Get your rocks ready. Stoning at the highschool at noon.

The BBQ Pit
161

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
Perhaps we’re missing a contemporary “Western” example of a culture that has swift, severe punishment for a person who breaks the laws of the culture. How about the Mafia?

Can we say (I’m guessing we can, but I don’t know much about the Mafia) that Mafia members are more likely to abide by the rules of their subcultures than average Joes?
[/QUOTE]

I think this is a good example. Contrary to what Ludovic offered, I’d say that the Mafia’s internal justice system was amazingly effective for quite some time. If the bosses thought you fucked up enough, the next day you were stuffed in the trunk of a car with a bullet in your head. No jury. No appeals process. Kinda makes it hard to not want to keep those in power pleased. There was a code that was strictly adhered to (fucked up as it might have been). The bad news for the Mafia is that it’s success relied on 100% compliance. When a couple of guys decide to save their skin with the Feds, that’s the beginning of the end. But it worked quite well (from their standpoint) for quite some time. Heck, it’s still working pretty well in Italy.

162

[QUOTE=Quartz]
No: that would be the death penalty, which I oppose. In an oubliette you get food and drink. But you only leave on dying or being pardoned or vindicated or having served your sentence.
[/QUOTE]

Now THAT’S fucked up. I know I’d rather be put to death, even by stoning, or even the rats. And I am 100% serious. At least it would be over in a few hours.

163

I thought we were referring to modern mafia, and in any case, the strict compliance was based on non-jury judgements, which are even worse than jury-based outcomes. So I suspect that way back before the Fed crackdown, you had what looked like harsh justice causing somewhat of an increase in compliance, but quite a bit of non-guilty people getting killed and quite a few guilty people getting away with stuff.

But it’s true that I was not thinking of the relative increase in loyalty and “code” compliance in the early Mafia. It’s just that I’m not sure if we’ve ever had that harsh punishment paired with a relatively good system of determining guilt rather than relying on rumors.

164

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
This would only be the case if I was arguing from first principles - but I’m not, I’m also arguing that the historic evidence supports the “no/negligible deterrence” premise. While you have argued against this, I don’t think you’ve sufficiently proved your case enough for this to count as me begging the question.
[/QUOTE]

I guess it all depends where you draw the baseline. I don’t think the historical evidence makes your point, or minie. I can’t figure out where to look to make a fair assessment. I think the best is probably Sharia Law in the recent past. For example, how prevalent was theft in countries or villages in which the chopping off of haqnds was strongly enforced? So, barring any reliable historical evidence, it makes sense to me to look at simple conditioning. And animals can be, and are, conditioned to increase certain behaviors and curtail others. We are hard-written to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
You’re arguing that any deterrence value is better than none, seems to me, but I’m weighing the possible deterrence against the likely increased brutalisation and desensitisation to violence of Society that public executions would cause. IMO, of course.
[/QUOTE]

I quibble with the first part of this. I’m arguing that if one can add the deterrence factor while not desensitizing society to brutalization, that that would be the best situation. And I think it morally incumbent upon us to seek that out. And it depends how you weight each side of the equation. To make the point in an extreme way. If you were able to make the deterrence factor 99.9% effective, yet that would desensitize society (however the hell you would measure that) by .1%, you’d have to accept that relatively small negative, wouldn’t you? Obviously, if the numbers were flipped you’d have to forego the tiny gain in deterrence.

165

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
But it’s true that I was not thinking of the relative increase in loyalty and “code” compliance in the early Mafia. It’s just that I’m not sure if we’ve ever had that harsh punishment paired with a relatively good system of determining guilt rather than relying on rumors.
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Though I’d be willing to wager that the mafia was pretty careful who they, uh, “retired”, as it was a loss for them to retire someone who really was loyal. But I take your larger point.

166

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Kinda makes it hard to not want to keep those in power pleased.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s certainly revealing.

I think we’re done here.

167

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Well, that’s certainly revealing.

I think we’re done here.
[/QUOTE]

Revealing? Really? What do you think it reveals, other than you’re still up to your old tricks of content-free drive-by snipes?

Up to your usual standards, I’d say. But thanks for playing. :rolleyes:

168

[QUOTE=Zoe]
Your use of quotation marks around the word justice leaves a lot of questions. Do you want real justice or not? Do you want that justice to be according to the laws of our justice system? Do you want the laws of our justice system to be in accord with the Constitution of the United States?
[/QUOTE]

Obviously, I was trying to bring attention to the word and indicate that I didn’t mean it in it’s more usual legal sense, but in the moral sense. Ideally, any punishment would satisfy both meanings. And that should be our goal. But that is not the case, which is why I wrote what I did. I don’t see how that was confusing.

[QUOTE=Zoe]
Just a suggestion, magellan, but ease up on labelling people as garbage and trash. Such labelling is one of the things that is really bad for our society. We had better learn to give a shit about those people. Reality tells us that they are going to be out and among us again. We need to do everything possible to decrease their violent impulses and increase their abilities to function normally in society if they are released.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ll have to pass. There IS human trash in this world. I see no reason to not call it what it is. Not everyone who commits a crime, or even a violent crime falls into this category, but the category exists.

[QUOTE=Zoe]
Not everyone looks for release in revenge. When Robert Kennedy’s assassin was brought to trial, the Kennedy family made it known that they were against the death penalty. Their wishes had no legal standing, but it served as a reminder that their are other ways of dealing with feelings of despair and anger.
[/QUOTE]

Big deal. They’re against the death penalty. That’s not some automatic moral high ground. And you’ll excuse me if the Kennedy name doesn’t cause me to genuflect.

169

[QUOTE=magellan01]
I guess it all depends where you draw the baseline. I don’t think the historical evidence makes your point, or minie.
[/QUOTE]

We’ll have to differ - I think the historical case for negligible deterrence value is clear. I think the same is true of the current use of the DP - The UN and Amnesty international agree with me:
[
[QUOTE=Amnesty Intl.]
7. The deterrence argument

Scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. The most recent survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded: “. . .it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment.”

(Reference: Roger Hood, The Death Penalty: A World-wide Perspective, Oxford, Clarendon Press, third edition, 2002, p. 230)
[/QUOTE]
](http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng)

[QUOTE=magellan01]
So, barring any reliable historical evidence, it makes sense to me to look at simple conditioning. And animals can be, and are, conditioned to increase certain behaviors and curtail others. We are hard-written to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
[/QUOTE]

…but we also reason our way past simple animal drives - we have arguments like “They’ll never catch ME!” or “All those guys they caught weren’t as smart as I am!” and similar. People just aren’t that simple.

[QUOTE=magellan01]

I quibble with the first part of this. I’m arguing that if one can add the deterrence factor while not desensitizing society to brutalization, that that would be the best situation. And I think it morally incumbent upon us to seek that out. And it depends how you weight each side of the equation. To make the point in an extreme way. If you were able to make the deterrence factor 99.9% effective, yet that would desensitize society (however the hell you would measure that) by .1%, you’d have to accept that relatively small negative, wouldn’t you? Obviously, if the numbers were flipped you’d have to forego the tiny gain in deterrence.
[/QUOTE]

I’m thinking any increased brutalisation of Society at all is going to have a negative feedback effect that will rapidly outweigh the deterrence value. I don’t think this is something you can do any numeric cost-benefit analysis on. It’s a chaotic system, and anything you do that you know will have some - any - negative effects is to be avoided because of that unpredictability. Why increase the negative effect on Society - an effect you admit would be hard to quantify - when there are alternatives? Because you think the deterrent benefits might outweigh it. What about those of us who weight the negative effects on Society much higher than you do? We get a say too, surely?

Currently, 2/3 countries don’t have the death penalty, and that number increases steadily. Having a more-efficient DP isn’t an advance. It’s a step back. Currently (well, 2006), the US, China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan execute 91% of all people who have the DP applied to them. 6 countries.

And look at the company you want to keep.

170

[QUOTE=Quartz]
No: that would be the death penalty, which I oppose. In an oubliette you get food and drink. But you only leave on dying or being pardoned or vindicated or having served your sentence.
[/QUOTE]

I did a bit more research, and sometimes the prisoners would get food and drink (especially if they were being held for ransom), sometimes they’d be left to die of starvation. I say we call it a draw. :slight_smile: