61–70 of 82 posts
The author also laments how the systems favors inmates who are more likeable and are good storytellers for parole eligibility, vs Frank Smith who was anti-social, grumy, and kept it to himself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…
Deterrence? I don't think that long sentences deter any crime. If the ultimate sentence (DP) doesn't deter murder, then why would lesser sentences deter lesser crimes?
So you think if there was no punishment for any crime, the crime rates wouldn't skyrocket? Not sure what to say to you if you think that's true.
> If the ultimate sentence (DP) doesn't deter murder...
Who says it doesn't?
Deter doesn't mean prevent entirely. You can't just say "well murders still happen", that doesn't prove that there wouldn't be more murders if it had no prospective punishment.
what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…
Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.
I've seen that too. IMO, neither "direction" is what matters here. Both cases are failures to apply justice appropriately. It's tiring that efforts to reform always seem to be led by people who are either "tough" or "soft" on crime.
(...)
> He begins to unspool a series of conspiracy theories, threaded with racial slurs: The United Nations was plotting to take away America’s weapons. He writes, “The Jew has been poluting the country with moral filth through the movies radio and TV” in a campaign to push Black men “next to the white woman.” People like them needed to band together to protect the country, he concluded. “Every person in this country who is white and Christian has a job to do.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some countries limit the time you can spend in prison for this very reason, no matter what you did. For instance, Brazil sets it to 40 years total even if you killed 100 people.
Croatia is the same, our serial killer that started killing when he was 16 is being released soon, killed someone on a free weekend while serving time, got married in prison. Not sure what to say of such a system, I'm not really in favor. And 40 years is like the max, for raping and killing it's more like 15-20, eg a deranged man who chopped of a tourist's head is released in a few years after serving 15, another man…
there is a real problem with the elderly in american prisons, they sentenced so many people to absurdly high sentences in the 80s/90s that they basically ended up with nursing homes for the elderly except they are prisoners. https://www.aclu.org/report/americas-expense-mass-incarcerat... Its just the punitive culture that is deeply rooted in american society. Its one of the more depressing subjects in sociology when…
Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.
What I'm saying is its not the evidence-based justice system to blame, its the root causes of crime that need to be addressed, if that fails, changing the justice system is addressing the symptom not the cause. That is what the united states is doing, resulting in inhumane treatment of prisoners and the highest prison population in the world, not something you really want to advocate for (at least in theory if you aren't conservative of course).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…
> we'd have to spend a lot more tax dollars on prisoners to actually rehabilitate anything Not necessarily. Recidivism costs a lot , too. Norway spends over $100k/inmate, to the US's $25k/inmate ( https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2022/10/25/what-can-we-learn-from-t... ), but only 20% reoffend versus 2/3 of American inmates. (Resulting in 70/100k incarcerated versus the US's 700/100k; that $100k/year starts to look like $10k/…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.
Oh I'd imagine especially the rise of tabloid news has driven a lot of resentment towards the rehabilitation-based judiciary system in Scandinavian countries, but its still the job of a functioning government to protect its rehabilitation/evidence-based justice system. After all there are conservatives everywhere, attempting to cash in on law and order politics, doesn't help that with the rise of neoliberalism there…
In Sweden we have people getting out of prison after running people down with their cars and killing them after having already committed dozens of violent crimes, only to continue committing crimes as soon as they get out.
After a while there’s not much else that can be done but lock certain people up for good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.
Oh I'd imagine especially the rise of tabloid news has driven a lot of resentment towards the rehabilitation-based judiciary system in Scandinavian countries, but its still the job of a functioning government to protect its rehabilitation/evidence-based justice system. After all there are conservatives everywhere, attempting to cash in on law and order politics, doesn't help that with the rise of neoliberalism there…
What about crime that's on the rise because of a relatively lenient rehabilitation oriented criminal policy? Most of the crime I've seen perpetuated in Germany and Scandinavia, especially the more gruesome ones, are often perpetuated by second-generation immigrants "left out" of a system where they don't even want to actively take part in - many of them want the benefits of being part of a welfare state, but it's only a minority of those who want to contribute to it. Case in point, migrants specifically from Africa and the Middle East are a net negative to the Danish welfare state, according to the government's own stats.
Before rushing to downvote me, note that I used to be one suc migrant to Germany yet I could see that the system in place isn't sustainable. Most governments such as the Scandinavian and German ones have resorted to hiding their numbers to conceal the failures of their policies (all in an effort to bring cheap labour).
Source for above assertion: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-017-0636-1