If you have actually committed a crime but you are remorseful and repentant for it wouldn’t you believe you actually deserve whatever punishment the court of law may hand you out especially in a country like the USA where cruel & unusual punishments are forbidden?
No. While I accept karmic responsibility for my actions, I don’t always feel that governmental punishments are fair.
Who wouldn’t want to get out of jail if they could? Your question made me think of the manson murderers.
No. If I’ve genuinely changed then the punishment is pointless cruelty. The goal after all is -or should be - behavior modification, and if I’ve genuinely reformed then the process is done, and successful.
The real world problem is more of a practical one; lacking telepathy, we can’t tell if someone has genuinely changed or is just a good liar unless and until we actually let them out.
Not necessarily. I may believe that the punishment, if not exactly “cruel and unusual” is excessively harsh or unevenly/unfairly imposed.
Which laws are we obligated to obey? All of them? Every single one? We’re gonna need a bigger jail.
Depends on what the crime is, or the punishment for said crime.
Your hypothetical assumes the law and punishment for breaking said law are just. This is not necessarily the case.
I do disagree with Der Trihs here, though. There is a purpose for punishment even if you’ve changed. It’s to make the other people you wronged feel safer. They can’t know for sure that you’ve changed. Knowing that there is a punishment makes it more likely that they believe you won’t do it again.
Actually, I’m not sure that is a disagreement. Because, of course, you would want to get out of it; you just want to also help reassure the other people.
The problem with that as an argument is that it would apply just as much to a case where the target of the punishment is completely innocent. If the goal isn’t reform but just to make the public happy then it’s all show and the guilt or innocence of the target becomes irrelevant.
Don’t want to hijack, but IMO the death penalty is certainly a cruel and unusual punishment. Just saying.
That would be the “real world problem” Der Trihs spoke of, BigT. We can’t tell if real rehabilitation has happened in reality.
I also tend to agree with Der Trihs, with one reservation. I’m not sure that feeling “sorry” and being rehabilitated (or successfully modifying the behavior, if you prefer) are the same thing, even if we had a mindreader to confirm the emotion. Just because I feel truly sorry for having done something doesn’t always mean I won’t do it again. In my actual life, this relates mainly to things like eating too much ice cream and not crime. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are criminals who do genuinely feel sorry for their crimes, and then go on to repeat them. Either they have an addiction or personality disorder which changes their thinking later or they have short memories or feeling sorry isn’t a bad enough feeling for them to avoid it by not acting that way again. With enough study, I’m sure someone could come up with a good rubric to determine the status of someone’s actual rehabilitation, but I don’t know that “sorry” is it.
Let’s rephrase the question as: Does true repentance necessitate the desire for atonement? Phrasing it this way removes the urge to opine on the purpose and quality of the penal system, which I don’t think was the intent of the question.
I believe true repentance must include the desire for atonement. There’s often no way to make the victim whole – you can’t bring back someone you’ve killed, and even if you return the goods you stole in a burglary, that doesn’t remove the victim’s feelings of violation. So , short of accepting the state’s penalty for the crime, how does a repentant criminal atone?
Depends on the crime and the punishment. I don’t automatically agree with all punishments anyway, but speaking of the USA, a good example of what I consider not just wrong but barbaric are three strike laws - you can end up with 25 - life. For any offense that can be upgraded to a felony.
My first impulse is to agree with Qin. My second impulse is to add a qualification. And my third impulse is to decide that Qin is wrong because of the broadness of the issue.
And now to explain.
I’ve done some bad things in my life, some of which I’ve talked about here, some of which I haven’t, and all of which I regret. I’ve never been punished for most of the really bad stuff; for reasons I’m not going to go into I don’t expect ever to be. This doesn’t make me happy. I’m not the guy I was back then and don’t intend to ever be him again; if by some magic I met him, I’d probably assault him. In a perfectly just world I’d have faced retribution. I know I’ve done stuff that did long term harm to people, and if it were possible to to undo it I would. But by the very nature of some of the misdeeds, no financial recompense is possible. There are some senses in which I’d rest easier if I faced consequences, and I hope that, if I am wrong about no retribution being likely, I’d have the balls to take my medicine.
But here’s the qualification: that’s just me. I don’t know if I think everybody whose committed a wrong should feel as I feel. I just know what I feel,and I don’t feel I’m on firm enough ground on the issue to judge someone who might feel otherwise.
The broadness of the issue also keeps me from completely agreeingn with Curtis. Some – a good number – of the laws in this country, America, are unduly harsh. Take the three strikes laws that were in vogue in the 90s, many of which are still on the books. In many cases they raise the legal penalties of an act past the point that is just. It was once (and may still be) possible in, say, California, to be sentenced to life in prison for stealing a trival amount of merchandise; you can believe theft is wrong, and regret a prior career as a thief, without believing that to be just.
The first problem is that people’s feelings of remorse are not directly related to the scope of their transgression; sometimes it seems as if it’s inverse. That is, some people feel guilty for everything and figuratvly beat themselves up over not remembering to top up the gas tank or not volunteering more often at the soup kitchen; some people don’t feel remorse for killing a 6-year old child because “it was crying, that was getting on my nerves, it’s its own fault, not mine, I’m sorry only that I splattered blood”. In between are a lot of people so busy finding excuses for themselves to ward off guilt that they can’t accept any responsibilty for their actions (they are helpless pawns, things happened, they weren’t caused by them, you know?)
I’ve often said that the Catholic Church had the right idea with confession, and then went and mucked it up by requiring it (and the way the priests asked for little sins putting overblown guilt issues into little children). But the idea of confession is:
- you sit there anonymously, telling what you did wrong (with a gentle questioning if you have trouble remembering)
- you say that you are sorry, that is, if you could turn the clock back, you would undo it
- you talk with the priest/ therapist/ counselor about what you are going to do to avoid that particular behaviour in the future. What is the cause that you burgled that car (your drug issue) or tried to drive over your neighbour with your car (he upsets you), and how can you deal with that cause (get a rehab, take an anger management course)?
- you make restitution to the victim to the best of your ability. You can’t re-animate a murder victim, but pay the family. You can meet with a robbery victim and tell them that you are sincerely sorry for their fear (this is being done in some German prisons, as part of victim program and helping also with the recdividsm rate in the criminals - they better understand the consequences of their actions)
- you get an additonal punishment. For Catholics, it’s 10 Hail Marys or 20 rosarys or fasting for a week. Secularly, you could give money - in addition to the restitution! - to a charity, or work in a soup kitchen or whatever. Something that’s hard on you but good for somebody else.
- Then, after all that, you get absolvence, that is, you are free of the guilt and can now move on with your life.
And even if you do it the secular way, with a therapist, you will feel better. Having no remorse is obviously a sign of mental or neurological problems, but feeling guilty for years afterwards won’t help either.
Don’t you have to be a wee bit masochistic to feel that you actually deserve punishment? Or at least impaired in some other way? If you know you are doing a crime but do it anyway, remorse is probably not a major component, unless its remorse at being caught.
No, for a person with a normal development in moral and their brain neurology* it is normal and healthy to feel sorrow for what they did.
Second, it’s not only about crimes that are illegal, but a general feeling of what’s morally right and wrong. A lot of things are not illegal per se, but immoral for some people (it violates the Golden Rule, for example).
People, even if they have a moral compass, still do things that are wrong, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, they act without thinking (see anger management problems, or eating a whole bucket of ice cream when you know it’s bad for you). Sometimes, they act despite their conscious knowledge, because they have a strong impulse. Every human sometimes feels the need to do something stupid, or childish or embarrassing; sometimes, these things go wrong.
Sometimes, you cause harm by neglience - you didn’t check your brakes, and caused an accident that injured others - so you feel guilty about not being more careful.
Sometimes, you act at the time without feeling wrong - you are on a drug habit, or you think that people stupid enough to fall for a con deserve to be swindled**. Later, afterwards, you develop a conscience and realize that what you did back then was wrong.
Sometimes people misjudge things. You think that one beer is no big deal, until you cause a car crash. Then you feel guilty afterwards.
And yes, some people have been raised or are by character the type to feel guilty for everything and wallow in remorse, and that’s unhealthy. But that’s different from the normal reaction.
- there is evidence that the moral part of our personality is located in a certain part of the brain, the frontal cortex I think. Also, during teenage years, parts of the brain are actually re-wired and re-structured. If something goes wrong during that time, if you had a defect there before, or if you injured after, you will have no sense of right and wrong.
** Terry Pratchett, in Going Postal, describes very well a professional con-man who initially has no conscience, slowly developing a civic feeling. Worth a read for the trick of making the reader like a criminal.
Well, thank god I’m not normally developed; I’m also lacking in the moral compass category.
Hardly anyone is ever sorry that they did anything. They’re just sorry that they got caught. If what they did causes exceptional suffering to someone else, like murdering them, killing their kids, paralyzing them for life, or ruining their livelihood in some catastrophic way, they may feel bad about it. Otherwise, they’re sorry they got caught.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.