Philosophy Discussion Forums

GEMorton wrote:

You don't answer the question as to why you think an apology is due. Do you disagree that apologies are due only when a wrong has been done? Or do you contend that imprisoning a murderer wrongs him?

Imprisoning a murderer wrongs him. In this relative world as is, the alternative of letting a dangerous individual go free would be even more wrong. Imprisonment for the safety of the community is the lesser of two evils.

Belindi wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 12:27 pm GEMorton wrote:

Imprisoning a murderer wrongs him.

That is a surprising view. Does acting in self-defense also wrong the attacker? I.e., does forcibly repelling an attack wrong the attacker?

I'm not sure what criteria you're applying to judge moral rightness from wrongness.

I had written:

Imprisoning a murderer wrongs him. In this relative world as is, the alternative of letting a dangerous individual go free would be even more wrong. Imprisonment for the safety of the community is the lesser of two evils.

Any and all deliberately-inflicted punishments are wrong. They are the lesser of evils when they are for deterring other would be criminals, and when they are for segregating dangerous persons, and when they are for society to express its corporate horror. This a pseudo pathology model of criminal behaviour.

Punitive punishment has this to be said for it: regardless of whether one is a determinist or whether one believes in the Free Will of the criminal, the criminal himself may prefer to 'do his time' and be done with the whole thing than to be regarded as 'sick'.

What suits both the punitive and the liberal fraternities is punishment that includes an ample measure of education for law-abiding citizenship, together with ample after care and employment after release. This is not only compassionate but, more tellingly, also saves a lot of money.

Belindi wrote: ↑January 16th, 2019, 8:51 am
Any and all deliberately-inflicted punishments are wrong.

You seem to be assuming that all constraints upon or responses to violence count as "punishments." Do I "punish" an attacker if I forcibly resist his attack, and constrain him to prevent further attacks?

A punishment is an intentional infliction of pain or discomfort as "payback" for a wrongdoing previously committed ("an eye for an eye"). Discomfort that may accompany resistance to or a constraint upon a wrongdoing in progress or imminent is not a "punishment" for doing it.

What suits both the punitive and the liberal fraternities is punishment that includes an ample measure of education for law-abiding citizenship, together with ample after care and employment after release. This is not only compassionate but, more tellingly, also saves a lot of money.

No, it doesn't, because "rehabilitation" programs are minimally effective. Criminals do not commit crimes because they don't understand the law, or because they are unemployed. If they are unemployed it is by choice, or because they have never acquired any marketable skills and have no interest in doing so.

And you haven't answered why you think rapists, murderers, muggers, etc., are entitled to "compassion."

Belindi wrote: ↑January 16th, 2019, 8:51 am I had written:

Imprisoning a murderer wrongs him. In this relative world as is, the alternative of letting a dangerous individual go free would be even more wrong. Imprisonment for the safety of the community is the lesser of two evils.

Any and all deliberately-inflicted punishments are wrong. They are the lesser of evils when they are for deterring other would be criminals, and when they are for segregating dangerous persons, and when they are for society to express its corporate horror. This a pseudo pathology model of criminal behaviour.

Punitive punishment has this to be said for it: regardless of whether one is a determinist or whether one believes in the Free Will of the criminal, the criminal himself may prefer to 'do his time' and be done with the whole thing than to be regarded as 'sick'.

What suits both the punitive and the liberal fraternities is punishment that includes an ample measure of education for law-abiding citizenship, together with ample after care and employment after release. This is not only compassionate but, more tellingly, also saves a lot of money.

This assumes that everyone can make use of the "education". Unfortunately in the real world, 5% of the population is either psychopaths or sociopaths, while the percentage of the US population who has been to prison is 3%. So at least a little more than a quarter of the sociopaths have never been to prison, in the western country with the highest incarceration rate.

LuckyR wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 3:19 am

Belindi wrote: ↑January 16th, 2019, 8:51 am I had written:



Any and all deliberately-inflicted punishments are wrong. They are the lesser of evils when they are for deterring other would be criminals, and when they are for segregating dangerous persons, and when they are for society to express its corporate horror. This a pseudo pathology model of criminal behaviour.

Punitive punishment has this to be said for it: regardless of whether one is a determinist or whether one believes in the Free Will of the criminal, the criminal himself may prefer to 'do his time' and be done with the whole thing than to be regarded as 'sick'.

What suits both the punitive and the liberal fraternities is punishment that includes an ample measure of education for law-abiding citizenship, together with ample after care and employment after release. This is not only compassionate but, more tellingly, also saves a lot of money.

This assumes that everyone can make use of the "education". Unfortunately in the real world, 5% of the population is either psychopaths or sociopaths, while the percentage of the US population who has been to prison is 3%. So at least a little more than a quarter of the sociopaths have never been to prison, in the western country with the highest incarceration rate.

I agree that some people , criminals or not, are ineducable. There's not alternative in those cases but for society to be paternalistic and incarcerate them in appropriate institutions, if they are dangerous. For practical reasons I'd not choose to imprison the ineducable ones who are not very dangerous but who commit more minor crimes such as stealing from shops especially when extenuating circumstances.

The other large contingent of ineducable criminals are drug addicts, or insane people, who need to be treated in hospitals not prisons.

Belindi wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 8:53 am
For practical reasons I'd not choose to imprison the ineducable ones who are not very dangerous but who commit more minor crimes such as stealing from shops especially when extenuating circumstances.

So ineducable thieves should be left free to continue their plundering at will? The victims should just put up with it?

I'd be interested to hear your understanding of what "justice" means.

GE Morton wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 11:51 am

Belindi wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 8:53 am
For practical reasons I'd not choose to imprison the ineducable ones who are not very dangerous but who commit more minor crimes such as stealing from shops especially when extenuating circumstances.

So ineducable thieves should be left free to continue their plundering at will? The victims should just put up with it?

I'd be interested to hear your understanding of what "justice" means.

Please read my post which is just above this one from you.

Platonic Justice is an ideal which we will never attain. Human justice varies according to the culture of the society in question.

Victims of crime need to be cared for as appropriate to their cases. In all cases it's impossible for the crime to match the punishment.
Ineducable petty thieves are a damn nuisance, but they are a lot less harmful than rich capitalist profiteers .

Belindi wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 8:53 am

LuckyR wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 3:19 am

This assumes that everyone can make use of the "education". Unfortunately in the real world, 5% of the population is either psychopaths or sociopaths, while the percentage of the US population who has been to prison is 3%. So at least a little more than a quarter of the sociopaths have never been to prison, in the western country with the highest incarceration rate.

I agree that some people , criminals or not, are ineducable. There's not alternative in those cases but for society to be paternalistic and incarcerate them in appropriate institutions, if they are dangerous. For practical reasons I'd not choose to imprison the ineducable ones who are not very dangerous but who commit more minor crimes such as stealing from shops especially when extenuating circumstances.

The other large contingent of ineducable criminals are drug addicts, or insane people, who need to be treated in hospitals not prisons.

Well considering that 3% of the US population has been to prison but 8% are convicted felons, less than 50% of felons ever go to prison in the current US system (a system that has the highest incarceration rate in the West) so your wish is kind of already happening.

Belindi wrote: ↑January 18th, 2019, 3:33 pm

Please read my post which is just above this one from you.[/quote]

The one just above this one is the post to which I last responded.

Platonic Justice is an ideal which we will never attain.

If we're lucky. Plato's conception of justice bears no relation that that concept as it is generally understood in the West, i.e., "securing to each what he is due or deserves."

What a person is due is what he has earned or otherwise merits by his acts. E.g., the winner of the race deserves the Gold Medal; the student who aced her spelling test deserves an "A", the worker who performed the work assigned to him deserves a paycheck, a person injured due to another's negligence deserves damages, etc. Justice is served when when praise or blame, rewards or punishments, are apportioned according to merit. It is served when the guilty person is convicted and the innocent person acquitted, or when a wrong has been righted.

Victims of crime need to be cared for as appropriate to their cases.

Cared for by whom? Who has a duty to care for crime victims other than the criminal who inflicted the injuries? If someone else has it, how did they become burdened by it?

In all cases it's impossible for the crime to match the punishment.

It doesn't have to match it; it only has to compensate for it.

Ineducable petty thieves are a damn nuisance, but they are a lot less harmful than rich capitalist profiteers.

I've been the victim of petty thieves several times. I've never had anything stolen by a "rich capitalist." What is the basis of your claim?

GE Morton wrote: ↑January 19th, 2019, 12:18 am I've been the victim of petty thieves several times. I've never had anything stolen by a "rich capitalist."

Well, you're very lucky then, miraculously. Like most people in the US and Britain, say, I have to pay taxes for wars lobbied into place by corporate interests. Lobbying that not only led to the wars, but also to the privitization of the military, no bid contracts to friend of admins, how reconstructions were carried out and then paying for the aftermath - say health care for vets and families. Or paying for the results of the 2008 financial crisis and the loss of services, infrastructure and more due to the lobbying of the financial sector, so they had more ways to earn money without producing anything which led to the crash. If your Argentinian, well we could go into Milton Friendman and his friends and how his little boy wonders screwed large sectors of their population of their money. Just as a random country example.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑January 19th, 2019, 1:12 am

GE Morton wrote: ↑January 19th, 2019, 12:18 am I've been the victim of petty thieves several times. I've never had anything stolen by a "rich capitalist."

Well, you're very lucky then, miraculously. Like most people in the US and Britain, say, I have to pay taxes for wars lobbied into place by corporate interests. Lobbying that not only led to the wars, but also to the privitization of the military, no bid contracts to friend of admins, how reconstructions were carried out and then paying for the aftermath - say health care for vets and families. Or paying for the results of the 2008 financial crisis and the loss of services, infrastructure and more due to the lobbying of the financial sector, so they had more ways to earn money without producing anything which led to the crash. If your Argentinian, well we could go into Milton Friendman and his friends and how his little boy wonders screwed large sectors of their population of their money. Just as a random country example.

Thanks, Karpel, I could not have answered better and I endorse all you say.

In addition I'd point out that the word 'deserve' applies perhaps to divine justice, but not to this world in which tit for tat is impossible due to our not being God. Retributive punishment is justifiable only to the extent that it shows the criminal themself and would be criminals the disapproval of society. When victims of crime express how glad they are when the aggressor is named and brought to justice that is exactly what they are glad of. They seldom want their pound of flesh.

Certainly a victim of crime often feels angry and their immediate feeling is often to satisfy the anger by hands on vengeance. You cannot run a criminal justice system like that.

Belindi wrote: ↑January 19th, 2019, 7:11 am
In addition I'd point out that the word 'deserve' applies perhaps to divine justice, but not to this world in which tit for tat is impossible due to our not being God.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make there. I said nothing about "divine justice" (whatever that is), and I gave examples of the meaning of "deserves" as used in ordinary speech. Are you suggesting that it is impossible to determine what people deserve, or that the word is too ambiguous to be useful?

Please define "justice" and "deserves" as you understand those terms.

Retributive punishment is justifiable only to the extent that it shows the criminal themself and would be criminals the disapproval of society. When victims of crime express how glad they are when the aggressor is named and brought to justice that is exactly what they are glad of. They seldom want their pound of flesh.

Well, every civil lawsuit belies that claim. What is sought in all of them is compensation for damages allegedly done to the plaintiffs. That should be the objective in criminal prosecutions as well --- the convicted defended forced to work, as long as necessary, to compensate the damages he has done or the losses he inflicted. I agree with you that retributive punishment --- the mere infliction of pain or deprivation as "payback" for pain inflicted by the criminal --- is pointless, except (as you say) to the extent it acts as a deterrent. But it does not result in justice --- securing to each person what he is due. The victim's losses remain uncompensated.

"convicted defended" in the above should be "convicted defendant."

Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑January 19th, 2019, 1:12 am
Like most people in the US and Britain, say, I have to pay taxes for wars lobbied into place by corporate interests.

Far be it from me to defend any of the recent US (and usually UK) wars. But wars are not "lobbied into place." That is hyperbole. They are voted into place, by pols elected by the people. Anyone who stands to gain from such a war will certainly lobby for it, just as anyone who stands to gain from any other government boondoggle --- and there are thousands --- will lobby for them. But the lobbyists do not cast the votes that authorize those boondoggles.

Or paying for the results of the 2008 financial crisis and the loss of services, infrastructure and more due to the lobbying of the financial sector, so they had more ways to earn money without producing anything which led to the crash.

The 2008 crash was not the result of any corporate lobbying. It was a result of US "affordable housing" policies, which forced lenders to relax lending requirements, and rewarded them when they did do. Lenders opposed those policies at the outset, but later devised schemes to profit from them.