, close-knit group of hunter-gatherers. It doesn't mean you can extrapolate that it works in an industrialised society of millions.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by crashfrog, posted 10-30-2011 3:13 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
frako
Member (Idle past 306 days)
Posts: 2932
From: slovenija
Joined: 09-04-2010


Message 34 of 40 (639423)
10-31-2011 2:07 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by crashfrog
10-30-2011 3:13 PM


Yeah, I think so. Contrary to what people think, revenge usually doesn't cycle. Your brother kills my uncle. I kill your brother.
Actually it does Albanian blood feuds a perfect example of families killing each other, over stuff they have alredy forgotten.
Their feuds can range for long periods because they have rules where you cant kill someone, so some hide for decades so they dont get whacked
and naturally when you do get vengeance the other family is pissed and strikes back.
And their ideas of how to take vengeance is also silly if you kill my kid i dont kill you but kill your kid. As far as i can remember read about this a long time ago.
There is progress though some dude cant remember his name is hoping to bring an end to this so he often acts as a mediator trying to get families to stop feuding. Using the same texts they get their ideas of blood vengeance from to try and convince them that the text actually says that blood vengeance is a last resort.

Christianity, One woman's lie about an affair that got seriously out of hand

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by crashfrog, posted 10-30-2011 3:13 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 35 of 40 (639431)
10-31-2011 2:52 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Tangle
10-30-2011 6:25 PM


I recognise the figure of 70% recidivism. It's the same here in the UK. For all I know it's the same everywhere.
The one thing we DO know is that prison doesn't work. (If we think that it's some kind of solution to re-offending that is.) The one and pretty much only thing we can say on the positive side for prison is that it prevents further crime in the community - but it doesn't prevent crime in the prisons themselves.
The sad fact is that the prison population isn't made up of murderers and rapists, it's mostly full of the illiterate, mentally ill and drug addicted. It isn't a deterrent because those that end up there don't have the mental capacity to imagine being caught or don't care if they are.
The truth is, we just don't know how else to deal with the problem.
As an aside and as an outsider, looking at how the US deals with its criminals seems mediaeval which sadly we seem to be following..
Indeed, prison is not effective at reducing recidivism.
But not every nation has a ~70% recidivism rate. Japan, as an example, only sees around 46%.
quote:
Approximately 46 percent were repeat offenders. Japanese recidivism was attributed mainly to the discretionary powers of police, prosecutors, and courts and to the tendency to seek alternative sentences for first offenders.
The likely cause being, as stated, alternative sentencing, meaning "not prison," for first-time offenders.
Which, of course, means that not sending people to prison is better at reducing recidivism than prison.
Therapy, community service, interaction with "mentors," employment assistance and vocational education, rehab, these and other types of programs work to transform a drain on society (whether in prison or out in society but unemployable) into a functional contributor.
After all, productive members of society pay taxes, while the unemployed and imprisoned drain tax dollars (this is not at all to say that I don't support a social safety net, welfare, etc - I'd just rather help people, including felons, improve their lives such that they don;t need those programs).
Speaking of which...did I mention the fact that in some states felons can't even receive welfare?
We literally tell people who have already paid their debt to society that they should just go out and starve to death.
Gee, I wonder why they tend to commit more crimes?

This message is a reply to:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 36 of 40 (639434)
10-31-2011 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by crashfrog
10-30-2011 3:13 PM


Yeah, I think so. Contrary to what people think, revenge usually doesn't cycle. Your brother kills my uncle. I kill your brother.
That's usually the end of it. When you come to kill me, you complain that I killed your brother, I reply that he killed my uncle, and you would usually say "ok, yeah, I guess that's fair. How about you pay me some money and we'll call it a day?" I'm happy to pay because I got something I value - vengeance for my uncle.
That depends on your goal, crash.
My goal is a stable society with the maximum attainable percentage of productive citizens possible, and the maximum attainable contentment of the entire population.
I don't see how revenge as a concept serves to increase utility toward that goal. Revenge doesn't turn criminals into productive citizens. Revenge doesn't increase contentment overall.
Fun fact, as an aside - people who can't experience emotions are actually terrible decision-makers. You'd think someone like Spock or Data would be able to make decisions quickly and easily by subtracting the emotion out of it, just a quick comparison between pros and cons, but what we actually find with people who actually have no emotion is that they can't weigh pros and cons because they can't experience how good the pros are and how bad the cons are. And they can't experience the emotion of finality, the experience of actually feeling like you've decided, and as a result they never know when to stop deliberating and actually come to a conclusion.
Only because human beings find it difficult to address problems unemotionally. We tend to use our feelings to measure relative utility and value because we don;t have any other option - the human brain doesn't understand multiplication, three million people is just a number.
When we actually calculate out standard amounts of utility for each option, we can very easily see which option provides the most and make the decision accordingly.
For instance, if my goal is to maximize the percentage of productive citizens as compared to non-productive citizens, I can easily see that prison locks a person out of any productivity for at minimum the length of their sentence. Alternative sentencing that allows non-dangerous criminals to retain their jobs or even improve their opportunities by providing education and job placement creates a greater-than-zero rate of productivity even with a low statistical success rate, making it obviously superior to prison from the standpoint of that specific goal.
Obviously other factors like cost need to be examined as well for real solutions (which typically have more than one simple primary goal), but just as an example, objective and unemotional rational decision making is certainly more possible than you make it out to be.
And considering the fact that human emotion is irrational and the reason the "tough on crime" idiocy has gotten us where we are, I'd like to see you prove that emotionally-charged decision making is superior to emotionless, objective utility calculation based purely on data and the intended goal.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by crashfrog, posted 10-30-2011 3:13 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 37 of 40 (648427)
01-15-2012 5:30 PM


Starting them Young
Ran across this: Creating lifelong customers: the school-to-prison pipeline and the private prison industry.
quote:
Creating Lifelong Customers:
As if the United States did not have a bloated enough prison population — which I think nearly every single American realizes is a painful truth — our school systems are being transformed into yet another way to funnel people into the private prison system.
School systems around the country, but especially Texas, have begun criminalizing what would otherwise be normal childish behavior.
...
In a 2010 report released by the Community Rights Campaign and the Los Angeles Chapter of Dignity in Schools entitled Police in LAUSD Schools: The Need for Accountability and Alternatives it is revealed that reports of police misconduct gathered from over 1,500 student surveys across 18 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) schools include: excessive force and restraint, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, intimidation, frequent and indiscriminate use of mace and pepper spray on large numbers of students, racial profiling, handcuffs used on students’ whose 'crime' was being late, frequent searches, and more.
Clearly this problem is greater than just one school district or just one state. This is a national problem which does nothing but create more crime by forcing people into becoming lifelong criminals who provide slave labor to private corporations while said corporations rake in absurd profits from taxpayers.
On an even larger level, this trend is representative of a disastrous epidemic: profiting from suffering. This takes shape in the form of war profiteering, prison profiteering, ineffective and/or harmful pharmaceutical/health industry profiteering and more.
What does this mean for the future of our country?
Jon

Love your enemies!

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by Modulous, posted 01-15-2012 6:01 PM Jon has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 38 of 40 (648429)
01-15-2012 6:01 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Jon
01-15-2012 5:30 PM


Re: Starting them Young
What does this mean for the future of our country?
I can't speak for your future, but it speaks terribly of your present. Handcuffs for being late? I was late all the time at school, I got detentions and stern talkings to...but handcuffing? Searches? Pepper spray?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Jon, posted 01-15-2012 5:30 PM Jon has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 40 by Jon, posted 01-15-2012 6:44 PM Modulous has seen this message but not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 39 of 40 (648430)
01-15-2012 6:33 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by Modulous
01-15-2012 6:01 PM


Re: Starting them Young
Check out Unicor and the list of jobs they can fill.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
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Jon
Inactive Member


Message 40 of 40 (648431)
01-15-2012 6:44 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by Modulous
01-15-2012 6:01 PM


Re: Starting them Young
... it speaks terribly of your present.
Clearly. And I wonder what other countries behave similarly. If other aspects of our torture justice system are any indication, this too likely ranks up there with the measures taken by governments in (other) totalitarian-like states.
This might have already been posted in this thread, but:
Prisoner Population around the World
quote:
WorldMapper on Prisoners:
In 2006 there were an estimated 9.3 million people in prison worldwide at any one time. Half of them were held in just 3 territories: the United States 24%, China 17% and the Russian Federation 9%.
Jon
Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Love your enemies!

This message is a reply to:
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