My Three Arguments Against Retribution...

Great Debates
1

As I’ve said, many times before, I don’t believe in retribution. I just think there are better things we can strive for.

Anyways, I have been giving it some thought. And I think I have three arguments against retribution. (Please deal with them, one-by-one, if you wish.)

[ol]
[li]Retribution is just revenge, plain and simple. It appeals to our baser emotions. And as I said, mankind can strive for better things, I think.[/li]
[li]As societies (Western ones, at least) become more and more advanced technologically and politically, we become more merciful anyways. When someone puts out your eye, we don’t put out their eye as we once did. Think about it.[/li]
[li]Lastly, some people are just ill. (I want to make a clear distinction at this point from actual mental illness. Most mentally ill are non-violent. I know this, because mental illness has touched my family. Both my parents, esp. my father, were bi-polar. And they were the nicest people you could ever meet.) But some people are ill in other ways. Take pedophiles. 30 or 40 years ago, where I live (Michigan), they were treated as ill, and often given therapy, along with a nominal prison sentence. That no longer is the case. But it shows the matter can be addressed from that standpoint.[/li][/ol]

Also, I am not saying some people shouldn’t be locked away–possibly even for life. Some people can simply never be rehabilitated, at least now. And locking them up HUMANELY, is probably the better alternative, I agree.

Those are my arguments. Take them apart as you wish. And please, be frank–just not brutal:).

:):):slight_smile:

2

Sometimes evil can only be countered by force. The Russians in WWII after Barbarossa and the Americans after Pearl Harbor being the two prime exemplars in my mind.

3

I’d certainly say pedophilia is a mental illness.

4

I agree. But countering something with force is not the same as seeking retribution.

5

Let’s say you have a man called Al who really hates one other person, Bob (and it’s mutual). So Al murders Bob.

Now let’s say that we can clearly beyond any reasonable doubt that Bob is the only person Al has ever felt this kind of hate towards and he’s not going to develop a similar hate for anyone else (it took a lifetime to build up). And Al acknowledges that murder is bad but he says his hatred of Bob was so high he did it anyway. So Al has committed the only murder he’ll ever commit.

This is not completely hypothetical. There are actually a lot of people who commit a murder under one set of circumstances but are unlikely to ever encounter the same circumstances and commit another murder.

So what do you do with these people when they are convicted? You don’t really need to rehabilitate them - they’re no more likely to commit another crime than you or I are. Nor is there any pressing need to segregate them from society - again they’re not likely to commit more crimes. And you can’t bring Bob back to life. He’s going to stay dead regardless of what you do.

What are you left with? Deterrence and retribution. Some people would argue that society should give Al a long term of imprisonment (or even execute him) as a warning to other potential murderers. It might not bring Bob back but it could dissuade some other person from killing a person they hate just as much as Al hated Bob. The problem is nobody has been able to show that deterrence generally works.

So we’re left with retribution. We put Al in prison as a penalty for committing a serious crime - even though we recognize it won’t undo the crime or prevent other crimes.

6

That’s exactly it. The threat of punishment is a deterrent. If there is no deterrent as long as I’m just a one-time offender, then why not kill the guy? “Retribution” is just another term for “punishment”.

Also, the OP misunderstands “an eye for an eye”. It actually was an innovation along the lines of what the OP is looking for. The idea was that the punishment should not exceed the crime, not that the punishment must equal the crime. You don’t kill someone for a crime less than killing another person.

7

Just to extend this conversation - how do you feel about various countries (and some US states) having a Death penalty for treason and other crimes against the State (spying etc). While these actions could certainly lead to deaths of innocent people, the perpetrator is not directly responsible for those deaths. If you go down the ‘consequences of actions’ route you get into the ‘Man who sold the pick to the miner who dug the copper that went into the bullet that killed the bank clerk’

8

I’m not sure retribution is a good thing, but you haven’t done a very good job of proving your case.

#2 is recursive–we are more merciful because we are less retributive than in the past, and we are less retributive than we were because we are now more merciful? That’s begging the question.

#3 Doesn’t have any influence on people who aren’t ill. You could argue that almost everyone society wishes to get revenge on is ill, or that we can’t tell who’s ill and who isn’t, but neither of those arguments were made.

I’ll give one pro-retribution argument: people have an innate desire to seek retribution or justice, as evidenced by the existence of systems of punishment in every society in the world. If you try to shut down any legal method of revenge, you won’t succeed in ending retribution, since revenge is human nature, but rather in pushing it into extralegal methods. Extralegal punishment–like lynch mobs in the South or assassinations in Ancient Rome– are ultimately less efficient and fair than legal means, since there is no opportunity for the accused to prove their innocence, and since the process is biased towards the wealthy and well-connected. In short, any effort to end retribution would ultimately be ineffective and worse for everyone involved than the current system.

9

If you don’t like retribution, move out here to the great State of Washington - we’re almost at that goal now.

Last week there were two young thugs that had been just been convicted of beating a WWII veteran to death during a robbery. One of them had his sentence plea-bargained down to 16 years, and the other to 20 years. with good behavior they will probably spend only half that time in the pokey.

Human life is pretty cheap out here in God’s country.

10

I don’t know if it relates to anything anyone has said so far. But I, personally at least, found this recent article very eye-opening.

Even if you support retribution, what are its limits? Eye-for-an-eye? More than that? Less?

The above article seems to show (IMHO at least) that people who favor retribution are often indifferent to the plight of prisoners, even though we all know that was never the point of the actual punishment.

:slight_smile:

11

You’re wrong. You’re just wrong.

Retribution is useful in a consequentialist analysis, because it deters future bad behavior. I think you overrate mercy. In a given case, it matters whether being merciful does more good for the guilty (or even merely believed guilty) than encouraging future crimes does harm.

12

Or we let Al go, as a warning to anyone else that acts like Bob that this could happen.

And civilized societies have done both. (It may help Al if he’s of a privileged class, or Bob is of a low class.)

Of course, if Bob has any relatives, you could end up with a vendetta spiral.

13

8-10 years confinement is cheap?

14

For murder? Yeah, I’d say so.

15

It’s basically a “the entire rest of your life is fucked” sentence still.

Prison years cost more when they’re the supposedly best years of one’s life. The kids are 18, they’ll get out at ~30 with no education, no job experience, no friends left, prison reflexes (including maybe a rape or two) and a rap sheet ensuring they’ll never get hired anywhere anyway. They’ll have spent almost half of their lifebehind bars, and be released in a world they don’t grok because in 10 years the modern world changes a lot.

And that’s if they don’t just get shanked - apparently the Aryan Brotherhood has put a hit out on them.

16

Big deal! In Australia they would have received a fully suspended sentence. IOW, no penalty whatsoever for kicking an old man to death.

It’s crap like this that makes arguments against retribution so hard to swallow. there is a desire in the human brain to see "justice’ done. The idea that it is just to impose no penalty for killing an elderly homeless man just doesn’t wash with most people.

17

Retribution is a motive. It’s not the action taken.

From scolding to whipping to lockup to execution–the entire spectrum of consequence for behavior can be administered without invoking retribution.

18

As somebody who can speak as an authority on prisons, I can tell you that article is wrong. Rape is not a common occurrence in prison and it is certainly not tolerated or condoned.

19

This is what Sir Francis Bacon once wrote about revenge:

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence. That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong’s sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man’s enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God’s hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.”

20

The question doesn’t quite clarify whether you are speaking of the formal concept of Retributive Justice carried out by a society or whether you are using the term more loosely.

Formally

Any society will have standards of behaviour it requires from it’s membership and it seems (from history) absolutely inevitable that some members will transgress. The justice system therefore needs to have a system in place which can deter members from any initial transgression (Deterrence), deter transgressors from repeat offending (Rehabilitation) and be seen to be dealing with transgressors publicly to attempt to salve the hurt suffered by specific victims (plus the “hurt” suffered by that society itself.)

Retributive penal systems have glaringly failed to stop crime, stop reoffending and fully salve the pain of some victims so they could be declared a failure.

The question becomes what system would do a better job?

[ There is an argument capital punishment has a 100% success record on stopping re-offending by the individual so punished but it clearly doesn’t work entirely successfully as a deterrent plus, today if not so much in the past, even it’s most fervent supporters don’t advocate for its application for more minor crimes. ]

TCMF-2L