The Newly Departed thread: announcements (departures)

[Edwardo Piet]

I get putting people in prison to protect society, and not as punishment. And I agree with that. Nonetheless, if a person is not responsible for the acts they commited, I still don't think imprisoning them is just.

I think it is when the alternative is letting them roam free and hurt people.

Example would be someone who is innocent by reason of insanity.

But they still get institutionalized. They're still detained from society so as not to harm anyone.

And, although ultimately no one is responsible at all... that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between harming someone on purpose and harming someone by accident. For example, manslaugther... when someone kills someone by accident. Because it was by accident, they are less likely to go around killing people than, say, a serial killer who kills people on purpose and doesn't regret it.

Another purpose for prison is to punish people who are able to be deterred by punishment. And also to make other people more afraid to commit crimes.

Psychopaths have no conscience so they are certainly not discouraged from killing people by their conscience. They don't have a conscience. However, most psychopaths don't kill people. Why is that? They're afraid of going to prison, they're afraid of being punished.


Without prisons you'd have anarchy. There are plenty of horrible people who would hurt people a lot more often if they knew they wouldn't be punished for it.

Of course, if you think no one is responsible for the acts they commit because they don't actually have free will, then it would seem everyone would fall under the category of innocent by your standards.

Well, there's still a clear difference between intentionally hurting someone and not intentionally hurting someone. Ultimately, everyone is innocent by reason of causation, but not by reason of insanity. There's a big difference between being sane and being insane. Sane people can learn from their mistakes and they can be detered, insane people can't. If a sane person gets punished, they might not commit the crime again. If an insane person gets punished, it has no effect on them because they didn't commit the crime maliciously (or even out of rational self-interest at the expense of others), they committed it because they're out of their mind. And if their insanity is so bad that they're incurable, then unfortunately the best that can be done to protect people from an insane and dangerous person, such as the criminally insane, is to detain them.