Re: Crime and punishment

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/2/2006 3:04:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, lemnosforge@... writes:

I haven't caught up on all the old posts yet- But there is a big difference between retributive justice (societal revenge in effect) and some of the other concepts of justice. A lot of the academic studies I guess seem to suggest retributive justice has little effect on crime rates (but I suspect raises the moral of the public and of the crime-fighting and (bravely sometimes) witness-testifying rest of the population- which I think ~are~ important). But those effects get debated a lot? I have the impression there are big, huge?, cross-cultural differences in the amount of retributive justice in different societies. (I happen to strongly believe in retributive justice myself, even though I have some doubts about it's efficacy in terms of crime rates.)

They are debated a lot because it is hard to say if they really work or not. In the past, there have been horrible things done to criminals, but crime continued and got worse. By the same token, poverty isn't the root cause either. During the Great Depression in the US, crime was very low even though there was a lot of poverty.

Different societies do have different tolerances for punishments. The West is very soft, while Islamic countries still hold public stonings and mutilations.

As for what to do with criminals, I think we should just put the hardcore repeat offenders away for good, since the few percent of them commit over 50% of crimes. It they were permanently taken out of circulation and not allowed back out to brag in their subcultures about how tough they are, then that would help make crime less sexy and thus others less likely to go down that route. As I said in another post, the hard core should just be locked away permanently, maybe on an island or in a walled city like the old "Escape from New York" movie. We may well get to that point yet if crime continues to get worse and more people flee from the cities. But even the suburbs are getting bad as the criminal culture, which is being glorified, spreads to them through the media.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/3/2006 10:16:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

The risk you would run there is that corrupt government and law enforcement officials might throw in the innocent with the guilty. It would sort of be like the "ghettoes" set up by the Nazis in WWII.TomAdministrator

That is true. But that is the risk even with our current system. For now that isn't happening and I think it won't until such time as they first disarm the people. That's the first thing Hitler did in Germany, disarm the majority of the people, leaving them powerless to fight back. We see this around the world where the most repressive regimes all have unarmed populations.

I do think that a tipping point will be reached where harsh measures will be taken against these hard core criminals though. The only bad thing is that it has taken so long and root causes, like the glorification of criminals in some subcultures, have not been addressed.

[Guest guest]

The risk you would run there is that corrupt government and law

enforcement officials might throw in the innocent with the guilty. It

would sort of be like the " ghettoes " set up by the Nazis in WWII.

Tom

Administrator

" As I said in another post, the hard core should just be locked away

permanently, maybe on an island or in a walled city like the

old " Escape from New York " movie. We may well get to that point yet if

crime continues to get worse and more people flee from the cities. But

even the suburbs are getting bad as the criminal culture, which is

being glorified, spreads to them through the media. "