If people were actually worried about inmate mental health we would do away with incarceration. Being held against your will doesn’t exactly do wonders for you - and the consequences don’t end when you’re released.
Sure, we have to “draw the line”, but isn’t that arbitrary?
> Sure, we have to “draw the line”, but isn’t that arbitrary?
Perhaps, insofar as it's arbitrary to be more concerned about the well-being of victims than perpetrators. Personally, I have arbitrarily decided to care more about potential murder victims than convicted murderers, potential rape victims than convicted rapists, property owners than convicted thieves, and so on.
> Perhaps, insofar as it's arbitrary to be more concerned about the well-being of victims than perpetrators.
I’d argue that our current system isn’t really interested in the well being of victims either. Or rather, it’s only interested with the victims when the victims express specific opinions. The actual relationship between crime, survivors, retribution, and forgiveness is an extremely complex matter.
Consider the case of Sirhan Sirhan, and how public figures treated Kennedy family members who were pro-parole vs. anti-parole. Sometimes the same people who were saying “you must listen to the family” were openly attacking other family members for wanting parole!
> Personally, I have arbitrarily decided to care more about potential murder victims than convicted murderers, potential rape victims than convicted rapists, property owners than convicted thieves, and so on.
If that’s what motivates you, you should actively hope for a more merciful and restorative criminal justice system. Our current system has very high recidivism rates, which is very bad for those potential future victims.
Contextually, I'm assuming the US, because they specifically mention Sirhan Sirhan, the Kennedy family, and high recidivism rates, all things applicable to the US justice system.
That is of course exactly as I suspected since an Americentric view of the world is depressingly common.
I think it’s not useful to form universal views of the world based on the status quo in the USA. The prison system is harsh in the USA, and recidivism is high. In some other countries however, the prisons are significantly more brutal, and yet recidivism is low. So it isn’t quite as simple as the the commenter was implying.
Makes sense - I’m well aware no one here cares about anyone else’s wellbeing (but some claims to the contrary sure are good for your image), and you can freely move that line around whenever you want to dunk on someone on Twitter or HN. That’s what life’s about.
Or maybe that’s just Twitter, on HN it’s about saying things everyone agrees with and never bringing up something difficult to respond to, so you won’t get downvoted.
>>If people were actually worried about inmate mental health we would do away with incarceration.
No, it is simple prioritization — that sort of absolutism is a fallacy. We are worried about 'inmate mental health' AFTER we are worried about preventing said inmate from further damaging the health, wealth, or life of others. If someone is a threat to anyone in my family, friends, society, IDGAF about their mental health until that threat is neutralized.
If you have a better way to neutralize the threat from people who decide it is ok to damage, steal, harm, rape, kill, or otherwise violate other people, let us know. Otherwise, cut the fallacies.
This may be one of my spicier opinions but I think we should have caning for some crimes. Fines and incarceration both have collateral damage, if the person punished is responsible for anyone. Fines are regressive. Incarceration has a host of well known problems.
But, unfortunately, a sufficiently dangerous person does need to be physically put away. Being held against your will may well do wonders for people you threaten.
Isn't the problem that carrot only works if it is bigger than their criminal carrot and the stick only works if it is bigger than their own sticks?
If you cane someone who was brought up with violence, it can reinforce the idea that only the strongest wins. On the other hand, trying to be nice to them won't work if they want the $100K they make from drug dealing.
The sad fact is that nothing works perfectly, but at least we can strive to make it consistent, which is probably the biggest problem in most penal systems.
>It's not particularly spicy, but it has absolutely no evidence to support its effectiveness, either as a deterrent or as rehabiliitation.
A strong claim. A few minutes of searching found no strong evidence for or against its effectiveness, or that is superior or inferior to incarceration. Much more seems to have been written about the morality and public opinion of the practice (e.g. [1, 2]). It is known that corporal punishment of children causes developmental harms, but this does not extend naturally to adults.
No, it’s not arbitrary. It’s dialectical. “The line” is drawn by laws passed by well-constituted popular government and based on long-standing precedent.
Like the laws that result in extreme racial bias in sentencing, or an outsize proportion of inmates locked away due to mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug crimes? The laws that don't take into account abuse by prison staff or other inmates, secondary effects on inmates like PTSD, or tertiary effects on society from things like grooming? The "long standing precedent" of drug criminalization that was willed into existence by public hysteria campaigns spearheaded by a highly agendaed political elite in a short span of time in the 1980s and 90s? The "well constituted popular government" whose judges and sentencing behavior vary so much between states that which side of a street you live/get arrested on can be the difference between months and life in prison? The government that turns a blind eye to prisons whose conditions are condemned by other governments (the UN) as torture?
Once you depart from the minority of incarcerations that are reasonably unquestionable (e.g. demonstrably uncorrectable violent sociopaths), you will find abundant arbitrariness at every level: in the formulation of laws, their application by courts, their enforcement by police, and the conditions of their punishments.
"Arbitrary" is the rule. "Dialectical" (which I interpret as "civically intended, publicly acknowledged proportional consequences") is the exception.
Sure, we have to “draw the line”, but isn’t that arbitrary?