http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00...
There are some cases where it's simply impossible to say with some measure of certainty that somebody is rehabilitated, but even the most lenient countries (Norway and the rest of Scandinavia) have measures to protect the rest of the population in those cases. Repeatedly determining that Anders Behring Breivik continues to be a threat to society is Norway's form of capital punishment.
Do you think that 68% of prisoners are mostly evil people who cannot function in society? 68% of men in prison don't have a high school diploma. Or are these mostly people who were born and raised in shitty circumstances with little hope for avoiding prison, hence why they didn't even finish high school?
Do you think 1/3 of black men are simply beyond rehabilitation? Because 1 in 3 black men will end up in prison at some point in their lives.
Let's just ignore the fact that the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison and jail has increased 1,100% since 1980. Let's ignore the fact that black people use drugs at the same rates as whites and even sell drugs at lower rates yet at state and federal level they're incarcerated far more than whites http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/kids.htm . Let's ignore the fact that 4.1% of death row sentences are erroneous, and that 95+% of all convictions happen through plea bargains, meaning that the rate of false imprisonment is probably quite high, even higher than 4.1%.
I'm guessing that a very, very small percentage of the prison population is beyond rehabilitation. In those cases, prison makes sense. But our prison population has exploded since 1980, and I doubt that most of the people that have been swept up in that growth are like Anders Breivik.
Here's a thought experiment: Would you treat a man who took revenge on his wife's murderer by killing them the same as the murderer, a psychopath who decided to kill the wife because they were bored?
Obviously, neither One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or American Psycho is desirable, but if you ask me to choose, you can guess which one I'd pick.
(Btw. even if you disagree, the U.S. has a tremendous amount of hate-crime legislation, which does punish people for what's on their mind.)
Anything else is basically just society taking revenge.
As for deterrence, I'm not sure that you want to build a system on that as we have; people ought to follow the law and not murder because it is the right thing to do, not because they're afraid not to.
If you have a system motivated by fear, it means that any external fear (psychological defect, job-related, desperation-related, or just plain being too drunk to remember that injuring others carries a stiff penalty) has the opportunity to override your system.
Murder isn't right, but we should be trying to figure out why it occurred and how to prevent it in the future and rehabilitate the person (or dispose of them forthright)--torture and punishment doesn't benefit anyone.
The problem is there are certain individuals constitutionally incapable of doing "the right thing". They have no respect for the lives of others, and can only be deterred by fear of punishment.
We call them psychopaths.
Anyway, violent psychopaths belong in mental institutions (for life, if it is determined that they remain a threat to society.) I don't think many people disagree with that.
This has almost nothing to do with, for example, sentencing on crack being tougher than on cocaine, and rape being worse than murder. Also, most people convicted of crimes aren't psychopaths, although they often have (fixable) mental problems.
In some cases the fear of being caught and punished is sufficient to stop some crimes.
Also, like the article pointed out, I'm not sure many people really appreciate how harsh prison is. Even with cable TV and AC, it's still prison.
It's quite firmly established at this point that solitary confinement is torture, but apparently the Norwegian prison system has the discretion of deciding to do this without any input from the judicial system. In my opinion, this is a horrible blemish on an otherwise good Norwegian legal syste, but it's understandably a sore subject. There has been very little debate around this point. Hard to bring this up when most of the kids he murdered were the acquaintances or children of the biggest political party at the time.
The moral of logarithmic growth is clear: "If you are gonna do the crime, make it worth the time!"
The reason for this is simple: Sentence length isn't just retribution for the crime. It can be for rehabilitation as well (at least, in other countries). Prison sentences also try to have a deterrent effect. Thieves aren't caught nearly as often as murderers. If the punishment for theft was repayment and a fine, we'd see a lot more theft. It's a similar story with drunk driving. Most of the time, people get away with driving drunk. Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets pulled over. But we want to discourage this behavior since it does kill people. So we make harsh punishments for even a first-time offense.
It's interesting that you bring up the example of Anders Breivik. How would your opinion of him change if, hypothetically, it were later shown that he had a brain tumor? For me, the justification for retribution evaporates. Sure, lock him up forever; he's still dangerous. But if we can trace someone's actions back to causes outside of their control, doesn't that obviate the need for punishment? Then, all we can do is try to rehabilitate them and/or keep them from harming others.
I think this argument applies to the vast majority of people in prison. We don't choose our genes. We don't choose our parents. We don't choose the household or culture we grow up in. We don't choose how much lithium is in our tap water.[1] The vast majority of our personalities and behaviors are shaped by forces completely outside our control, often without our knowledge. We're nowhere close to fully understanding the interactions between genes and environment necessary to diagnose each person's violent behavior, but that's no excuse for exacting retribution. Right now our society is effectively punishing people for having brain tumors. I think focusing on rehabilitation would be much more effective and fair, even for some of the most horrific crimes.
1. Yes, this actually matters: http://www.gwern.net/docs/nootropics/1990-schrauzer.pdf
One obscene result of this paradigm is that you sacrifice the actual lives of individuals for merely potential benefits for society. The literary example is Jean Val Jean, who of course ends up spending a lifetime in prison for stealing a loaf of bread.
This actually happens in American justice. Those harshly punished for minor offenses are not only not rehabilitated, they are turned into hardened criminals by association with the low-lifes who truly deserve to be in prison.
> It's interesting that you bring up the example of Anders Breivik. How would your opinion of him change if, hypothetically, it were later shown that he had a brain tumor? For me, the justification for retribution evaporates.
To extend your hypothetical, say we can conclusively prove that the universe is deterministic and there is no such thing as free will. Then is no one responsible for anything they do?
I contend, in the absence of contradicting evidence, we must live as if we have free will, because (ironically) we have no other choice. So if Breivik's lawyers/doctors demonstrate a brain tumor affecting his behavior, we treat him differently than we do the garden-variety psychopathic mass-murderer he appears to (and purports to) be.
Has it reduced those crimes? I have no idea.
One demographic I could see it working well on is younger offenders - whereas some forms of punishment could be considered "cool", being publicly forced to do something and wearing an outfit not of your choosing while doing it, I can't see how that would be considered cool. Also, it could avoid them meeting the wrong people while in the joint which might lead them further down the wrong path.
At the very least it would be cheaper than almost any other form of punishment, plus you'd get some garbage picked up.
Sentences should be high enough to deter crime, and no higher. If one month of prison time doesn't reduce your petty theft rate significantly, then double it. Measure the new offense rate then double the penalty again. Eventually you'll reach that knee in the curve where any additional punishment you can mete out has little significant effect, and that's your magic number.
The idea of "lesser crimes" should not be used to influence punishment. You cannot linearly compare shoplifting against auto theft or battery - so it's not possible to assign commensurate sentences. Compile the offense rates and then go for the knees, dispassionately.
In Saudi Arabia they will cut your arm off if you're caught stealing. That's a pretty severe punishment. Do you think there's no theft? In Iran you may get executed.
What is most likely going to happen is that this knee will continuously move away from you as you try to pursue it. More punishment isn't going to reduce crime. People's response to punishment will change with that curve and you will get all sorts of unintended consequences. The US system is a living proof of this.
What you need to do is address the social causes of crime. Punishment should be the last resort, minimal and should be as humane as possible. Fines/damages/community service should be strongly preferred to prison terms.
Why can't I? For theft, it's easy to determine the value of the stolen goods.
You seem not to care for the lives of the individual human beings committing the crimes. It's not ethical or moral to sacrifice the one for the benefit of the many.
My point was that sentence guidelines should generally be data-driven, the dependent variable being the crime rate for a specific offense. I did not mention edge cases, judicial discretion, capital offenses, recidivism, rehabilitation, and other gnarly stuff.
Does in your example crimes with lower rate of catching criminals will end with a very high sentences and few caught will get an unreasonable jail times? "You have pirated a song, an infinity in jail is Your sentence"
"Data-driven" is a reasonable approach, but what data should be allowed to drive? Choosing what kind of data to use and making relevant conclusions from it is the hard part.
Anyways, the data is in. Putting more people in prison for longer doesn't work. The problem though is that in the short term reversing this policy without any other policy changes may not work either. People aren't as simple as that.
There are monsters in this world, they are human. Society is best served with them not being amongst it freely.
Getting soldiers back into civilian life can be challenging, but no one questions that it's something we must try to do. People who are convicted of murder did what they did for many different reasons, and making a blanket statement that they're all monsters and should be denied even the chance to rejoin society is wrong. Sure, some of them are lost causes, but not all of them, and therefore we have to give all of them a chance at redemption.
I doubt that most people who commit violent crimes were violent people from birth. Most of them were probably forced into a lifestyle in which it is the norm. This is not to say that these people aren't accountable for their actions, but we should definitely understand that most of these people grew up in circumstances where violence was unavoidable and that instead of punishing them indiscriminately, we should try to actually 'correct' them in correctional facilities by healing them and trying to help them become functioning, productive members of society.
Be a solider? Kill? Follow orders? Wake up so early?
And what happens when they want? A life sentence?
We need a prison system that is designed to teach prisoners how to effectively reintegrate with society and provides the mental help that they need instead of one that just perpetuates the cycle.
Sure, there are cases where people will never be able to integrate and that can be dealt with. But there is so much cognitive surplus being wasted here.
We need all hands on deck for the coming decades. We need to grow up.
For instance, the sentence for petty larceny can be 6 months to a year. The penalty for 1st degree murder can be 30 years to life. I don't know anyone who would think Murder is merely 30 to 60 times worse than stealing underwear from Walmart.
I'm not one of those who thinks we should adopt Nordic style sentences. I.e. Anders Breivik should never see the light of day again in my opinion.
But sentences should be appropriate to the seriousness of what was done. Since the worst possible penalty is death/life in prison, which is ~30 to 60 years in most cases, lesser crimes such as theft or fraud should merit much smaller penalties. I.e. a day in jail, community service or payment of restitution.