Punishment for the sake of punishment

Imagine that a man robs a bank, and in the process injures or kills two workers. After this he hides away for 10 or 20 years. During these years the man has realized what he did was gravely wrong, and has turned himself into a proper, well meaning citizen. He rehabilitates himself. But then he is finally found by the police.

The police say that since he's reformed, they'll ignore his transgression.

What message does this send to the general public, a small number of whom would love to murder someone but are afraid of the consequences?

If this takes place, why have a law against murder at all?

If a man comes to regret his crimes and seeks redemption he should turn himself in.

Finding a murderer after 20 years that claims he is sorry but he already moved on and "reformed" himself and thus should be spared punishment will not cut it.
A more interesting question is, should we punish people suffering from amnesia and possessing no real recollection of their former lives.

Yep, commit murder, hide it and continue on with life for 10 years = free. Sounds like a great system for preventing crime.

Try him for murder, not for robbery.

Prison is not to rehabilitate criminals, it's primarily supposed to be a deterrent to committing crime.

That's similar to: a woman falsely cries rape and the guy is locked away, once out of jail he goes and actually rapes her, should he go to jail again?

It's a bit different because we don't necessarily know that the rape accusation was false.

"Prison is for rehabilitating criminals"

This is your key proposition. Prison might also be 'retributive'.

Where the term justice actually means to 'equalize'; in the case of law, the time for the crime.

Rawls would say :"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought."

Therefore, 'justice' is determined by the societies whose expectations and truths have been violated. The man's crime and rehabilitation might be good enough for him, but it does not equal to justice between those he killed and their survivors, or the codes of the society he robbed from in heisting one of its banks, and killing its guards, ect.

So, I would say, your proposition on 'rehabilitation' treats crime like a disease, and its consequences like symptoms. where it can theoretically 'clear up' on its own. Where as, I think the criminals are the disease of society, and the only way to heal the criminal wounds upon the social body, is that the disease must be quarantined from it, removed from it, and destroyed if necessary.

First of all the relatives of the victims should receive reparations, and then the bank itself (at least getting the shekels back).
Second, one of the principles of law is that illegal actions should have consequences so as to deter such violations, and to ensure that violations will be punished. It's a kind of social contract. Therefore even a reformed person should receive just trial. Many people are able to reform while in prison, they don't demand or get immediate release afterwards so people who've reformed in liberty cannot demand no internment whatsoever. This is also why the whole statute of limitations thing is absolute senseless bullshit.

The issue of reform is also not the easiest thing on Earth to determine. Believing that someone like the hitman from the documentary 'El Sicario: Room 164' has actually left that life of crime and violence behind is hard and requires a great deal of cool headed inquiry and thinking.

>steal a bunch of money
>invest it in some lucrative business
>business goes well, no readon to steal or rob again
>get busted
>lol I already got my life back on track, I didn't steal for a year, you can't put me in jail!

sounds fine to me.

Every crime should be punishable by death.

proven without a doubt* and proven not made accidentally.

Law should be taught in elementary school while learning to write. And repeated until everyone knows it by heart.
Personal responsibility should be a subject in school.

Prisons should be closed, or significantly reduced to be used in case of emergencies.
Executions should be broadcasted.

If a certain member of community is punished the community should be punished slightly too (not enough to cause massive mutiny but enough to let them know they are partially responsible for their members, to motivate ppl to keep eye on each other's state of mind).
What I dont understand is ppl getting triggered by this, if you're smart you wont do crime. Simple as that.

We cant make laws that forgive stupidity unless we want to allow it to flourish.

Prosecuting a criminal is at least as much about sending a message to other potential criminals as it is about punishing the perpetrator himself.

You don't want people to think they can get away with robbing a bank just because they managed to hide from the law for a while. The fact that he hasn't committed more crimes hardly exonerates him, since that is simply the behavior expected of anyone.

If it can be concretely proven that they are indeed suffering amnesia, then I personally don't think they should be punished. They are not the same person that committed the crime.

If we found out Hitler was alive as a progressive gay jewish-convert hippie in San Francisco, should we just let him go?

Welcome to the USA. In most European countries it's not.

yes

You mean in [insert here your small welfare state] and not Europe.

There's also the fact that you can rape someone several times but only kill him once.

>thinking gov won't make arbitrary laws just to get rid of people they don't like
>thinking this doesn't already happen
>thinking all laws are just
What are you, gay?

GTFO

>Europe

Europe does not represent the world you narcissistic fuck.

It's not for punishment. It's for scare tactics/fear, or sometimes quarantine.

Communities would protect their criminals to avoid the punishment. Punishing the whole community along with the criminal would also make him 'one of us' with the state being on the other team. Those who handle criminals to the authorities should be rewarded (and those who accuse innocents severely punished).

he didn't ever imply that it did.

This.

>statute of limitations for murder is after the funeral because "they're dead just move on"

We should just kill everybody who committed any crime.

Prison has purposes. One is rehabilitation. Another is deterrence. The threat of punishment is meant to deter people from commuting crimes. If we did not enforce the law it would be an empty threat. So in yojr hypothetical it would be important to punish the man to show that the law applies to everyone.

I've never understood that argument.

What makes managing 6 millions big Denmark so much easier than 300M US but at the same time, it isn't THAT much harder for Germans(80M) and Brits(60M) to do the same or almost the same?

Is there some critical 299 999 999 population mark that makes all social security nets impossible to maintain or what?

I'm not big on welfare statism etc. but I've just never really got that argument.

Denmark, England and Germany are Small-Medium nations with (previously) homogenous culture.

The US is a melting pot with far larger population.

The cultural barriers make it harder, and the difficulties from the population are exponential not linear.

In practice, there is no way to really know when someone has truly rehabilitated himself/regrets fully his actions. As soon as you have a system which takes something like this into account you will have criminals gaming that system to get a free pass pretending they 'regret' everything.

If technology ever reaches a point where one can literally read someone's mind then this might change.

No man is punished for the crimes he's done, he's punished so others do not repeat those crimes.

It's purely as a deterrent. If people knew they would get away with murder if they just stayed hidden for 20 years they'd be more likely to do it.

>Prison is for rehabilitating criminals
European detected.

Though, in all seriousness, the punishment is also supposed to be a deterrent. I mean, you can't have people thinking they can rob banks if only they don't get caught, and use that money to turn around and lead normal lives for long enough.

But I live in the US, and we don't really understand the difference between justice and revenge anyways.

Prison as a deterrent is a barbaric concept, law abiding should come from fear of social ostracisation and self-regulation within the confines of societal norms.

It's incredible how the lack of internal shame and enforcement of social pressures manifests themselves, as evident by the stark differences between Americans and Europeans.

:^)

I'm from Spain and jail is hell here.

Denmark may be a homogeneous culture+nation I don't rightly know.

But Germany and the UK most certainly are not. Both of the nations as they're comprised today are an amalgam of other groups and identities. There are separate dialects of German spoken in every one of Germany's states. With high German being their method for communicating between every German citizen. And the UK is even now facing push factors that seek to tear her apart in the form of Scotland. Your notion that Europe has it easy when it comes to providing welfare because of united cultures is dubious at best. Most European nations today have at least one sub population that wants to secede from their current country. With their presence within those countries being the simple answer to empire; "just keep it".

The United states are indeed a melting pot but the USA is a melting pot because here is where cultural barriers and differences come to die. I would imagine that nearly every natural born US citizen identifies as an american first and a(n) [insert US state here] native second. Much unlike British Scots and German Bavarians. With the possible exception for this being Texans. The US has a uniquely universalizing culture that rarely allows for such divisions to take hold.

You are correct in your assertion that increasing population makes a state much harder pressed to provide welfare to its citizens. But the united states is also the world's strongest and largest economy. If ANY state can provide welfare to its people the USA certainly is that state.

Perhaps in an ideal world that alone would do it, but I'm sure, even in Europe, you have subcultures where being a criminal is a badge of honor. (Here they are rather rampant.)

Personally, I don't think that deterrence should be the primary purpose, but that puts me well outside of the thinking of most of my fellow Americans, some of which who don't want to use nitrogen or helium for executions for fear that it isn't cruel enough. I, nonetheless, recognize it as a function. If one can murder for profit and just go back to leading a normal life, as in OP's scenario, after all, there's no deterrent, social or otherwise.

Kill him, he broke the law so he has to die to show the human monkeys you dont break the law, infact gore his entire family in public to show them we are not fucking around.

US actually has four legitimate penological theories: retribution (OP's example), deterrence, incapacitation (which is what your advancing), and rehabilitation. Not an expert on Europe, but in Europe they really seem to eschew retribution while it holds a lot of sway in America because of victims' rights movements.

The deterrence and retribution theories are tough to justify in a liberal justice system, as you're treating the criminal as a means to an end by making an example out of them or giving a punishment that will satisfy the victim's own need to see "justice" done. A lot of crime victims aren't satisfied with the punishments their attackers receive, because for them this is just a stranger who ruined their life; retribution theories basically don't work for either party.

I may be talking out of my ass here but the difficulty is probably in governing the government. somewhere from local level to elected representatives someone will fuck up everything horribly and someone else will need to look at it and say "no, this is all wrong. stop." more area and people means more things to oversee and more difficulty seeing the whole picture for whoever is attempting that. they will miss something or be wrong, and before you know it everyone is used to things being horribly wrong and it takes years to untangle.

American Exceptionalism (TM)

But currently they can get away if they hide for long time, it's called the statue of limitations.

Born and lived my entire life in Washington, Usa.

Jeeze, then you're an even worse American than I am.

Congrats, that takes effort.

Not DC you retard. The state.

wrong, at least for portugal

>But I live in the US, and we don't really understand the difference between justice and revenge anyways.
Except that is exactly what justice is. You make revenge on people who commit crimes so that others won't do the same. Rehabilitation isn't really justice. It's rehabilitation. You are helping the individual, not trying to influence society as a whole.

Quite sure /pol/ wouldn't let go a hippie.

>Prison is for rehabilitating criminals
youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU
A little cringey. But pretty much true.

At one stage prison may have been for rehabilitation, it's not anymore. It's all about the cheap slave labor America is built upon.

In most places drug dealers can get longer sentences than people who actually murder/kidnap people.

>It's a Europe is a single country episode.

Double Jeopardy

The state enacts vengeance so the victims don't themselves.

I just wanted to say this thread makes me salty. Literally all of this thread has no discussion, just one liners everywhere with no thought or discussion behind them. Fuck all of you, this is why we can't have nice things. If you faggots just wanted to shitpost, go on /b/ or some hit, fuck off from here.