As many have said, I doubt this way of thinking would produce a positive outcome (That is, the classical interpretation of eye for an eye). Rather I propose this. Decriminalize drug use and other victimless crimes and impose fines instead of prison time for said crimes, or if one cannot afford it, mandatory community service or some other form of work. Less prisoners, more productivity, more income, and people are still being punished.
As far as rehabilitation goes, I believe it should probably be provided to those addicted to drugs, perhaps as some sort of welfare program or some such. I’m not sure how that would work too well without costing taxes payers quite a bit though. When it comes to criminal rehabilitation, I don’t think that it is necessary. I believe prison should be intimidating and something no one should ever want to go to. It acts as both punishment and as a deterrent.
I believe many repeat offenders in US prisons are that way due to gang affiliation or extreme poverty with little other choice. I’m no expert in European crime, however I think the level of widespread large gangs is rather unique to the US (compared to Europe). I don’t think it’s accurate to think that the judicial/prison system of say, a Scandinavian nation would work equally as well in the US. Two extremely different cultures and thus should be treated as such. I just can’t imagine Iceland for instance having a US version of Bloods/Crips/MS13/Latin Kings. Gang members go to prison, hook up with other gang members, and go back to their gangs, repeat. No amount of “rehab” is going to make them go back and preach to their fellow gang members of how what they’re doing is wrong and has been all the time and that they should stop. It’s simply not realistic in my opinion. The real question is how do we break up gangs? But I believe that is a topic for another thread.
Right. They paid more money to put them on death row and then kill them even though the evidence says executions don’t deter crime. But they’re not paying to keep them alive, so… yay.
I bet you could easily show that there’s a strong relationship between home security and crime. If you don’t have a front door, you’re not worried about crime. If you have three deadbolts and bars over your window, you probably are.
For the most part, mankind didn’t even get around to inventing locks until the end of the 18th century. I’m fairly sure that torture and regular execution was far more common before the 18th century than they are today.
To be executed for a crime, your crime has to be impressively heinous, like if you killed someone and made them into a hat. It’s not a sentence that is related in any way to the career criminal.
The top theories for the drop in the crime rate, in the US, is because of the legalization of birth control or because of the rise of three strikes laws. If you look at the rate of incarceration, in the US, over the last couple of decades, I think you’ll come to the conclusion that it’s the latter.
Locking someone up forever isn’t rehabilitation, but it does seem to have proved effective.
Eye for an eye is kind of a tough principle to follow. Let’s face it, there’s not a lot of eye gouging going on. So how to you apply the principle of letting the punishment equal the crime to actual crimes?
Monstro already pointed out the difficulty of punishing a drug user with this method. I’ll add how do you apply it to a thief? Do you break into his house and steal his TV? If he’s a mugger do you steal his wallet? What about a child abuser?
A harsher sentencing and punishment system would have to be coupled with a relaxation on the legal status of a lot of low level “crimes”. Legalizing drugs for example would allows us to objectively study the effects of it on crime. Most users will opt for a legal option when one is available and affordable. Why search out a shady, dangerous guy when you can get your fix at the corner store? This would also give a great number of our current problematic re-offenders a possibility at immediately improving their situations and hopefully prevent them from sinking into other, more dangerous types of crime for lack of other options. The same argument would follow for prostitution and other like “crimes”.
Now if you couple that with a much stricter and nastier punishment program for serious offenders I think you might get somewhere. You might re-institute hard labor and sentence shoplifters to ten times the value of what they stole at something like $0.25 an hr. Convicted thieves might have to pay a sort of direct restitution to those they stole from. Vandals may be sentenced to work for the community for half their work week cleaning up the messes they make. Other violent crimes would probably need to incorporate corporal punishment to adhere to this principle. The problem though is that without some sort of support base for these people when the punishment is over, they will just fall right back into their old patterns.
To elaborate upon this: Criminals are often capable of indulging in risk/benefit analysis. So long as we have a range of criminal penalties, we provide an incentive for criminals to moderate their activities even where we might have failed to deter them outright.
For example: Say you’re robbing a liquor store. Under our current regime, it makes some sense to leave the clerk alive and unharmed. Yes, he may help to identify you; but if you kill him, and you’re still caught, you’ll be going to prison for a much lengthier sentence. But if your sentence is life in prison (or close to it) whether you kill the clerk or not, then there’s no reason at all to leave him alive; a surviving clerk increases your odds of getting caught and spending the rest of your life in prison.
This. In times past crimes were punished very harshly, but unless it serves as a disincentive, which it often does not, then all we’re doing is creating a debt for society. I don’t think most people evaluate their crime in the form of risk or cost-benefit analysis. Do you think someone holding up a 7-11 really weighs the $50 or whatever they’re going to get against the high chance that they’ll end up serving several years in jail? Do you think the guy smacking around his girlfriend or otherwise doing harm to people out of anger or revenge or whatever is really thinking that the risk of going to jail for some time is worth that release?
Instead, I think people commit crimes believing that they aren’t going to get caught or, in other cases, without any regard at all for potential consequences. In the latter case, when someone isn’t being rational, no increase in penalty will make them change their mind. And in the former, you may catch a couple people changing their minds, but if they don’t think they’re going to get caught in a case where they’ll get 5 years, why would 10 suddenly make a huge difference? Or maybe, as others pointed out, it might make them go to greater lengths to avoid getting caught rather than simply not commiting the crime.
Either way, if someone is desperate enough or irrational enough or just plain dumb enough to commit a serious crime, it’s just hard to see how increasing the penalty to anything but a ludicrous level would have much impact. But then, if it’s almost as bad to steal as it is kill, you very well may see relatively minor crimes having what “should” be more serious crimes tacked on in an attempt to reduce their chances of getting caught.
The idea that jails are there to rehabilitate though isn’t how we tend to treat them in America. We may do it for relatively minor crimes. We don’t even really treat it as a form of justice. It’s more just a time out from society for breaking the rules. How many kids only need one time out to learn not to misbehave again? They may have access to rehabilitation services, but it’s ultimately just a punishment. Or in the case of more serious crimes, it’s a manner to protect ourselves from people we feel are too dangerous to be trusted with us. How do we rehabilitate someone who goes far enough to rape or murder or something else that far out of line? Maybe a couple here and there will really rehabilitate, but it’s just as much about society’s ability to trust them after they’ve done that kind of wrong.
I don’t think the OP is specific enough. Some crimes are punished too much, some too little or seemingly not at all. Drug crimes are a good example. If all a person is guilty of is drug use, who really cares? But it gets votes to crack down on some types of crime.
OTOH, people who commit financial crimes too often seem to get away with it, or face seemingly minimal penalties. Corporations seem to be using their power to twist governments to look the other way, or simply to re-legislate their desired crimes as legal. Do you think the big push for ‘no regulation!’ is really about moral outrage? Nah. Powerful organizations simply want to be able to get away with more.