Why do we punish criminals?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Shouldn’t we be treating rather than punishing (when possible) murderers, rapists, and other thugs or at worst, just quarantining them so they can’t hurt anyone else, rather than insist on sadistically punishing them? People always say that two wrongs don’t make a right but I wonder how many people actually believe that. Norway has a much more forgiving system than the States does and it works well for them. I’m not saying Norway has the same social problems we do, but they aren’t being overrun by murderers either.

If criminals suffer from various mental illnesses, isn’t the death penalty essentially a form of eugenics?

2

The study which addresses your question is Jurisprudence - the Philosopy of the Law.

Suffice to say that there are learned volumes written on the subject of Crime and Punishment in every jurisdiction and professors of law who live and breathe this stuff. It is a vast subject and I don’t know how the Napoleonic Code and Roman Law treat it.

But for simplicity, in UK/USA law there are five general theories of punishment:

1.Deterrent Theory- drunk driver loses his licence which is a warning to others

2.Retributive Theory - drunk pays a fine to society

3.Reformative Theory - drunk attends court ordered alcohol treatment

4.Expiatory Theory - drunk pays compensation to a victim or a relevant charity

5.Preventive Theory - drunk spends 10 days in jail thus removing him as a risk from society.

3

The theory is if criminals are punished in painful, torturous ways, then other individuals will be deterred from committing crimes.

It makes “common sense” to the voters.

This theory is of course almost complete bullshit. Simply put,
1. Crime is committed mostly by young men who’s brains are wired to discount long term consequences. So increasing punishment doesn’t decrease crime by much, it just puts the state into the business of torturing people.
2. If you make someone suffer for years (solitary confinement is considered torture by many credible authorities) and then release them, of course making sure that all employers know about their record so that they cannot obtain decent employment, what have you done? You’ve created a hardened criminal. Regardless if the individual wants to reform, you have purposefully put them into a situation where in order to reasonably survive they must commit further crimes.
3. Most convicts suffer in silence in massive prisons. Since their suffering is not widely known or understood by the public, it doesn’t have the deterrent effect it should. If the state really wanted to get the maximum “value” of all this human misery, it would broadcast the plights of the incarcerated on mandatory television programming.

But it does not matter if something is bullshit. It matters what the majority of voters want, no matter how ignorant or easily manipulated that mob of voters may collectively be.

In American society today, there’s a feedback loop that’s been running for decades :

  1. Television and news media have found that people are inherently afraid of crime more than they are afraid of the major dangers in their lives like disease and car wrecks.
  2. Afraid people consume more mass media, giving them money
  3. Mass media runs more stories to drum up fear of crime
  4. Some sensational crime is committed somewhere in a nation of 350 million people
  5. Voters, manipulated by the media, vote for candidates who promise to ‘get tough’ on crime
  6. Laws are passed to raise prison sentences and make it easier for the state to convict
  7. Back to step 3

This is why the USA has a larger percentage of it’s population languishing behind bars yet does not have a low crime rate compared to Western European countries who are more forgiving of criminal behavior. I’ve read articles describing european prisons with conditions more like a stay in a hospital or hotel, actual legitimate efforts to reform the convicted, actual efforts to make sure released felons can obtain stable jobs and family support, and much shorter sentences.

Rationally, if deterrence worked, people would be more likely to commit a murder in, say, Sweden, where you might get 10-20 years behind bars in a facility that tries to treat the underlying conditions that led to the murder, decent food, and conditions that look decent. They would be less likely to commit a murder in, say, Texas, where you would suffer inhumanely for the rest of your life if you don’t get the death penalty. Compare the 2 country’s homicide rates and get back to me, mkay?

4

No, it is because of the US’s differing stance on the criminalization and punishment of drug related crimesas compared to other countries.

Over 50% of inmates in the US are there for drug related crimes with the over 25% of those drug related offenses related to marijuana.

5

Treating underlying problems is hard. Locking people in a cage is easy. Also more profitable for our private prison system.

6

There is no effective “treatment” for criminals. That is, there is no large-scale program or set of programs for violent or chronic offenders that rehabilitates those who don’t volunteer to be rehabilitated, and that keeps them rehabilitated at a higher rate than simply warehousing them until they age out of the high-crime period of life.

Regards,
Shodan

7

Then why doesn’t Sweden have a crime epidemic of hardened criminals? They run a system where the number of people who are given life sentences is around 10 total individuals. Everyone else they plan to release. By your hypothesis, those “untreatable”, incorrigible criminals are just going to rob/rape/murder their way around until they are caught or killed.

I think justice systems should be *evidence *based, not “my gut feeling” based.

8

Swedes are better educated than most Americans. They also have an actual social safety net that reduces the ‘need’ for people to commit crimes.

The SO agrees with Dickens, that ‘ignorance and want’ are the main causes of problems in a society. Americans tend to be ignorant and wanting more than the Swedes seem to be.

.

9

The country that has the lowest murder rate on the entire planet is Japan. (well, it’s either the lowest or in the very bottom, regardless, it’s low).

Japans justice system is interesting. They don’t have jury trials, and the police force confessions out of suspects. Yet, the standard sentence for murder is about 10 years and a rape is 4. Everything else is presumably even shorter than that. Again, logically, if you let murderers go after 10 years and rehabilitation is impossible, you would expect Japan to not have one of the lowest murder rates of any civilized country on the planet.

I think, Shodan, your logical fallacy is similar to the one made by institutions in the U.S. See, if you were running a justice system and you released 1000 people every year, and 1 of them committed a murder, you don’t get any credit for the other 999. The news media will crucify you for the one.

Believe it or not, but convicted felons reoffend at about the same rate as the surrounding population if they stay out of trouble for 5 years or more.

10

They also hang people, so it using Japan as an example might not boldter your argument.

11

A very small number of people, a tiny fraction of the number executed in the USA.

12

Nevertheless.

I’ve always said that simply locking people up is treating the symptoms instead of treating the disease. The issue shouldn’t be whether we need stronger or lighter sentences, whether we should have capital punishment, or whether we should focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. (And I agree that we should try to rehabilitate offenders.) It’s like putting a pot under a leak in your house instead of fixing the roof. The way to reduce crime is to treat the causes of crime. People who have a good education are less likely to commit crimes than people who have poor educations. They tend to use drugs less. They tend to get better jobs. We also need a better social safety net, including health care. Not that I’m suggesting most thieves steal to pay their doctor bills; but people would be more likely to seek treatment if they had coverage. People with mental health problems could receive treatment. And so on.

Of course the opposition will say, ‘It’s too expensive!’ and ‘Why would people work if they get food and shelter and medical care for free?’ Well, most people don’t want just the basics. Give them the means and opportunity to advance (‘Teach a man to fish’), and they can make their own way. And expensive? How much does it cost to lock up over a million people, especially since we have for-profit prisons instead of state-run ones? And the whole punishment thing? Yes, punishment is justified. But ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ only goes so far. The child needs to be taught.

13

I don’t buy this argument. “Drug related crimes” can include burglary, robbery, felonious assault or even murder involved in acquiring the drugs (or the money to buy them) or crimes committed while under the influence of them. In any of these cases you’re still an amoral criminal, not an addict with a ‘disease’, and you deserve prison, not rehab. It’s simply the fact that uneducated, ignorant people who are likely to commit crime are also likely to be into drugs & alcohol.

14

Actually Sweden’s recidivism rate is not significantly different from nations like Canada or Japan (cite) or states like Alabama (cite - pdf).

Regards,
Shodan

15

The concept of unalloyed punishment for misdeeds is long ingrained in our social reflexes, with Abrahamic scriptures validating the concept. As modern man became more civilized and reflective, many societies have drifted away from pure punishment for its own sake, and strove to administer justice in a thought-out manner that would better serve public safety and well being. A few countries failed to keep up, partly due to inertia and ignorance, and partly owing to the economic value of judicial punishment as either a for-profit industry or a form of generating public revenues, which trumps societal value.

16

Two ways to look at it.

 1.  Sweden is wasting money on trying to treat criminals and should just cage em til they croak
 2.  Punishing people is pointless.  They coddle their criminals in prisons that are nicer than some U.S. motels.  Yet they aren't any *more* likely to reoffend, either.

Do you disagree with #2? This conversation is a little derailed in that there’s several issues here, whether or not prisons should try to rehabilitate, and whether there is any point to making the prisoners suffer by purposefully making the conditions as awful as possible.

U.S. prisons, whether by design or just bureaucratic neglect, create environments where gang violence is common, there’s nothing to do but stab each other, the food’s just barely nutritious enough to remain alive, the prisoners are so crowded and rape each other so often that Hepatitis C is rampant, and so on. I’ve read of Swedish facilities located out in the country where the prisoners stay in cabins and do light duty on a farm. Relatives can visit, etc.

17

The reason we punish criminals is because those of us who abide by the law would feel like idiots if those who didn’t got away with it. And most people don’t break the law most of the time, so apparently the system works.

18

Sweden has a fairly homogeneous population, with long roots and a fairly flat success distribution. Their immigrant population has a much higher crime rate, although they don’t keep statistics by race or ethnicity.

19

Drugs cause crime. It’s that simple. Drug addicts break into cars and houses. Dealers get shot. Cartels kill people. How are you supposed to stop people from dealing drugs if it’s their only source of income? If you release them, they’ll be right back at it. You jail them, indefinitely. You torture them a bit so their friends are scared to be caught, and if you’re lucky, scared out of the game altogether.

The real question is why anyone should care about them. Fuck 'em.

20

So basically you’re saying that minorities need the smackdown put on them because you think they aren’t as rational as white people.