but it would also help a lot if we remembered that criminals are people. members of society who screwed up, felt they didn't have a choice, or have psychological problems. punish them, treat them, restrict them, but they aren't unhuman.

Somebody kidnaps and rapes a six year old? Yeah no, they are inhuman and just need to be taken out behind the chemical shed and shot.

There will never be any meaningful criminal reform in the US before the right recognize the existence of the first type of offender and the left the second type.

But, making rules for everyone on the basis of the worst of the worst makes things worse for everyone: There are people who know they have a problem, but are too afraid to seek help because they are certain that everyone else will want to kill them if their secret ever comes out. Those people might stay hidden for life, or they might get drunk, do something regrettable, and be so frightened of the consequences that they kill their victim.

Dark Triad types don't think of getting caught, or so I am told. Question is, how many want to do things they recognise as immoral but are afraid to seek help to overcome? How many more seek mental stability by staying in denial, either refusing to recognise they have a problem or by refusing to believe society's condemnation? How many people could be saved by stopping people before they act, by treating humans as deeply flawed and letting the challenge be self improvement rather than simple binary good-or-evil?

I don't claim to know. Could be the hypothetical groups are tiny. It's not like it's possible to measure the size of a group which by definition is hiding to the best of its ability.

I've always thought a major issue with the criminal justice system is serving competing masters:

You want to punish people so OTHERS decide it would be a bad idea and don't try it

You want to punish people so THEY decide it was a bad idea, not worth doing again.

You want to redeem criminals, put them on a better path

You want to ensure the criminals do not post a further threat to society

But these goals contradict each other to a degree:

Punishing to send a message is something I suspect this only work for fringe crimes - most criminals aren't know for their expert cost/benefit analysis - and regardless, "send a message" punishment hurts efforts to redeem ("we're punishing you as a threat to others" isn't something that makes people think you're fair and worth listening too)

Punishing someone to ensure they think it's a bad idea probably works in terms of teaching cost/benefit, but there's the risk that you're teaching the opposite - Life in prison has got to suck, but if you get through it and discover there is no place in the outside world for you, you're socially ostracized, hard to employ, probably in a crappy financial situation...well, crime CAN pay, and you know you can survive the consequences if you do get caught (heck, at this point, crappy as it is, you're probably used to it - not enough to like it, but it would have some degree of comfort compared to the unfamilar-and-crappy situation you are in now. I could continue to armchair psychoanalyze the effects of living in a smaller community, but I think I've made enough unjustified statements.

Redemption directly pushes against the Punishment rules. Not because redeemed criminals can't accept the concept of "paying a debt to society" (I've always hated that phrase), but because (reportedly) rare is the prisoner that ARRIVES at prison redeemed, and starting with punishment and separating them from the situations that were the problems before generally does not help with dealing with those situations. (And this is assuming this is a "dumb" criminal that committed a stupid crime for stupid reasons. My mother told me as a young child to not commit a crime I couldn't retire on. I recommend this to parents of young children...it has an inherent logic that is harder for a child to dispute than "Just Don't". I credit it with keeping me out of trouble until I was old enough to appreciate the value of laws, respect, and morality. Anyway, there are doubtless OTHER criminals who truly had no better option - redeeming them by telling them how that is their fault and we'll punish them doesn't sound like it would succeed.

Sheltering society from the increased threat that a proven criminal represents largely doesn't care about Punishment or Redemption...but it doesn't help them at all. Redemption is easier of the criminals aren't removed from life. Punishment sounds like it is helped by this, but that goes back to the "what lesson are they learning", so if we're training career criminals, that makes the Sheltering concept currently a short term win for a long term loss.

All of this is based on my opinions that are largely formed from random articles and headlines (rarely in-depth) and likely too much influence from TV and movies (insert Law & Order DUM-DUM here) so no one should actually trust this. If, however, anyone has interesting insight or even actual knowledge to share, that'd be great - I have literally thought this general structure for the last 20+ years, so it obviously has some staying power in my brain even if I'm not motivated enough to do much research.

I think you're totally right, and until we acknowledge this point as a society, it will be really hard to improve things very much.

But, much like improving a technology, you need metrics and you need to decide what your goal is. Presumably society will want a balance between everything listed, not just one...but what are the terms of that balance? As it is, every lawyer, judge, jury member, voter, journalist, and prison warden are all winging it, so we aren't getting a balance, we're getting a mish-mash result from this tug of war. (I wonder how much of that comes from the trial process being adversarial - the assumption is the truth survives if both sides push in opposite directions as hard as they can. Leaving aside if that works as intended, sentences and guidelines are likely heavily influenced by those for whom that environment is familiar and accepted. That's a digression though)

Anyway, if we don't know what we are trying for, how can we take steps towards it?

But to give some concrete ideas:

* Improve mental health care, in prison, but mostly out of it. My understanding is that when there was a big push to close "asylums" a few decades ago, significant groups of those populations (and those since that would have gone there) quickly moved to prisons. And even if that was unrelated, it's not hard to find that prisons hold a lot of people with mental issues.

* Improve the social safety net - if people can feed themselves, their kids, and live where there are jobs (or at least opportunities) it becomes much easier to say that there is no need for crime. I think this will become a bigger deal - automation may be costing jobs, or may just result in shifting them, but either way unskilled labor that pays enough to live on is definitely shrinking. I'm very curious about basic income, but the potential for unforeseen side effects is huge, so I'm cautious.

* Non-violent offenders don't need prison (nor lesser violent offenses and/or those that aren't likely to reoffend - a high school fight is different than a murder). Give them GPS trackers, force them to stay inside, to attend whatever sessions are needed. This might be honest real help, or it may be boring them to tears with a shrink or group meetings, depending on your views, but that means it's either Rehabilitation or Punishment. :) But it keeps people in contact with real society (in particular it maintains their corner of society: Friends, family, news), doesn't create a separate concentration to train people to be harder criminals, and is cheaper to boot! Critics would say this lets people stay home and watch TV all day, which is valid, but if Punishment is the goal, there will be downsides, the degree to which can be negotiated.

* Better work plans. I can only imagine getting a job as an ex-con is hell, based on how every job application I've ever filled out asked about it. This ties in with the safety social net above - better handling of managing jobs for everyone, but in particular ex-cons. If you have more to lose, it's easier to stay in the lines. (This is probably the hardest thing in this list to do, because it is to want, hard to figure out how)

* Give white-collar crime the same sentences. If every one of these wealthy execs and financiers that "settle but admit no wrongdoing" got the same treatment as the poor black 20-year old that robbed a 7-11, I'm guessing there'd be a bigger push for reform. That's not just cynicism - I'm guessing most people, including myself, don't realize how bad it truly can be, and thus have only vague interest in improving it.

* End prison rape. It happens. Not rarely. We know it happens. and we joke about it. Not rarely. I know very little about trauma, but I do know that someone that has trauma can form some very hard opinions very quickly. And if most people make jokes rather than care about your trauma, and have no/limited support network, and have no/limited mental health care, I can guess in which direction those hard opinions are more likely to go.

I'm probably missing some, but these are the ideas I've seen that sound to me like they're going in a sensible direction.

This is something that I've been painfully aware of since the Aaron Schwartz case.

It appears that pedophile is as much a sexual orientation as homosexual, and is as hard to change. But where gay people do no particular harm except to the sensibilities of conservatives, pedophiles do a lot of damage.

However a 12 year old who sends a naked picture of themselves to a friend is treated by the law in the same way as a pedophile. Ditto an 18 year old whose 17 year old girlfriend's mother gets unhappy. As a father whose children are hitting puberty now, this fact is very scary.

I warn my children, but one mistake could destroy their lives, and there is no shortage of people who it has happened to.

Got any support for this? I'm finding contradictory information.

1. The measured recidivism rate will depend on time frame. The longer the frame, the higher it is. Most studies use a shorter time frame.

2. Most sex crimes do not get reported. Most studies rely on reported crimes because it is obviously easier to get data for them.

3. Most re-arrests are for non-sexual offenses. But a non-sexual crime when carried out by a pedophile may have a sexual motivation.

That said, in the largest available long term study, the 10 year rearrest for another sex crime is 20%. The actual re-offense rate is certainly much higher.

Making it personal, I was abused as a child. I know two other people who that person abused, and I have strong evidence that there were many more before that. However looking at his legal history, you'd only see a single arrest and conviction for public indecency in the 1960s.

I have seen surveys indicating that the most unusual thing about this example is that he was arrested and convicted at all. That perfectly fits with what I've heard from other people who were abused. Most of the abusers were serial offenders, few were convicted.

Moving on, visit http://virped.org/ to get an idea of how hard it is to be a pedophile who is attempting to never offend. I fully respect their attempts to be better people, but won't be letting my children be around anyone who I suspect is in that group...my reasons should be obvious...

On #3, anyone with experience in how the legal system works will agree that while how often it happens may be hard to quantify, but it certainly does happen. And probably not very rarely.