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Author | Topic: Crime and Punishment | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
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.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9489 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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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..
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1024 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
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: 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.
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frako Member (Idle past 306 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
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
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
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: 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?
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
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.
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Jon Inactive Member |
Ran across this: Creating lifelong customers: the school-to-prison pipeline and the private prison industry.
quote: What does this mean for the future of our country? JonLove your enemies!
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
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?
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
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!
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Jon Inactive Member |
... it speaks terribly of your present. Clearly. And I wonder what other countries behave similarly. If other aspects of our This might have already been posted in this thread, but:
quote: Jon Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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