Prison as punishment

[mlmooney89]

They killed someone, yes it was an accident but they knew that texting and driving a multi ton killing machine is dangerous. They made the decision that their text was more important than another life. It is no different than drinkin and driving. You kill a person and get community service and a fine?! How will that deter people from texting and driving? If people are texting and driving they already care about their own lives more than others. The idea of decades in jail is what deters people from doing illegal things, not picking up trash on the side of the road.

-That's the deterrence motivation...sure...but..they also knew that they'd go to jail for texting and driving if they hit someone....and they still did it.  

So, is it an effective deterrent, after all?

Theres the notion in that, implied but not directly expressed...that it's the rules and punishments that deter us from some x.  Let me ask you, are the rules and punishments the reason that you don't murder...or is it simpler than that?  Like, maybe, you don't want to?  Conversely, if you did want to, would the existence of the rules and punishments stop you?  If the rules could be removed or lessened from you...say you were placed in an active conflict zone and handed an assault rifle, would you?  In a nutshell, are you a killer, and if so, always or only sometimes?  If not....never?  We're strange creatures.  

This is fully just me and a one time scenario so I don't hold this to anyone else but yes, going to jail has stopped me from killing someone before. I literally held a knife in my hand and the only reason I didn't stab him in his sleep is because I didn't want to spend my life in jail. In the end he killed himself so I reckon good things come to those who wait? lol

But I understand where you are coming from in that people shouldn't need the fear of punishment to deter them from doing evil but some people do. Maybe not most people but what about the people that do hit and runs? They only look at it in the light of they will go to jail if they tell anyone. Instead of getting first aid and possibly saving the person they just leave. That happens way too often...

With THAT said maybe if the threat of going to jail wasn't there perhaps they WOULD stop and help...

[The Grand Nudger]

@RealJoe

I don't think that anyone's disputing that we -don't- put people in jail, primarily, to remove dangerous people from society, but that maybe that -should- be the reason we do so, primarily.  That perhaps these are the only sorts of people who should be in jail, in the first place, and that other means of addressing other crimes would be more suitable -to- those crimes.   For example.

@ Mooney

In the end he killed himself so I reckon good things come to those who wait? lol

ROFLMAO! Hi-five!

But I understand where you are coming from in that people shouldn't need the fear of punishment to deter them from doing evil but some people do. Maybe not most people but what about the people that do hit and runs? They only look at it in the light of they will go to jail if they tell anyone. Instead of getting first aid and possibly saving the person they just leave. That happens way too often...

Right, but obviously, they know..if they get caught, they go to jail....and it;ll be even worse. They still do so. Did the threat of punishment do anything, in that example? Are the people who do stop and help only doing so to shave a few years off a possible sentence? I guess I'm just not convinced that the fulcrum for what people will or wont do really lies at the point of a rule against it. Not so much, I suppose, that it;s not something that people consider, but that it's weight has been vastly overestimated.

If it's just "some people", for example (just assuming that it is the fulcrum for something, for somebody)...we're doing something shitty to all of the other people who -don't- need that, for reasons not at all related to them. Punishing the better in us in order to dissuade the worst which, even in your example, runs...attempts to evade consequence completely...and sometimes, does evade consequence. Other people are being punished disproportionately for -their- crimes and personalities, for what bastards might do or might try to get away with.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sure, punishment satisfies some base desire of mine to see "justice" done ... but how just is it? I'm deeply distrustful of laws based on emotion. In one sense, our entire system of justice is predicated on punishment, in the sense that in cases like abuse, rape, murder, and so on, no punishment at all can repair the life-altering effects of the crime. Nothing. And so at that point, it seems clear to me that punishment is the motivation at least in part.

Wish I had a more useful answer, but there's a reason why I'm a retail manager and not a judge, I guess.

[TheRealJoeFish]

@RealJoe

I don't think that anyone's disputing that we -don't- put people in jail, primarily, to remove dangerous people from society, but that maybe that -should- be the reason we do so, primarily.  That perhaps these are the only sorts of people who should be in jail, in the first place, and that other means of addressing other crimes would be more suitable -to- those crimes.   For example.

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@ Mooney

In the end he killed himself so I reckon good things come to those who wait? lol

ROFLMAO!  Hi-five!

But I understand where you are coming from in that people shouldn't need the fear of punishment to deter them from doing evil but some people do. Maybe not most people but what about the people that do hit and runs? They only look at it in the light of they will go to jail if they tell anyone. Instead of getting first aid and possibly saving the person they just leave. That happens way too often...

Right, but obviously, they know..if they get caught, they go to jail....and it;ll be even worse.  They still do so.  Did the threat of punishment do anything, in that example?  Are the people who do stop and help only doing so to shave a few years off a possible sentence?  I guess I'm just not convinced that the fulcrum for what people will or wont do really lies at the point of a rule against it.

---

You are right, I do a lot of is/ought in my post without really being careful about the two.  I should clarify: 1) I think retribution is the primary factor motivating the criminal justice system, for whatever reason, and 2) I think retribution should be the primary factor motivating the criminal justice system, because it's the only system that works/is intellectually coherent.

And, I should clarify - I also think that a deterrence-based criminal justice system breaks down in a bunch of ways similar to those I mentioned for other systems: it doesn't work for psychopaths, it doesn't work for careless/naïve people, it doesn't work for people who don't mind going to jail (or in the case of fines are rich or in the case of death are suicidal).

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I'd like to see broad recognition that a retributivist criminal justice system is what we have and what we should have, and then, once we view it in that light, we can work on maximizing other aspects of it while being wary of the fact that a retributivist system is, like Thump says, very susceptible (more so than other systems, at times) to emotion or inconsistency.

[Aroura]

Very thoughtful post Joe.
I don't think any single one style of justice system will be effective, and a combination would be best?
Preventative when and wherever possible.
Rehabilitation on those most likely to benefit from it.
Utilitarian with those who cannot be prevented or rehabilitate, for public safety.

I think we have far too little focus on prevention and rehabilitation. Prevention (in the form of education and meeting more basic needs for those in severe poverty) certainly needs improvement. I think rehabilitation needs more study into what methods are effective. Society seems to dismiss this too quickly.
We already know that punishment as a preventative measure is highly ineffective.

[Minimalist]

But why does our current system work the way it does?

Follow the money.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...ex/304669/

Three decades after the war on crime began, the United States has developed a prison-industrial complex—a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need. The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation's criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population. Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent.

This article was written in 1998 and things have gotten far worse since then.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ Joe

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I'd like to see broad recognition that a retributivist criminal justice system is what we have and what we should have, and then, once we view it in that light, we can work on maximizing other aspects of it while being wary of the fact that a retributivist system is, like Thump says, very susceptible (more so than other systems, at times) to emotion or inconsistency.

It is most -definitely- what we do have,  I just don't think it's what we should have.  There's no requirement that our system be based upon notions of retribution in order to incarcerate or rehabilitate or fine....but that same notion -is- behind our treatment of prisoners and the public at large (soon to be prisoners in the eyes of the prison industrial complex) as invisible people, who probably "deserve" what they got anyway if they've found themselves on the wrong end of the law.  

What does killing the killer -do-, for example, and how does stating that he deserved it help to do that anyway?  Who cares if he deserved it, if the reason we're doing it, in depressing reality, is to service our own wounded psyches?  Does it prevent killers from killing?  Or is it just another example of killers killing? Are we engaging in this sort of system for any particular effect, or -as Min put it so succinctly earlier- are we just barbarians? From where I sit, it certainly seems as though we might be enjoying a bit of loot and pillage.

The folks the next village over stole my cattle, so Imma burn down their house...and whatever valuables I can get from the ashes will fetch me a pretty penny, to say nothing of the human chattel. All of this, ofc...they deserve...for the crime of stealing my cattle, this is retribution - and it fills some hole in my life created by the loss of my livestock. I think that legitimizing the retributative model allows us to skip over some issues that, if we thought about this a different way, or indeed used a different sytem..we might have to face...and that in facing those things some of the abbuses currently endemic to our system might be reduced or even eliminated.

If, rather than saying "you deserve this punishment for breaking our laws" in regards to incarceration....what if we said "no one -deserves- this, but you leave us with no choice"? We might have to legitimately consider the second half of that claim. Same with things like capital punishment...and all the way back down the the relatively mild, fines. Do you think that we might have a different system and society before us, today, if we addressed it that way?

(all of his ignores whether or not notions of moral desert are even grounded in reality, which they may not be...but obviously that hardly matters since we're clearly capable of acting on them regardless- in itself, disturbing even if irrelevant)

[robvalue]

I remember now that the family that lost members in the accident (I think they were children) were "pleased" with the sentence. I find that rather hard to understand, personally. It seems like they feel there must be retribution, regardless of whether it actually achieves anything.

I guess is stems from our instinctive desire for "fairness", that someone can't be allowed to "get away with things".

[paulpablo]

This is a discussion I had with my wife recently, regarding something we heard in the news. A guy was using his phone at the wheel, and crashed into another car killing several people. He was given a jail sentence, around 10 years I think.

This got me thinking about the suitability of such a sentence. I think it's an interesting point to discuss. To me, the primary purpose of prison is to remove dangerous people from society. The secondary purpose, where possible, should be to rehabilitate them. This could sometimes be achieved simply by stopping them doing what they were doing, and giving them a new environment in which to reflect. The third and least important is punishment.

Why do we punish? If there is no other purpose to it, the only reasons we could come up with are "justice" and acting as a deterrent. The second I can understand the pragmatic value in, although it feels unsatisying to me when applied to adults.

In this particular case, it was an accident. The guy didn't mean to kill anyone. Of course, he is accountable. But what does anyone gain by him being in jail for 10 years? Is there a better alternative? As a rough suggestion, how about being banned from driving and being indebted to society in some way, being forced to "pay back" in a positive way, with prison time being reserved for refusal to adhere?

The immediate problem would be people suddenly not caring about running people over by accident. Would this really follow?

I'm not saying the current or alternate "punishments" are right or wrong, I'm very much unsure what would be best. I'm interested in peoples' thoughts!

I think the person definitely deserved 10 years or over.  I saw another case, or it may even be the same one where a man killed someone while driving and using a mobile phone and this was after he'd already been caught around 3 times driving while talking on his phone.

Being banned from driving is nothing to someone who's already not bothered about disobeying driving laws.  As for being indebted to society, it seems reasonable, but this person has killed several people.  It's not really like he has a measurable debt he can pay off.

I have to admit that I've been distracted by my phone while driving before.  But not, I don't think, in any significant amount.  And I've never had a conversation on my phone without it being hands free before.  I don't know how distracting it is because I've never tried doing it just on the basis that it's illegal and it's not worth the points or a fine.

If you like talking so much that you think it's worth risking a fine and points then just buy a hands free set instead.  If you don't buy one then don't use your phone.

[paulpablo]

I remember now that the family that lost members in the accident (I think they were children) were "pleased" with the sentence. I find that rather hard to understand, personally. It seems like they feel there must be retribution, regardless of whether it actually achieves anything.

I guess is stems from our instinctive desire for "fairness", that someone can't be allowed to "get away with things".

I don't get why you wouldn't understand that people would want some retribution for a lost loved one due to careless behavior.