Crime and Punishment

Suppose a woman kills two people - comes home, finds her husband in bed with another woman, kills them both.Homicides of this type ("heat of moment", murderer knows the victim, thought they were justified) have the lowest rate of recidivism - rather close to "none" - because they're not killing for the pleasure of killing, they had a specific person or persons in mind that they wanted to be dead, and now that they are, well, you can't kill someone twice.How much time should that woman serve for a double 2nd-degree murder? (Or possibly "involuntary manslaughter" if the defense can prove the circumstances made her "emotionally disturbed.") There's a high degree of statistical certainty that she won't offend again. How does it "protect the public" to incarcerate her for any length of time?Or another example - the crime with the highest rate of recidivism is grand theft; thieves almost always return to a life of crime after serving their sentences because big-ticket theft makes a lot of money in a short period of time with relatively low personal risk, the crime is a particular warning flag for employers (who don't want their stuff stolen) and therefore thieves in particular have a hard time integrating into lawful society, and it's a "high skill" type of crime that thieves become invested in because of their training. Under your "protect the public" rubric it seems like we should give car thieves life sentences - or even the death penalty - because of the statistical surety that a car thief will steal more cars after we let him out.I would say that life sentences for car thieves and small fines for double murderers pervert most people's sense of what the purpose of the criminal justice system is supposed to be, but this seems to be the inescapable conclusion of your rejection of the notion that "justice" is about punishing the guilty.The third point I would add is that, in all iterative versions of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", quid pro quo ("I'll start out cooperating, but then I'll do to you whatever you did to me last round") invariably emerges as the most stable and effective overall strategy. That's a significant piece of evidence that, in fact, retributive justice is crucial to the protection and safety of society.

Also, as you read up on the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma, make sure you pay particular attention to the results of the "I'll never betray you" strategy, which I would say most closely resembles the viewpoint expressed by "two wrongs don't make a right."

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. 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. 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. Well, but again, this emerges as the best strategy in the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.