What's your opinion on crime punishment?

what's your opinion on crime punishment?

mine is that punishment is there to decrease the incentive for people to do specific things deemed harmful to society. this means I value punishment over rehabilitation. While it would make sense to try and rehabilitate an individual once he's done a crime, not punishing him would mean not preventing another person from doing said crime in the future. Therefore the punishment is not here as a personal gratification for the victim or as a part of the rehabilitation. It is here as a prevention method.

Now I would assume many would agree with me on a principal level but we would come to qualms over which specific crimes should be punished how much. I'm interested in hearing if any of you disagree with me on a principal level.

You can have both. You can rehabilitate to the point where the criminal is again contributing to society, but worse off than he would have been if he didn't do the crime.

Your view of punishment and penology sounds very grounded in deterrence; other theories are rehabilitation (which you pointed out), retribution (return the wrong done to the victim), and incapacitation (the person is dangerous and needs to be removed from society until they are no longer dangerous).

One of the issues with deterrence theory is that most criminals don't consider a punishment when committing a crime, as they do not believe they will be caught or do not believe they are committing a crime.

Furthermore, the appropriate length of the sentence, assuming capital punishment is not an option, can be very hard to determine, as the vast majority of people do not want to spend any time in jail. Even if you bitterly hate someone, a 4 or 5 year jail sentence would deter most people, and the ones that it doesn't deter would most likely be equally undeterred by a much longer sentence, as they are thinking in the manner I discussed above.

Ideally, deterrence can be combined with incapacitation and rehabilitation to avoid keeping people imprisoned for very long periods of time. Retribution is highly subjective and thus difficult to justify, as crime victims are seldom satisfied with the punishments their attackers receive, even when they are sentenced for life or executed.

>* a 4 or 5 year sentence would deter most people from killing someone

what exactly is the difference between rehabilitation and incapacitation?

also my problem with these two is how are you able to tell with certainty that the person is not dangerous anymore? and this is a big issue for me, why do we even think of certain individuals as 'dangerous'? anyone has the physical ability to kill, rob and commit other crime (the mental abilities are a bit more difficult to study in everyone). This view assumes that the law is here for only a few individuals who are problematic due to their beliefs. I believe people should be allowed to believe whatever they want. If they think murder and rape is okay, then let them think that. Basically what I'm saying is that I'd rather have protecting me a set of punishment detering criminals from doing their actions than their own personal beliefs. Humans are notoriously bad at following rules they write down for themselves without any incentive to follow them.

>incapacitation
You put them in jail where they can do no harm

>rehabilitation
You fix them so they stop doing harm

You've already got answers from another user with the flaws of a pure punitive scheme.

Theoretically, incapacitation is based on the safety of the community, while rehabilitation is concerned with the rights of the individual criminal and that he doesn't just need to be put away, as wit incapacitation, but if he is given job training skills, social skills, medical or mental health care, he will be able to become a productive member of society and should thus be freed to fluorish. Incapacitation doesn't care about any of that, it's just, "He's dangerous, put him away."

You're right, determining how dangerous someone is, whether they are dangerous at sentencing, and if someone has ceased to be dangerous are very difficult matters to decide. This is generally left to psychiatrists, various corrections officials and parole officers, but even amongst these professionals there is considerable disagreement about what makes someone dangerous, how to evaluate that, and which crimes are specifically indicative of dangerousness. Plus, this system can be prone to abuse, as it becomes easy to just lock someone up forever by saying they haven't made progress; some old penological theories believed that willingness to commit crimes was indicative of permanent character flaws, biological or otherwise, and people could go to jail very long time for something like simple assault.

As for your defense of deterrence, if it isn't working empirically because criminals do not often consider the consequences of their actions, then isn't deterrence faulty? Sure, you could argue that if we took away the laws, people would do whatever they want because they have no fear of punishment, but if, in a democratic society, a particular activity is very widespread among the population, then it would almost certainly not be criminalized; what is "normal" is rarely, if ever, considered a crime.

I think that it's also worth pointing out that if the sentences for crimes are too high, then people are willing to go to bigger lenghts to avoid prosecution, leading them to possibly break more laws/cause more harm due to very strict punishement system, so it could be very double-edged sword and not just linear ratio between "harm prevented by making the crime less desireable by bigger punishments" and "harm done to lawbreaker for breaking the law"

It's there for punishment as you said
I don't believe in rehabilitating criminals, segregate them based on crime + previous convicts, give them access to books and 1 hour in the yard.

Crimes I believe should be punishable by death
>murder
>attempted murder
>paedophilia
>home invasion

This is a good point, and has been recognized as a problem in Western democracies. The instinct for freedom amongst people is strong, so if they want to do something, but they believe that the punishment is too severe, some will try to figure out a way around it. The government is frustrated by these attempts to avoid prosecution for breaking the law, so they make the means of avoidance a crime as well. At that point, you're already in deep trouble because the crime itself carries such a severe punishment, so punishing someone for committing a crime in attempting to avoid punishment fails as a deterrent.

The best example I can come up with is if you have stiff fines for speeding violations, so people buy a radar detector. If the government outlaws the radar detectors, the fine must be markably more steep than the cost of a speeding ticket. However, if the speeding ticket fine is already very high, people might not care about the even higher fine for the radar detector, as progressively stiffer penalties become something someone knows they can't afford anyway or they consider that high a fine to be fundamentally unjust.

The speed limit example is rather nice, but I like just to point out how people on death sentence are being treated as they don't have anything to lose, thus they might be willing to do anything just for a chance to avoid death, despire that example being very extreme I cannot imagine someone seriously denying that a phenomena like this exists.

Also there's this interesting seperate phenomena of covering small lies/crimes with incrementally bigger ones until you eventually end up doing horrendous acts that would make you avoid doing what started the chain of events, but by then it's too late and you are forced to do what you would've never agreed to previously.

Despite hating the example the best I can kind of think of is the Ramsey example in Song of Ice and Fire, where he decides to kill the maester and Stark kids, because the situation led to it even though he most likely would've never agreed to it innitially.

I kind of thought about that when I've watched a bit about Peter Gerard Scully, despite his acts being just beyond awful and he himself probably not being of the right mind to begin with, it felt like he actually didn't want to come as far as he did and would've never wanted to end up the way he did and would never do what he did to his own children and would consider that unthinkabout, but situation led to it with small steps. Maybe I am wrong about it in that case, but it certainly seemed to me to be what happened.

You raise a good point with your various examples, specifically with death sentences. For instance, liberal penology from the late 18th century was very grounded in rationalism. They believed that very strong punishments for crimes such as rape would be ineffective, because if you commit the crime, you basically have nothing to lose and your life is over. At that point you may as well shoot and kill the person you raped or violently robbed because at that point what else do you have to lose?

Detterance also falters when they have nothing to lose.

Ask a Veeky Forums bro who spent 5 years in prison anything.

Also an excellent point. This is also a good reason not to ruin someone's life with the punishment if they committed a crime, because when they eventually get out, they will have nothing to lose and could very easily fall back into crime.

I can't think of any reason not to rehabilitate criminals if you can, seems like a win for everyone really. It's not like rehabilitation would have to replace punishment, either.
Do you just think that rehabilitation doesn't work often enough to justify putting time and money towards it?

why

I don't believe in rehabilitation because you're helping those that have harmed society and putting trust into individuals who have proven they're untrustworthy.
I also don't believe it works often enough as said. If someone goes into prison for drunk driving or some other minor offense then more often than not they had a fairly productive life outside of prison and so they don't need new degrees or special snowflake meetings. When they leave prison and it's harder to find a job then that's tough fucking shit because as I said, they've harmed society and have forfeited their right to reap it's rewards. It also acts as another deterrent, since you'll be laying bricks, sweeping streets or cleaning bathrooms for the rest of your life if you commit a crime. There's no reason that criminals should take jobs from law abiding citizens.

What punishment could prevent ALL crime?

A death sentence. Why not have the death sentence for every crime?

Rehabilitation isn't for them. It cost taxpayer money to jail them. If you rehabilitate, they pay tax money.

>I also don't believe it works
Well that's the real reason you're against it.

That's fair enough but I think the deterrent would work fine if we didn't pamper prisoners.
Punishment = less crimes = less taxpayer money

That's called communism

So?

It's what OP is talking about.

Deterrence. The best deterrent OP can think of is harsh punishment. So death penalty for all crimes, right? Obviously it would be after a trial, it's not like you'd allow police to just execute people for jaywalking. They'd have to be prosecuted first, it would have to proven than they jaywalked before they'd be executed.

Then you end jaywalking. Like OP says, once they've decided to break a law, they're total write-offs. Why waste the money incarcerating them for life when you can kill them?

This was Draco's model: death for everything. Of course, he didn't have very many laws either, unlike today.

We need a more lenient death penalty. And we need to stop illegal injections. Beheading works just fine.

>appeal to extremes

But putting lives in danger is a crime.

So jaywalking would count.

So jaywalking must have the death sentence.

How else can we dissuade people from ever even attempting it?

Not at all. OP said that when a person has committed a crime, rehabilitation is no longer a possibility.

If you believe that someone who breaks one law will be a criminal for life, and you believe that the death penalty is justifiable, then you must accept that the death penalty is the only reasonable justice for any crime worthy of being considered a crime. If you don't, then you must accept life imprisonment for all criminals, and the personal cost this would have for every taxpayer.

I see what you're saying, but why would people in a democratic society vote to allow execution for all crimes? It's hard to imagine yourself brutally murdering someone, but it's a lot easier to imagine yourself jaywalking or committing some minor offense that creates a small risk of danger or disturbs the social order, like littering.

Do you know how much execution costs? Way, way more than keeping an average prisoner in jail does, and they end up sitting there for ages appealing it, so they won't be executed for decades.

You're arguing we should spend money to just flat out murder civilians for minor stuff. What about if you go slightly over the speed limit? Death penalty? Accidentally violate a building code? Walk your dog on a dog free beach?

Death penalty is just unnecessary, when you can keep a prisoner in jail forever and have them help pay off their fees via work programs.

Actually, I think I misread the point I replied to, ignore this.

Either way, purely punitive measures are pointless, as unless you keep someone in prison for life or execute them, they're just going to get out with no extra skills apart from those learned from other criminals, into a situation worse than the one they were originally in.

Rehabilitate a prisoner and they have a chance to become functioning members of society.

As far as we can tell, the average criminal who commits a crime thinks his chance of getting caught is 0%. You could make the punishment for littering "you and your entire family will be executed" and dumbfucks would still be doing it because they're all walking around thinking "surely I will never be caught, and thus never be punished at all." So criminal justice as a deterrent doesn't work. Flat out doesn't fucking work, because the kind of people who weigh out the risks and their options aren't the kind of people who become criminals to begin with.
>Exception: Certain kinds of white collar crime are the kinds of things that "noncriminals" get ordered to do at work, and they do it because there's no real punishment for the most part, even when they do get caught. If securities fraud had a mandatory sentence of getting your dick burned off, you might see more people quitting in that field.

How do you explain very high US crime rates while their justice system punishments very hard?

Easy
Niggers

Rehabilitation works for most people who have broken the law though, depending on what they have done.

Just take a look at the Norwegian recidivism rates versus the U.S for example. Norway has 20% recidivism, and the U.S has something like 70%.

Honestly, I think the way Americans look at criminals plays right into the hands of private prison corporations that want to make money off of prisoners.

Criminals should be liquefied into nutrition supplements for law-abiding civvies.

Bring back the guillotine.

There's also the question of how much deterrence to aim for. A punishment strong enough to deter anyone (or as many people as possible) from committing a crime would be ridiculously out of proportion to the crime.

That's true, and most penological theories include this proportionality analysis because they accept that humans are fallible and make mistakes, with some people making very big mistakes. Penological theories which reject this idea and subscribe to potential human perfectibilty tend to be tied to various utopian movements, such as Nazis or communism, because their theoretical world is perfect, and people who would dare disturb that perfection by violating its laws must be deterred from doing so through grave punishment.

The difference that you conveniently left out is that criminals in Norway are white nordics where the criminals in the US are black and hispanic

But there's no way that could possibly contribute to the recidivism rate because it would be racist to say blacks are prone to criminality, right?

>Nords
>White

Even assuming 100% recidivism rate among black prisoners, that still leaves 51% recidivism rate among everyone else.

You won't know until you put the prisoners in Nordic style prisons.

They have no reason to try the American system, one with far worse outcomes, but Americans have a reason to try a system with better outcomes.

I see it as both.

Coming from Denmark, where sentences are short and merciful compared to the United States or China, I still think the punishments are strong for most violent crime.
Petty crime is hilariously softly punished, you could burglarize 10 houses and get caught and not even see the inside of a jail cell.

Then again, if you put petty thieves into prison with hardened criminals, the thieves will often become more criminal, which is why remittance rates in the United States are twice or thrice as high as here in Scandinavia.
And criminals that have served 5 or 10 years will still describe it as the longest and worst period of their life.
No one likes to loose their liberty.

And my society benefits from rehabilitation. It is much better if a criminal stops being a criminal, instead of coming out of prison and going directly into the next crime spree.

Another thing is, that the more lenient punishment means that most criminals will not violently resist arrest. Many cops (and civilians) are shot by desperate criminals that are "NOT GOING TO PRISON AGAIN!", especially the three strike laws mean that otherwise non-violent criminals have a reason for violence. If you are looking at a life sentence, all bets are off, there is no reason to hold back, to not shoot a cop, to not take hostages, to not try to escape. Life is life, you might as well fight like an animal.

And we have the special "psychiatric prisons" where the crazy ax murderers go in to be "treated". What happens is that they come in, and they never come out again. This is basically life sentences, whereas the longest sentence you can possibly get it 14 or 16 years in the normal prison system.

TL;DR - it should be deterrence, but you also need rehabilitation for the sake of society, it's simply more economical and safer for everyone

Just split it into violent and non-violent crimes.

If you stole money by playing a con or scam, you are liquidated and have to pay off the debt in community service.

If you beat someone up, you get a time-out, and can pick up your property when you leave.

We don't execute for every crime because we want the deterrent to keep working for as long as possible, so after you've committed a minor crime there's still something to be afraid of. This is where we can also give "cheats" like killing witnesses an extra deterrent, or create an incentive for turning oneself in.