Presently in America, the state punishes and the citizenry isn't too enamored with the state. It punishes the poor and poorly connected savagely and the well-off inconsistently.
Generally, I disagree with the assertion, and I would not be seeking to refine how we punish to be more effective and consistent.
The goal ought to be to remove a person from their situation, show them a better way to live and slowly and patiently attempt to re-form them as people through real growth (skills, character, etc.) so that they can go back into the world better and don't need to reoffend. Obviously there's a long way to go to get there, but I think many countries have tried the other path and I'm not convinced it works.
This is mostly a history of punishment in western society. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s interesting. It answers the question in the title mostly by asking what, from today’s perspective, are the rational uses of punishment?
But it doesn’t get much at why we do this in the first place. Why do adults punish children? Why do so many people belong to religions with strict and explicit punishment dogmas (e.g., going to hell for offending a higher power). It doesn’t provide a rhetorical or moral framework for differentiating punishment from abuse or torture. I think these are more interesting questions, although perhaps not fair to expect from a historian.
Clearly punishment is satisfying to us. Revenge stories are as old as literature, and widely celebrated. I think that in a large society it’s an obsolete and harmful impulse. The article references Plato’s views: “Plato discussed punishment in terms of learning virtue and deterring future acts rather than just in terms of taking vengeance for the past, which he dismissed as a primitive, animalistic motive.”
It’s interesting to me how long it takes for views like this to take hold and create a more just society, and how easy it is for cultures to backslide. Revenge is a powerful impulse.
Moralism is a powerful thing and American moralism is far from dead. I think a lot of folks in America probably fancy themselves as being free from these chains, but subconsciously I think the chains of moralism are fairly deep and strong.
Today’s anti-moralist stance is very moralist itself. It’s funny how cultural colonialism is going at full speed today. Yet many people think this brings post-colonial justice.
I don't really see amoralists creating laws to punish moral people. Generally people who don't like morals prefer ethical frameworks. But, I do agree that a lot of speech today has moral overtones, and that itself is wrong.
I don’t mean to oversimplify your point, so I’ll phrase this as a question:
Should we punish children for bad behavior? How do we discipline without punishing? How can we discipline our kids but avoid making them feel bad?
I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult.
What type of discipline do you mean? The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Or external discipline that makes you behave in a way (not necessarily a good way) out of fear of punishment?
Which of these are desirable?
Is it possible and efficient to instill the former using punishment?
> The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life?
Also, self-discipline tends to follow age. If punishing little kids helped, then why do kids often become terrors in their teens and twenties, then eventually grow up, mature, and become more responsible?
Of course some people never grow up, but many of them were smacked around as kids anyway.
> I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult.
Is this not already the case? I’m not entirely sure how one might measure this, but boy does my gut tell me that its already happened.
Personally I don't want to punish but rather inform: if you do this, this might/will happen. It doesn't imply that they're a bad person for doing what they did, just speaks more to the cause and effect of actions.
I think this may actually work better for kids. I think so often we praise/shame them, and they can get caught in a cycle of unpredictable self-worth. I dunno, for me, I like to let people know how I will most likely react to certain actions and tell them that even if I react that way, I will still love them. Punishing (with the intent to hurt them) often hurts me, so I'd rather not try to hurt them. That being said, I do want people to know if they punch me in the face, I may punch them back, leave the bar, or strongly distance myself from them physically. I just want people to be more aware of consequences rather than feel like they're a bad person for choosing their actions.
I teach my children primarily to fix things by righting the wrong. I fully realize that not all wrongs can be righted, but it is a valuable starting point. So many times I've had the pleasure of seeing my children come up with genuinely ingenious ways to right a wrong.
In disputes where I'm playing referee between two of my children, I gravitate away from deciding who is right and who is wrong. Instead direct conversation around, what happened, what people need, and how we can satisfy those needs within the creative realm of reasonable possibility.
As a baseline for issues that don't have a clear needs-based line to follow, I consider the systemic issues involved and re-engineer systems to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. Most often this takes the form of natural consequences.
Finally, I don't have angelic children. The reason it works is because we've been doing it for years, not because my children are more compliant, or I'm some saint. We all get upset, angry, and do things we regret. What we are all invested in is having a shared desire to make things better than we found them.
What I am skeptical of, however, are responses which attempt to frame children as willfully non-compliant. That says more about the person describing the behavior than the behavior itself.
No matter how many times my dad beat me or my mom yelled, it didn't instill discipline, just resentment. What worked to give me discipline was getting a job and living on my own. Simple incentive is all that's necessary to ensure people show up and do work.
Punishment/revenge is satisfying to a lot of people, but I'm repulsed by it. I don't feel an instinct to punish people who have wronged me, and I feel just as bad for people who are suffering regardless of what they did before. I wonder what makes me different from people who favour punishment. Is it just because I was never punished as a child, or is there a neurological difference?
it's definitely a base instinct. When I'm stressed and preoccupied, lashing out is certainly easier than when calm.
I also wonder how people rationalize seeking punishment. More often than not, no forced act can undo wrought damage, particularly emotional damage, and people don't really feel better seeing others suffer, even if that's what they believe they want.
People also are extremely prone to forgetting the core intent of society's justice system and prisons, which is (or should be) reform, which is sad. Many balk at the idea that prison is humane in any dimension. We have a lot of growing to do :(
I don't have an issue that the threat of prison is a useful deterrent, therefore it needs to obviously be a less desirable option than whatever lives people live now. But nor should it ever be inhumane.
The big problem with prisons is that those put there consequently spend a significant period of their lives interacting with nobody but criminals (and prison guards, who aren't exactly known for their ability to inspire the best in others). I'd wager a significant number of career criminals only end up making those life choices after spending time inside.
OTOH reform is genuinely hard and not often successful.
Personally, I think prison ought to be structured a lot more like life outside prison. You teach people what they need to do to be successful outside, which has some obvious benefits.
Provide for jobs, pay a reasonable market wage, a fair amount of paid time off and/or sick leave.
Then teach them how to pay bills and prioritize. Charge reasonable rates for accommodations, food, and amenities. Let people upgrade their room for an increased monthly fee. Maybe they can pay for cable. If someone wants a steak on their birthday, they can splurge and get one -- but it will cost them more than their usual meal.
Now you're probably asking: "but what if they refuse to work?" I say: the same thing that happens outside a prison. You don't work, you don't get paid. You don't get paid, you can't buy food. You can't buy food, you don't eat. The problem will solve itself after a while.
I'm on the same boat as you. I feel like when we do things that would be emotionally satisfying as a reaction to something, it is almost always the wrong thing to do in the bigger picture. The space of possible reactions is infinite, and picking the first choice coming to mind just feels totally wrong.
Have you ever been wronged in a substantial way? Something that shook you so much, that you carried it with you for months or years afterwards? It's the kind of thing that when it happens, you think: "I wish nobody else had to go through what I did".
If you haven't, consider yourself lucky. Some of us aren't so.
Yes, I would say I have. I have been sexually assaulted for example, but that doesn't mean I want the person who did it to suffer as well. That would just mean more suffering.
I am okay with that. I don't gain anything by another person's suffering. It would make me feel worse, not better, and it would make the world a worse place because prison generally makes people worse. It would also expose other prisoners to a predator they can't avoid as easily as someone on the outside can. It would be a lose-lose for everyone.
Honestly, that sounds selfish. Plenty of others gain from a system of justice where heinous acts are deterred. And you do too, even if you don't acknowledge it.
Prisons can and should do better. But you are incredibly naive if you think there aren't people in the world whose only deterrence is prison or violent retribution.
I disagree. There is no evidence deterrence works, and I think it's very unlikely that there are people who want to commit sexual assault who would decide that it's not worth the risk if more people were punished. I don't think people work that way.
If you are thinking about citing the Italian study[0] that people always cite in respond arguments against deterrence. My response is that it's way more likely that 1 month less in prison is what caused the lower re-offending rare, not the threat of 1 month more in prison if they re-offend.
What makes you assume a society with less punishment is a “more just” one? Have you considered that maybe there is a reason that otherwise different societies have almost universally evolved to impose harsh punishments? I.e. that it’s a positive adaptive behavior?
One of the reasons why punishments used to be so harsh in the past was that enforcement was very inconsistent. In premodern times, it might take a lot of individual crimes before a repeat offender was caught. Given that most crime tends to be committed - even today - by a small, but prodigiously active subset of the general population, once someone was caught stealing, robbing or murdering, there was a tacit assumption that it was a career criminal. Who, in case of a light punishment, would go on stealing, robbing and murdering his peers for the next ten years or so.
Which is why permanent incapacitation - mostly by the sword or the gallows, but sometimes by being sent on the galleys, into the mines etc., which was scarcely more survivable than an actual execution, only that it took much longer to die - was the usual judicial punishment. At the very least, the criminal was branded so that he would be instantly recognizable forever.
Nowadays, the police has a lot more tech at its disposal. If it is willing to do so and financed to do so, it can catch basically any criminal it wants to. That is why our laws no longer resemble the Bloody Code of early modern Britain.
That's a good point, but AIUI those harsh provisions weren't even enforced very strictly. Similar to modern plea bargaining, there were many ways to reduce the punishment one would actually end up getting. I believe that David Friedman describes these mechanisms in quite some detail in his work on unusual legal systems.
I often see revenge as "you hurt me, I think you're not hurt, I want you to also hurt."
I think we 1) assume the other is not hurting, which is very often false, as the other person may hurt us because they feel hurt and assume we aren't hurting and 2) instead of trying to make them feel hurt, we can tell them that we're hurting. However, I think we mostly don't do that strategy because it often requires us to cry and most cultures shun crying.
So we seem to end up feeling hut, hiding that hurt, and assuming the other doesn't feel hurt, probably because they're so good at hiding it.
I think revenge probably evolved first and foremost as a deterrent. While it might feel satisfying to cause pain to someone who has hurt you, the damage has already been done and you can’t undo whatever damage you suffered. But you can show that there’s a cost to messing with you, which could prevent future aggression. I’d guess that’s why we feel the desire to punish in the first place.
There was a study I read over the last year, maybe it was posted on here, that said we mostly seek revenge out of spite not deterrence. I hope I can find it again.
I don't think it's about undoing the damage, it's about evening the damage. If you punch me and I feel hurt two days later, then I may still want to punch back. If I have healed physically and emotionally, forgiven you completely, do you think I'm as likely to punch you then?
> There was a study I read over the last year, maybe it was posted on here, that said we mostly seek revenge out of spite not deterrence.
It's easy to imagine that it's personally for spite, but evolutionarily for deterrence (i.e., spite is an evolutionarily effective way to encode deterrence).
Ah, I found the link, "Punishment isn’t about the common good: it’s about spite" on Aeon [0]. The author doesn't state definitively (in the article at least) that punishment is about spite, but rather seems to introduce that it's likely that it is. I haven't read the linked studies yet but hope to.
It depends on the situation, but if you’re likely to encounter the person who attacked you again, or others who might attack you, and they all become aware that you won’t fight back or get revenge in some other way, letting it slide could be the more dangerous option.
If it’s a random stranger, someone you won’t encounter again, or you live in a society where violence is very rare, then it’s probably a moot point.
We evolved in small tribes where everyone knew everyone, and just about everything that happened would quickly be known by the whole group. Combine that with scarcity and a higher propensity for violence, and being seen as an easy target would be something to avoid at all costs.
I think you're assuming that fighting back is the only option. Yesterday, I saw my friend's two year old throw the toys of the five year old and the five year old didn't immediately punch his younger brother, but instead he cried. By crying, both parents were alerted and immediately came to his aid, and frankly scolded the two year old for throwing the toys (indirect revenge?).
Maybe you could argue that by crying, the older child was getting revenge on the younger because he knew his parents would come to scold him. Or maybe the kid just wanted comfort because he lost something he cared about. It was hard for me to know whether his intention was to receive comfort and attention or to have his parents shame his brother, maybe both?
> Combine that with scarcity and a higher propensity for violence
I guess I don't see this as a given as much as it seems you do. I suppose I think people act violently out of pain, most of us just lashing out at each other because we think they hurt us first, more cooperative by nature than competitive, but maybe I'm describing your views inaccurately.
This is such a micro example but is having a 5 year old cry more desired than throwing the toy back? Needing some higher power when through age/ability the child could handle the situation themselves? Does this create a person at 25 who needs some external party to settle disputes and does this become a situation where this child learns to twist people into tools by playing on emotional responses?
Possibly, I suppose it depends on how the parents react to the cry. Bottling up the tears can also teach the 25 year old to numb themselves with alcohol or drugs, or feeling abandoned by the parents could lead to massive distrust, so I don't know if any of them necessarily lead to one outcome or another.
This may be true, but it invites escalation. Ender's Game revolved around this philosophy from what I can remember, and in the end..well...I won't spoil it if you haven't read it or watched the movie. but betting on preventing future aggression != guaranteed peace.
It's been awhile since I read the book(s) or watched the movie, but wasn't one of the core philosophical tenets underlying Ender's... specialness... the fact that he was ruthless in revenge? In the sense of "I may not be the one to start a fight, but I will certainly ensure that my response to aggression is so thorough that no further aggression is possible."
Granted the initial 3 sequel books were large tomes about the corresponding guilt, repentance, and consequences stemming from that initial idea.
focusing on the consequences, it would be a very difficult earth to live on if a a response (the gp's point) was that using violence/punishment/retribution to stop further aggression was rational. I agreed that in the context of pure overwhelming aggression it might be possible (ender's game), but I doubt we would have gotten very far as a species or a planet if everyone followed that mentality with each other.
The whole point of that book was that Ender was bred, taught and programmed to think that way and that it was wrong - it accomplished nothing. Even Ender himself realises this - and wouldn't have done it if he wasn't playing a game.
Now we can argue the merits of positive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement all day. But when a technique is effective at changing unwanted behavior, then it will be used.
Punishments are absolutely necessary because some kids don't know when their parents disapprove of their behavior otherwise. I'm not talking about beating kids btw, I'm talking about scolding, "go to your room", and timeouts.
I don't think corporal punishment is worthwhile. There's some studies that shows that while effective at changing behavior, it also teaches the kid that violence is sometimes necessary, a lesson that I'm not sure if we should be teaching them.
But punishments in general? You don't want to reach for them as your first tool in your parenting toolbox. But you really can't just positive-reinforcement "you're doing a good job" all day to your kids. Its disingenuous and the kids pick up on that.
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> It answers the question in the title mostly by asking what, from today’s perspective, are the rational uses of punishment?
To change a person's behavior. If someone keeps lying, cheating, and stealing in society, we want to make them to stop so that they can reintegrate and become a beneficial member of society.
Perhaps we've gone too far with jail times in the USA, but the foundational theory is quite simple and effective here. Anyone who has ever trained a dog or other animal knows how to use animal psychology / punishments / rewards to change the animal's behavior.
Human psychology is more complex than animal behavior, but it shares a lot of similarities. Positive reinforcement (aka: rewards) and negative reinforcement (aka: punishments) are both useful within the framework.
As well, we need to clearly distinguish "punishment" and "revenge".
Revenge is an emotional response by those who have been wronged in the past.
Punishment can mean many things (so perhaps we need more specific words), but I believe in this context it is meant to be a rational, conscious act to influence behaviour - though there are other kinds of punishment, and it can be difficult to distinguish. A parent may raise their voice very intentionally, without actually being angry, to gain attention, distinguish and underline a point, or elicit quick obedience (i.e. a "STOP!!!" when a child is about to dart on the road), but they may also raise their voice out of impulse, emotion, frustration, with no specific goal in mind and thus no clear direction or "win conditions".
(I've only recently learned of the phrase "omnidirectional ass-chewing" [1], which is a very intentional demenour and environment for receiving marines to put them into a constantly stressful environment to train focus. It LOOKS like random angry yelling, but is in fact extremely studied, careful, and intentional. )
> There's some studies that shows that while effective at changing behavior, it also teaches the kid that violence is sometimes necessary, a lesson that I'm not sure if we should be teaching them.
Isn't that true, though? Violence is sometimes necessary.
Teaching a child that violence is never necessary is just as bad as teaching the child that violence is always necessary.
> Outside of very few, select circumstances, violence isn't the answer inside of a household.
Sure, but we're teaching kids lessons for when they're adults, right? Is it really a good idea to raise a generation who will not act out of self-defense?
> Even if two boys are fighting it out, I'm not sure if the right answer is to kick their ass and spank them / humiliate them over it.
I don't think violence is an answer for that.
> People used to beat their kids up over bad grades or missing homework assignments. That's too much violence for sure.
That's way overboard, and not what I had in mind. Rewards and punishments with kids is complex, and I don't want to come off like I am trivialising it all.
Humans (and chimps, and dogs) have all been studied in-depth, and at this point we know for certain that the idea of fairness is not a uniquely human one.
Take for example this very common scenario: an older/stronger child slapping a younger/weaker sibling.
The victim in this case is likely not going to believe that any non-physical punishment is fair(In fact, it isn't fair), and all it would do is breed some resentment.
If it happens just once or twice, sure, the victim can move on. If it happens all the time and the only result is that the parents take away TV for the aggressor for a few days, then that's going to result in plenty of long-term resentment.
Even worse, sometimes if the victim responds, they're going to get punished as well because some parents don't usually care to adjudicate.
Schools are even worse - the victim is more of a legal liability to the school than the aggressor, hence schools are more likely to pretend it never happened, or to punish both parties equally.
Taking all this into account, I tell my boys that they should never hit first, and that if anyone ever hits them the only appropriate response to to hit back.
They've[1] never hit anyone thus far, but they are also not afraid to hit anyone who hits them, because that's only fair.
[1] The younger one is only 3, so not yet a proper data point.
> Sure, but we're teaching kids lessons for when they're adults, right? Is it really a good idea to raise a generation who will not act out of self-defense?
Perhaps this is my response to office gossip. But I'm talking about my coworker who regularly brags about corporal punishment and how he's a good father for hitting his kid on the regular.
There's a lot of people out there. I don't think you and I are in much disagreement, although perhaps I didn't write my words in a way that suited your perspective.
There's still a generation of parents who think that hitting their kids is the right response, be it from occasional spanking, or even wholesale beating them up to teach them a lesson.
Beating up kids / corporal punishment isn't about "self defense", but instead about "learned helplessness". Its a different strategy to parenting, and some people still believe in it.
> Perhaps this is my response to office gossip. But I'm talking about my coworker who regularly brags about corporal punishment and how he's a good father for hitting his kid on the regular.
Depending on country and legislation, you may want to report this. In some places you may even be legally obligated to report child abuse, which this sounds like.
It is not your (or mine) place to judge whether your coworker actually abuses his children (or if it is "just" talk, for example), only to report to the relevant authority so that they can investigate. Please, if you are worried for them, act
This is a scary proposition though, at least in the US, because you cannot always trust good judgement from the investigators. The answer seems to be either: “there is no problem” or “you lose your kids entirely”. The likelihood of an investigator taking a nuanced response doesn’t seem very good. And the options of foster care in the US are not great, and there are child-abusers within that system too.
People have gotten their kids taken away for silly things. It’s a very real fear, even for genuinely good people. Unless it’s truly horrible abuse, I’d postulate that it’s better for a kid to stay with their parents. If you call Child Services on that parent, there is a real chance that you make the kids life significantly worse than the abuse they’re receiving at home.
My initial comment may have been too strongly worded, and it is normal to feel conflicted in such circumstances. There are hotlines for these matters in many countries and you can often discuss the specific case anonymously with the Child Protection Services without naming the family.
The CPS do make mistakes sometimes, and I am not from the US, but I find it hard to believe the either-we-take-your-child-or-do-nothing dichotomy. A general problem with these cases is that only one part can go to the media, whereas the other part is bound by their confidentiality requirements. And those who successfully receives other forms of support may not want to talk publicly about it.
Also, we are generally not in a position to assess or grade the abuse, which is why there should be a low threshold for reporting suspected abuse. If there are physical abuse, there may be other forms as well. It may escalate. Depending on their resilience, the children might be traumatized or have their development impaired. Whereas the CPS have the means to do such investigations and judgements. Perhaps they are already doing investigations on the family?
And if the CPS do make a mistake, it would not be the fault or responsibility of the lay-man who reports, although it may feel differently
> Also, we are generally not in a position to assess or grade the abuse, which is why there should be a low threshold for reporting suspected abuse.
So if you overhear someone saying they spanked their child you are saying you should call CPS and say that you suspect child abuse that should be investigated?
> And if the CPS do make a mistake, it would not be the fault or responsibility of the lay-man who reports, although it may feel differently
No, this is not how it works when you know you are reporting people to a flawed system. See “swatting” or just generally how well received calling cops to intervene in a poor minority neighborhood goes.
> So if you overhear someone saying they spanked their child you are saying you should call CPS and say that you suspect child abuse that should be investigated?
If that gives you reasonable suspicion that a child is being maltreated or abused, then yes. If you have reason to suspect that the child is in immediate danger from being hurt, then you should probably call the emergency services directly
> No, this is not how it works when you know you are reporting people to a flawed system. See “swatting” or just generally how well received calling cops to intervene in a poor minority neighborhood goes.
To my knowledge, swatting is fundamentally different as it involves both conscious deceit and a motive to harm. Something being a consequence of your actions is different from you having ethical responsibility for the outcome. I guess the question is how flawed? Is the CPS in the US really as dysfunctional as you seem to assert?
> If that gives you reasonable suspicion that a child is being maltreated or abused, then yes.
Someone saying they spanked their child is not reasonable suspicion of abuse.
> Is the CPS in the US really as dysfunctional as you seem to assert?
It's just as flawed in most countries, it's just that few people interact with it so they never get a sense of how out of proportion the CPS response is.
Lets look at the scenario you painted: Mummy/Daddy smacks toddler firmly on the well-padded (diaper) bottom.
You think that's abuse. So does the CPS. They remove the child "while they investigate", which could take anything from a week to a year in most countries (the investigation is done in most jurisdictions in tandem with the court proceedings arising from this, which take long[1]).
You have to ask yourself whether the child is more harmed by the smack or by the removal from the parents, from the family unit, etc.
There's no contention that the period in question is an important bonding period for the child (tons of research), prevention of which can cause lifelong issues.
The argument of CPS in most western countries is that the smack is more damaging than breaking the childs bonds with the family.
Many people don't believe that. I want to know whether you believe that the smack is more damaging to the child than the removal from the family.
[1]The reason it takes so long is because someone claimed abuse, and that claim has to be investigated. Unlike the scientific process, where human testimony is the lowest form of evidence and usually ignored, in the legal system human testimony is the highest form of evidence.
> Perhaps this is my response to office gossip. But I'm talking about my coworker who regularly brags about corporal punishment and how he's a good father for hitting his kid on the regular.
Yeah, if its regular he's probably doing it wrong. In 16 years of parenting, I've smacked my kids a total of maybe 5 times.
> There's still a generation of parents who think that hitting their kids is the right response, be it from occasional spanking, or even wholesale beating them up to teach them a lesson.
I don't think physical punishment is the correct response to anything but physical violence, and even then it's a rare response and should be proportional.
I just don't think that it should be completely off the table as a response to physical violence. I also think the kid should know that it's on the table.
"Consequences for your actions" should mean something; the consequences should be proportional and similar to the actions.
"Consequences for your actions" should not mean "I lose TV if I hit my brother repeatedly when I am angry".
>Beating up kids / corporal punishment isn't about "self defense", but instead about "learned helplessness". Its a different strategy to parenting, and some people still believe in it.
It isn't about learning self-defense, it's about learning that even if they will never hit someone, they're living in a world where violence is never off the table. They need to be prepared for that.
I taught my kids how to dodge and block various physical attacks and that if anyone tries to hit them they should extract themselves from the situation and retreat to a safe place.
I think it's probably correct to read this within the context of a parent-child relationship eg one of wildly disparate power imbalance where one has significant latitude to use violence and the other has virtually none to stop it.
We can probably assume that people who want to model this behavior also tackle things like self-defense, protection of the innocent, righteous wrath, etc when it's appropriate to discuss them.
> Isn't that true, though? Violence is sometimes necessary.
It's doesn't need to be strictly true. This isn't a mathematical proof, but a behavior used to influence other behavior.
> Teaching a child that violence is never necessary is just as bad as teaching the child that violence is always necessary.
I'm not sure what kind of thinking leads you to this conclusion, nor is it clear what this statement means if I'm being open about it. "Violence is always necessary"? If someone doesn't get out of your way you are supposed to shove them? If someone honks their horn at you, you should smash their windshield? If someone tells you something you don't like you punch them? You'd never learn anything of substance with this viewpoint.
violence is never necessary != violence is always necessary
The tradeoffs for survival (much less society) are unequal.
I'm 28. In my life so far, I cannot think of a single time when I have ever needed to engage in violence.
Now, if someone attacked me, would I defend myself? Absolutely, as a last resort. And it's true that children should be told it's okay to defend themselves by whatever means necessary. I don't think this distinction is particularly difficult to understand.
Corporal punishment in particular socializes children to let themselves be attacked and not defend themselves.
> Corporal punishment in particular socializes children to let themselves be attacked and not defend themselves.
I was spanked as a kid. As an adult I've violently defended myself without hesitation from an unprovoked attack by a criminal stranger in the parking lot of a big box store. So that part doesn't seem to me to be true.
This is kind of like saying "My grandmother smoked cigarettes all her life and lived until 83, so they must be safe." We have a lot of data showing the corporal punishment has negative effects on children, on average across the population.
It's hard to say exactly what causes that. However, the idea that it teaches children to defend themselves doesn't make sense to me because children who are spanked are not defending themselves.
> We have a lot of data showing the corporal punishment has negative effects on children, on average across the population.
I think the problem is that "corporal punishment" as a term is just too broad. You just used it upthread as "getting a spank" which is relatively minor.
The studies I am aware of showing negative effects use the term to mean "regular and systemic caning".
Those are two very different things; the studies are not studying the thing you referred to.
Violence by an adult to a child is just the domination of the weak by the strong - on an individual basis.
You're bigger, so you can physically overpower them. The rules bind the child but not the adult - after all if child uses violence to try and get what they want, you'll just respond with more.
The violence used by society at large doesn't work that way: no one person can successfully fight off 5 people detaining them. One person with a weapon destroys any physical advantage. No one person can physically overpower civilization, and so hey, this is all about rules, negotiation, and enlightened self interest after all.
> Isn't that true, though? Violence is sometimes necessary.
People sometimes ask, when will humans finally stop killing each others in wars and crime. I believe that not until violence goes off the table completely as an option. Not sometimes, not only for hideous criminals, not for stopping violence, not as a play, not as teaching implement. Literally never, not-even-coming-to-mind never, physically-incapable never, gone-in-any-form-from-the-culture never, no-hunting-animals-too never. Otherwise it will always be the ultimate option which can always escalate.
The horrifying stereotypical faulty AI answer is that the dead are violent only in fiction. Which illustrates the ironic essential hypocrisy involved in getting a stable solution. I don't think it is a routable solution or achievible even if we may see the path. Like how we can easily see "be born a billionaire" as an answer to personal fiscal woes.
Slightly less extreme and horrifying than omnicide but persistent are somehow inflicting widespread learned helplessness that somehow persists across generations. Even if we could all be "honey-beed" and all die from inflicting serious harm, any defect would make the "violence capable mutants" monarchs.
Reminds me some public opinions from Western Europe countries (especially from Germany) during first months of war in Ukraine – "Why they are fighting? Just stop killing, please and give Russians what they want."
> To change a person's behavior. If someone keeps lying, cheating, and stealing in society, we want to make them to stop so that they can reintegrate and become a beneficial member of society.
I think a common criticism of this stance is, that it does not ask why a person does something that others want to punish. Obviously there sometimes are no answers, but often it's poverty and lack of options. So this begs the question, why people come to steal and murder etc.
I personally don't believe that "punishment" is usually well invested in a person. Rehabilitation and support structures are probably the better option.
I am also realising that it gets very interesting for white collar crime "without a victim" such as tax evasion or manipulation of stocks. My intuition is to punish exactly these crimes, but I think that's my bias showing.
> Anyone who has ever trained a dog or other animal knows how to use animal psychology / punishments / rewards to change the animal's behavior.
Use of punishment in dog training is actually pretty hotly debated. Not that it doesn't work, but that it has consequences beyond what are intended and that substitution, redirection, and rewards result in a happier and more obedient pet.
Yeah it works way better to establish the fact that you're the alpha dog via some basic obedience involved in feeding and stuff like that, then build up the dog to want your approval, establish boundaries around things like playtime, give the dog adequate "jobs" and stimulation for the breed so its not bored and anxious, etc. One the dogs needs are all met like that within some structure you're going to have a way happier dog compared to not understanding why the dog is acting out and having to tell it 'no' and discipline it all the time. That requires a commitment from the human a well though, it isn't a one-way street.
Which is more less how society should treat humans as well.
If we're going to have an article called "Why Punish?" there should really be a companion article on "Why Steal?" And given the right conditions literally every one of us will steal to survive. Every single one of us are still just animals at our core anyway, that means you dear reader.
Debated? B. F. Skinner already found out back in the 1950s that punishment does not lead to any learning of the desired behavior. Rather, it leads to avoidance. So I would argue that the fact that punishment is the most inefficient way to change behavior is pretty much established. In fact, you can look at any area - dog training, marriage, marketing, computer games - and you will find that the most efficient and effective methods of shaping behavior of those that employ positive reinforcement. Things like Facebook and social media are pretty much just Skinner’s techniques amplified by the internet.
> and you will find that the most efficient and effective methods of shaping behavior of those that employ positive reinforcement.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up (Oki position), he uses a Dragon Punch / Reversal and punishes me.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up (Oki position), he uses a Dragon Punch / reversal and punishes me.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up. He uses a dragon punch/reversal and punishes me.
I block while my opponent is waking up. He uses a dragon punch, loses to my block and I punish him.
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An entire genre of video games, fighting games, revolves around conditioning your opponent and getting into their head. The rock-paper-scissors battle of attack vs block vs grab takes place so quickly, you often don't have the time to react (though some players do have insane reaction speeds).
When you can't leverage reaction, you leverage conditioning. And over the long term, the only way to really learn the game at a high level is by getting your bad habits repeatedly-punished by a stronger player.
Perhaps its not "efficient" to learn, but in this case, it is the only way to learn. Expert players are bad at vocalizing what is or isn't working. There are very few coaches, and almost none of them know how to take you to the highest level (even if they themselves have reached peak form).
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There's other forms of punishment as learning. Ex: fall into a pit in Mario. You die, so you try again.
Or "Boar Lure" in AoE2. If you fail, your villager dies, and/or you don't get the precious early-game food you need to sustain your production.
Or in Basketball. If you get crossed up, you fail to block the opponent and they get a free shot at the basket.
FWIW I agree with you, but many people still employ it and tell others it works despite the academic and professional evidence to the contrary. I probably should have phrased it a little better to make that clear.
>>Perhaps we've gone too far with jail times in the USA
Perhaps? I dont think that is even debatable at this point. I would encourage you to research actual treatment of prisoners in the US, we in the US are critical of nations like Russia, and China while willfully ignoring the abuse that occurs every day in US prisons.
>Anyone who has ever trained a dog or other animal
This right here is the exact reason for this abuse, it is common for the US prison system, and the correctional officers to dehumanize the prisoners and treat them like animals, not cuddly pets or dogs, but like the worst animal abuse stories you here from the traveling carnivals that used to keep Elephants and Loins for show.....
We need MASSIVE reform of both the criminal system, and prison system. I am not talking about being "weak" on crime like seems to be the norm today, refusing to prosecute crimes, and letting people out immediately but "tough on crime" does not have to involve the dehumanizing treatment, and outright abuse that occurs that leads to nothing productive, no rehabilitation, and more often than not non-violent criminals go in non-violent but come out extremely violent.
There is NOTHING redeeming about the US Prison system
No, this isn’t true at all. My teenager has never been punished once in his life, and he’s turning into an excellent human: hard-working, compassionate with self and others, honest.
I would define punishment as “intentional infliction of suffering for purposes of behavior modification.” As stated, that’s flatly unethical, especially with your own family.
Now, he experiences consequences of his actions all the time. Scratch the counter-top? Win an afternoon of helping me refinish it. That works because it’s directly connected to his actions, and because I treat it as a learning opportunity rather than yelling at him or banishing him.
There are more possibilities than “punishment or permissiveness.” Kids need structure and to understand and experience age-appropriate consequences for their actions. But that doesn’t mean they need arbitrary suffering imposed by people they’re supposed to love.
As kindly as possible - if your anecdote about your teenager misbehaving is scratching the countertop, you may just have an unusually well behaved teenager. What would your response be if he drove drunk and crashed your car? Or if he you got in an argument and he took a swing at you?
If those are outside the realm of possibility for you guys, that’s awesome, you probably have an awesome kid. But for most parents I know, their teenagers have seriously test their limits at least a few times and it seemed like a punitive approach worked well. Depending on the “crime”, grounding them at home or taking away their phone/car/screens for x amount of time is a perfectly reasonable punishment IMO. It certainly worked well enough on my four siblings and I when we did dumb crap as teenagers.
Punishment isn't typically defined that way though. That's a bit of a harsh definition
In psychology it's often defined as any behavioral method used to decrease an undesired behavior - split into positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment is adding stimuli that they don't like (physical punishment is included here, but lecturing can be too), and negative punishment is removing things that they like. If a child asks rudely for ice cream and you don't give it to them because of the way they asked, that's a form of (negative) punishment.
Your countertop example is too - from a behavioral perspective, that's just a form of (positive) punishment - you're making them do something they don't like in response to unwanted behavior. You might have an added rationale to connect things, but that's still what the behavioral effect is.
I don't think that's true at all. People say that crime increased in San Francisco because of the more progressive DA, but ignore that crime increased less in San Francisco than nationwide.
Do you have any numbers that shows this? To discuss the disproportionate rise in crime in progressive DAs’ cities isn’t to ignore the rise in crime across the board.
Sure, the statistics are not very good, but we don't have anything better. We have some evidence that property crime has gone down relative to other parts of the country (and much better evidence for homicide, which doesn't have the same under-reporting risk), and no evidence (as far as I know) for the opposite.
You can't talk about crime statistics without talking about whether people are actually reporting crimes at the same rate.
It's entirely possible that a city with a progressive DA that doesn't prosecute certain types of crimes sufficiently or judges that don't actually pull criminals off the streets, end up with a social atmosphere where citizens don't bother reporting crime as much, because they know nothing will be done about it anyway.
Adding to that, police don't operate in a vacuum and may respond to the election of a progressive DA by reducing their level of effort, whether that's in retaliation, or out of a fear of being prosecuted for misconduct, or as a form of strike [1]. Or, like you said, we just see drops because they don't bother to make arrests they know won't get prosecuted (e.g. nonviolent drug arrests in philly following Larry Krasner's election follow this pattern [2]). Or, its some demographic, or socioecenomic, or some other trend unrelated to the DA (or which also happened to result in the DA being elected in the first place).
Basically, stats are hard, crime stats are really hard, and someone who tells you Crime rates did X because Person A did thing Y without a 20 page paper probably doesn't have a clue, including me.
They may not report those crimes to the police, but police reports aren't the only way to find out data on crime rates. Stores will still report shoplifting loses to their insurance companies for example.
> I don't think that's true at all. People say that crime increased in San Francisco because of the more progressive DA, but ignore that crime increased less in San Francisco than nationwide.
Well, yeah ... if shoplifting isn't reported as a crime, then it doesn't matter how high the shoplifting rate goes, then official crime rate will still be low.
TLDR: If shoplifting is unreported, then reported levels of shoplifting will be zero.
The problem is that we don't have any high quality data on most crimes. Virtually all murders are reported. But victims often don't report lesser crimes, especially in places like San Francisco where they know that the police won't bother to investigate and the DA won't bother to prosecute.
The closest thing we have is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), but so far they only have data through 2020.
Honestly Walter, if shoplifting is decriminalized then it won't count as 'crime' will it? It's in the word.
From what I can see the trend has more to do with covid restrictions lifting than anything else. Violent crimes and gun-based homicides are the things that have risen most sharply, so that has little to do with larceny.
And generally speaking, if you are frustrated by shoplifting, you should be even more frustrated by civil asset forfeiture, which deprives Americans of more wealth than all burglaries put together. However, it is state sanctioned with no real recourse or insurance to protect victims.
The shoplifting rates in big cities rose by about 70% from their 1980 to early '90s, then fell fairly steadily to around 60% of '80s levels until around 2007, then started rising again. They got back to their '80s level around 2015 and and swung around that by about 10% since then, until there was a drop at the start of the pandemic.
In small cities the pattern was the same except the peak around 1990 was a bit lower, the decline through mid-2000s only got down to a little below '80s levels, and the 2015ish rise wasn't as big (although because the earlier decline didn't get much below '80s levels the small city rates were higher than big city rates).
This article has a nice graph of this from an FBI report [1].
I care not about if some individual gets a speeding ticket on the other side of town. I have zero revenge ideas. I do care that I am (and others are) aware there are consequences to speeding. That is a direct, and explicit deterrent to me. It is also a social contract that I or others who break this contract will be punished. That is a comforting thought. Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them. I cross without hesitation. We think of others as having near-similar ethics (following social rules) as we do.
When such contract is broken and punished I am appalled not because I want vengeance, but because I am relying for my life to keep such contract.
Punishment is a deterrent, not vengeance.
Ethics and morals must not die.
I am really trying not to be cynical about the article's framing.
> Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them.
It's really quite telling that in countries where religious strictures are held to be more important than individual freedom, like the US, the prevailing attitude is that "people will only do the right thing if they are afraid of being punished if they don't".
Whereas, in a country like the UK, with considerably more rights and freedoms and less reliance on Judeo-Christian religion, the idea is that "people will do the right thing, because they expect others to do the right thing in return".
Kids have the freedom to go to school without fear of being shot.
Mothers have the right to take 6 months paid maternity leave.
Workers generally have more rights and protections, although this is getting worse.
Rules and consequences exist because people have different ideas about what "the right thing" is, not because society thinks people are inherently immoral.
Very few individuals believe their actions unjustified or that they are "the bad guy". If we went only be individuals self-assessment of their actions, there would be very few criminals.
That isn’t unique to the UK, every country has a moral code and the general populace will be hesitant to break it. Why do you think most people are willing to try drugs but very few would assault someone and steal their money. Both are illegal.
People in European countries - including the UK, despite what the right-wing Brexit idiots might think - tend not to steal not because they're afraid of getting caught but because they wouldn't want to be stolen from.
More people are willing to take drugs illegally than they are to steal, because taking drugs does not directly deprive someone else of something. If you want to compare different kinds of theft, look at the difference between piracy versus shoplifting versus housebreaking. Most people of even a fairly high moral compass are okay with torrenting stuff because Disney has enough money and even a huge amount of people illegally downloading a movie that they wouldn't have paid to see anyway doesn't really "harm" Disney in any way. It is "theft of service", in that there are still the same number of physical copies and no-one has lost any physical goods, but someone somewhere has not been paid for their time.
If you shoplifted a DVD, there would be one less DVD in that shop, that ultimately someone has paid for so it can be on the shelf. This breaks down further - you might shoplift it from Asda because (again) Asda has enough money, but you might not shoplift it from Wee Mad Bob's Magic Videos, because everyone knows Wee Mad Bob and he's an great guy who's struggling enough to keep his shop open, especially with the big new Asda opening up a video section.
If you broke into someone's house, you'd be taking the conscious decision to enter someone else's space, and remove something they have chosen to have in their home. That crosses far more morality contour lines than buying a bit of shitty homegrown from some guy down the pub.
TL;DR the US is more right-leaning and right-wing views tend to be amoral and "stealing is okay as long as you don't get caught", whereas Europe is more left-leaning and moral, and "stealing is not okay, because you wouldn't like it either".
This is a hilarious take. Your post is long but is essentially saying Europeans (but not right wing ones) more fully embrace "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". That you are more inclined towards the Judeo-Christian moral ideal than Americans. (Also strange as right wing parties have strong religious associations). Is your claim that Europeans have stronger/older ties to religion? Or that you are just better than Americans in some intangible manner.
> Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them.
I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally.
Road rage and horribly antisocial driving behaviour exists. I don't think it usually includes murderous intent, but intentionally dangerous behaviour is quite common.
Yes, they exist, they're illegal, and the legal consequences don't actually stop them.
If the argument is that everyone would road rage and drive dangerously if there weren't legal consequences, I dispute that. Many people don't do it simply because they don't feel like doing it.
Maybe not everyone. But probably sizable proportion of road users would. And I think that is the point. Punishment is effective tool for stopping at least sizable fraction of them.
I'm very familiar with environments where people drive however the fuck they want. A cyclist wouldn't last long there. Maybe it's not murderous intent, but it's at least reckless disregard for life.
The person who runs a red light doesn't intend to murder, they intend to be reckless under the belief they are skilled enough to avoid hurting others. That the rules were meant for others, less capable than they.
The consequences for rule breakers exist in part to deter those lacking the wisdom to understand why the rules were created in the first place, not because society believes that class of rule breakers wants to hurt others.
But the consequences don't actually deter them, as evidenced by the countless cars that run red lights.
Those who believe they are skilled enough to avoid hurting others also believe they won't get caught by the police running a red light.
The question is, which is the worse consequence, getting a ticket for running a red light, or killing another person in a crash? I would say the latter, in the minds and hearts of most people.
I think it comes back to failure of enforcement and size of punishment.
I think lot less people would run red lights if they were reliably punished for it and the punishment were non-trivial. This is why I support Finnish model of income based fines. You end up paying some fraction of your monthly income. So it will hurt rich and poor more equally.
The fines are often very trivial for certain fraction of population.
If you have a whole society that mostly doesn't have inherent respect for social norms or laws, then it would be incredibly difficult to enforce those norms or laws effectively. You'd need a police state. Massive levels of surveilance. And how could you even trust the police themselves, if people generally don't respect social norms or laws? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
But we're not talking about an entire society of normalized rule breaking. I agree, there are places where a traffic light is little more than ornamentation, but in much of the West the average driver respects most rules of the road (speed limits being the least commonly respected).
So we're talking about a how to affect the size of a minority subpopulation in an otherwise rule following society. Here the consequences give rule-breakers pause.
"Is running this red light really worth the fine?"
"I already have 5 points on my license and I'll lose my job if it gets suspended"
That's the value of consequences. You'll never stop all rule breakers or enforce consequences with perfect fairness, but some will be deterred which makes the system worthwhile.
> So we're talking about a how to affect the size of a minority subpopulation in an otherwise rule following society.
I don't think that's what we were talking about.
WaitWaitWha: "Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them."
Me: "I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally."
WaitWaitWha seems to be arguing that we don't have "an otherwise rule following society", and only the punishment is preventing widespread rule breaking. Whereas I was arguing that we do have an otherwise rule following society regardless of the punishment. I would also argue that punishment doesn't actually do much to deter the people who don't respect the rules in the first place.
Indeed, I would say that speed limits are the least respected because speed limits are rather arbitrary. Speed limits change over time (they were set to 55 in the 1970s to save gas, not to save lives), and they vary widely by locality. Not to mention that speed limits don't vary by day/night or by weather, which makes no sense. Whereas red and green lights have had the exact same meaning the whole time, and the consequences of violation are rather obvious, because a red light means cars may drive through the intersection perpendicular to you, one of the most dangerous situations you can imagine.
> I agree, there are places where a traffic light is little more than ornamentation
I don't know what you're agreeing with, because I didn't say or intend to imply that.
> "Is running this red light really worth the fine?"
Well, the primary thought has to be "Can I make it through without dying?"
> I don't know what you're agreeing with, because I didn't say or intend to imply that.
> If you have a whole society that mostly doesn't have inherent respect for social norms or laws, then it would be incredibly difficult to enforce those norms or laws effectively.
The latter sentence is predicated on the existence of a society that ignore rules, I'm allowing that such societies exist but the context is not applicable to the average Western drivers.
> WaitWaitWha: "Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them."
> Me: "I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally."
There are three populations at work:
* People who will not run the red light because they respect the rule of law
* People who would run the red light, but don't because they fear the consequences of breaking the law
* People who will run the red light regardless of consequences
I won't speak for WaitWaitWha, but what I am arguing is I would not feel safe relying on just the first group. If the first group is 90% of people (which is still "most people"), the second group is 9% of people, and the third is 1%, I don't like those odds. We don't know what the breakdown actually is, but I feel better knowing both the first and second group won't run the red light in a society with consequences and in that vaguery I feel safe.
> Well, the primary thought has to be "Can I make it through without dying?"
No, the kinds of people running the red light and perform other reckless actions rarely contextualize that widely. That's why we need legal consequences in the first place. They don't consider in the moment the risk to their own and others lives, because they think their skill or a sense of invincibility prevents such bad outcomes from happening. Legal consequences pose a barrier that they can mentally recognize as independent from their own invincibility complex.
> The latter sentence is predicated on the existence of a society that ignore rules, I'm allowing that such societies exist but the context is not applicable to the average Western drivers.
It was a counterfactual hypothetical.
>There are three populations at work: * People who will not run the red light because they respect the rule of law * People who would run the red light, but don't because they fear the consequences of breaking the law * People who will run the red light regardless of consequences
This is missing the 4th and most important population:
* People who will not run the red light because it's likely to kill themselves and/or others.
That's the population I rely on.
> They don't consider in the moment the risk to their own and others lives, because they think their skill or a sense of invincibility prevents such bad outcomes from happening.
Do you have any empirical basis for this claim? Does it come from personal experience? We can't read minds, except our own.
I think it's bizarre to say that risk is not a factor, since nearly all red light runnings occur right after the yellow, when the relative risk of a crash is lowest, rather than in mid-cycle, when the risk of a crash is highest. Unless the streets are deserted. Hardly anyone ever thinks they're invincible enough to thread the needle of present perpendicular traffic.
Even when the streets are deserted, red light runners don't just plow through mid-cycle. They treat the red light like a stop sign.
I wonder if there can be a difference in intention between "punishment" and "consequences."
I personally hear punishment and think of an intention to harm, whereas hear consequences as lacking that intention, more of an intention to inform.
For example, say that if someone runs a red light, they will receive a bill for $500. Am I giving them the bill because I believe they are a bad person and deserve to be punished? Or as a way to let them know that these are the rules and the consequences of the rules?
I'm ok with the latter and can feel very sad at the former, as I think it just perpetuates pain and increases distance in society.
Inform? Do you really believe that they are uninformed, that they are unaware of the rules and that there are consequences for breaking said rules.
People are not informed by speeding tickets. There is no element of surprise there. They knew the rules, they broke them anyway. Same with theft and so on. I could understand it for some obscure tax law, but basic things like this, no.
Maybe you reached for the wrong verb there, but they are not ignorant of the rules.
Maybe another verb would convey it better, I don't know. I do believe in letting people make choices as long as they know the consequences. I think most of us are vastly uninformed of all the consequences of such things. Sure, I know if I go over 45 I will get a speeding ticket. How much will it cost? How many points will I accumulate on the driver's license? How ashamed (or terrified) will I feel when the cop pulls me over? How ashamed will I feel when I tell someone I'm late because I got a ticket? How will it affect my insurance rates? Will I lose my license? How will my passenger feel, if there is one?
I think there are many more consequences than just the first-order ones and I do believe most of us are uninformed or ignorant of the full scope.
>> Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them.
The idea of punishment as a deterrent is hopefully dead and buried at this point.
The U.S. has one of the harshest prison systems in the developed world, and an outrageous recidivism rate - 76% of prisoners are arrested again within 5 years of release [1].
Norway, on the other hand, has some of the most humane prisons [2], and a recidivism rate of only 20% [1]
Can you please explain your understanding of the word correlation? I'm very curios to hear how your reasoning for how statements about these can be proven by a single data point.
Yes: if punishment was an effective deterrent, then the natural expectation is that there is strong correlation relationship between the level of punishment used and the deterrence effect.
Saying punishment doesn't provide deterrence only claims that punishment is not correlated with deterrence.
Maybe the examples shown gave the impression that an anti-correlation was claimed, but that is purely an invention of the reader.
There is a big difference between proof and falsification. The grant-parent wants to establish a general rule, whereas the parent only wants to falsify it. Usually, a single example is enough for falsification. -- There is only one caveat (that's why I said "usually"): The evidence used for falsification must be true, which in itself is a deduction from many detailed observations.
The real flaw in the argument of the parent is, that in a direct comparison between Singapure and Norway Norway still wins: If roughly the same recidivism rates are achieved in a very punitive and a very supportive system, the supportive system is superior according to utilitarian principles.
>The real flaw in the argument of the parent is, that in a direct comparison between Singapure and Norway Norway still wins: If roughly the same recidivism rates are achieved in a very punitive and a very supportive system, the supportive system is superior according to utilitarian principles.
Wouldn't that depend on subjectively balancing costs and benefits of the other involved factors? For example, Singapore's system may (or may not, frankly I don't know and it's not important to the logical point I'm making) cost less than Norway's system. In that case, the question would be what value the society places on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive.
Perhaps. My argument contains an unspoken "ceteris paribus" clause, which is typically the case, when we compare things: that all relevant factors are on the table and everyone agrees on them. To generalise your argument: From a logical point of view, no conclusion is ultimately settled, because it cannot be ruled out that not someday someone comes up with a new and better argument.[1]
So when I pointed out a "flaw in the argument", I meant the argument as presented, without additional refinements (as you are trying to develop).
A minor detail: When discussing a normative question, it is important to carefully distinguish between normative and descriptive aspects. The descriptive aspects are everything that is the case. The normative aspects are everything that should be the case. Therefore, the question is what value a society should place on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive. -- And the idea that norms are up to a certain point "subjectively" is in itself a description whose normative relevance asks for an intense debate.
[1] There might exist a few exceptions, such as fundamental logical theorems. But this is too far off from our case.
Surely you realise that the original point works equally well with any of the three given examples?
If the recidivism rate is 20% regardless of if the punishment is harsh or not, I don't see why the conclusion should be that the harshness is supremely important. The harsh punishment does not better than the lenient ones!
Likewise: with the rate is 70% and 20%, but the punishments are equally hard in both places, why on earth is the conclusion that clearly the punishment is universally effective at keeping the rate of recidivism low?
What the original posted was arguing is that harsh punishment is not an effective way of reforming criminals, as measured by the recidivism. The example merely needs to illustrate that recidivism and harshness don't go together.
What shakow did was simply adding another example proving this point, and then acting like they'd provided a contradiction.
I'm sorry to say, but if you think that you can provide a counter example to the statement "there is no strong correlation" with one single additional data point, you've grievously misunderstood how correlations work.
Only the most naive people think that "punishment as a deterrent" is dead.
It only takes a simple thought experiment to see why that idea is stupid. How many additional murders do you think there would be if the punishment for murder was a day in prison instead of 10 or more years? How many aggrieved ex-spouses, neighbors, and coworkers would turn to violence to solve their problems?
You’re gonna have to back up that “though experiment” with some data. Or at least a logical explanation, as to why you think the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs, held in check by the threat of prison time.
Otherwise your comment is little more that a dark speculative fantasy.
> Or at least a logical explanation, as to why you think the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs, held in check by the threat of prison time.
You don't need the MAJORITY of the population to be homicidal maniacs, only held in check by the thread of punishment to see a marked rise in homicides.
I'd guess that even with a low rate of one out of every thousand people being homicidal maniacs only kept in check by the threat of force, you'd get 200x or more homicides than you have now.
After all, a homicidal maniac will, almost by definition, kill repeatedly, and since (in this hypothetical situation) they are not punished for it, there's simply no reason for them to stop doing it.
Again, you’re gonna need some data. I would consider 1 in every thousand people being a homicidal maniac held in check by the the threat of force to be an extraordinary high incidence rate. Such a rate doesn’t even vaguely match up with my experiences of people.
One in a million I could believe, but numbers lower than I have difficulty believing.
Even if the state doesn’t punish anyone, and even if there was no physical retaliation. I imagine that murdering people would quickly result in your social ostracisation. Who the hell wants to spent time with a nutter who’s gonna kill you for rubbing them up the wrong way? I think most people would find better friends and colleagues.
One in a few hundred will murder someone in USA with todays rules. Don't you think those people would murder a bit more liberally if they weren't punished for it?
> Again, you’re gonna need some data. I would consider 1 in every thousand people being a homicidal maniac held in check by the the threat of force to be an extraordinary high incidence rate.
I wasn't making a claim about the actual rate, I was contending your claim that
>>>> Or at least a logical explanation, as to why you think the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs, held in check by the threat of prison time.
The GGP only claimed that the homicide rate will rise if there was no punishment for it. You decided that he meant that the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs.
I was merely pointing out that even with a small percentage (0.001%) being homicidal maniacs, the rise in homicides will still increase by two orders of magnitudes or more.
> Such a rate doesn’t even vaguely match up with my experiences of people.
Well, of course - people are punished for being homicidal maniacs so I don't expect them to go around advertising the fact. Your experience of not knowing very many matches the reality that those that do get found out are removed from society.
> How many aggrieved ex-spouses, neighbors, and coworkers would turn to violence to solve their problems?
This isn't the real problem, most people aren't murderous, they're kind. The problem isn't retaliation against mundane grievance, which is taken up by people with no sense of proportion and consequence anyway, but the response to crime.
If a hit-and-run drunk driver runs over my child, and the legal system refuses to punish them, I (and most people) are going to take on that punishment as my responsibility. I may not carry it out, but if I don't I'll take the guilt for not punishing that drunk driver to my grave. There's a ton of pressure on me to hurt that person. After I do, their loved ones may retaliate against me in the same way. If I fail and I'm killed myself, that raises the level of grievance among my family and friends. Even people on the sidelines have to become involved.
This is a straw man. Obviously people who are inclined to murder need to be removed from situations where they might do more murders. I didn't say there should be no consequences.
The question is whether harshness and cruelty themselves are deterrents, or if a humane rehabilitation scheme would do better at reforming murderers into non-murderers. The evidence suggests the latter.
Much of crime is a matter of impulse control. Most people don't do a cost benefit analysis, weighing the odds and severity of punishment. They get angry or greedy or whatever and they act.
I wish I could find a video where a specialist in criminal rehabilitation says that most of the guys he works with ruined their lives in 10 seconds, with just one bad impulsive decision.
No, it isn't. Your claim is "punishment as a deterrence is dead".
I am claiming that:
If the punishment for murder is 20 years in prison, there will be X murders per capita.
If the punishment for murder is nothing, there will MUCH more than X murders per capita. How much exactly? I don't know. But I know damn sure there will be a lot more.
You can have a real debate about where the point of diminishing returns and how it models. Is it linear or does it decay exponentially? Is one year sufficient or does it take five or ten?
You come here with a bold claim like "punishment as a deterrence is dead". It absolutely, unequivocally is not. If you want to have a more nuanced conversation, you need to make a more nuanced claim. Because the one you made is ignorant and obviously false.
I think recidivism is more correlated to opportunities for rehabilitation than punishment . When I was at a boxing gymnear Baltimore there were kids from poor families talking about their life. In the US if you are poor you are pretty much screwed once the legal system has you. Your background check will exclude you from decent jobs and it’s just a never ending downward spiral. The courts often add some kind of bullshit fees which unemployed people can’t pay so they go back to prison.
The US has managed to set up a cruel and heartless system that punishes poor people, costs enormous money and destroys the social fabric of whole communities.
Your examples do not support the proposition that punishment is not a deterrent, unless Norway's prison is such a nice experience that being imprisoned there can't even be considered punishment. They more support the proposition that punishment that is too harsh is counterproductive or punishment not accompanied by rehabilitation efforts (which Norway puts much more into the US) is is not effective.
For a comparison between two places that are more similar than the US and Norway that took different approaches to punishment due to the pandemic, see this article comparing Albuquerque, New Mexico and Wichita, Kansas [1]. It suggests that what is important is the speed and certainty of punishment rather than how severe that punishment is that serves as a deterrent.
Here's an interview with the author of that article about this [2].
If you think a more just society requires rehabilitation & showing the criminals a better way, you just got schooled by the far-left voters of San Francisco.
They found out the hard way that there are some very, very bad people out there, and they got sick of them. A very small number of sociopathic folks are not deterred by anything but the certainty of punishment.
In the worst case, all you can do is ensure that they can't prey on everyone else. Lacking capital punishment for most crimes, we're left with imprisonment, or Clockwork Orange.
What got shown was that ignoring bad behavior does not make it go away. I do not see any effort towards rehabilitation or education in SFO, just no prosecution.
That's right as far as it goes. What's missing is any realization that our society can't do "rehabilitation or education" effectively and if it could, just replacing the DA won't make it happen.
Secondly, as I said, there is a non-negligible criminal population that's already been raised, so all the talk about raising your kids or your dogs properly is kinda irrelevant.
For a really sociopathic person, therapy is just finishing school: it teaches them how to fake normal human emotions more effectively.
I know it's almost always taboo whenever I bring it up, but in recent years I've become convinced that a moderate level of retaliatory violence could lead to a better society.
There seems to no longer be any negative consequences for many minor antisocial acts (types of bullying, shoplifting in some parts, even reckless driving/endangerment). It's impossible in practice to legislate being an asshole, so until recently we relied on group shaming or the thread of a minor beating from someone wronged to keep this sort of behaviour in check.
Because of past cruelties, we've determined that all amount of verbal and psychological abuse is milder that a single slap, and I'm honestly wondering if we're leaving too many usable options to better society on the table.
That, combined with shaming and some amount of indoctrination of morals and ethics in our youth seem to have been abandoned completely, instead of being mostly toned down.
Imagine the current cancel culture is even more widespread (it is a nightmare).
[My personal point of view is that] the society should not punish, it should try to prevent future crimes. For example, capital punishment: according to studies I've read, it is not a real deterrent, and false positives are likely (innocent people are killed) -- therefore I'm against capital punishment (if the capital punishment were effective to prevent murders, I'd reconsider it).
There definitely is an element of vengeance in capital punishment as well. "Eye for an eye".
I am not fully on board with that, but, on the other hand, I cannot pretend to myself that I'd consider "Eichmann being hanged" somehow morally bad or evil. In a sense, he had it coming, like many of his peers. More recently, the people who raped and killed their way through Bucha, deserve the same treatment.
But I can see that them hanging won't deter further butchers of next Buchas. People commit such crimes while feeling virtually sure that they won't ever be punished for them, and they are often right - too many war criminals expired in a luxurious bed at home. Notably, Stalin's executioners were never tried by an international tribunal unlike their Nazi counterparts, because the USSR won the war.
If the butchers of Bucha were to hang, it would be mostly motivated by vengeance.
Capital punishment certainly works as a deterrent in the sense that a dead person commits no crime. But the way its conducted and the number of false positives makes me not a fan, in most cases. I imagine there are some situations where it is highly effective, but only if done immediately; I cannot fathom the whole "death row" thing for those hypotheticals. I believe strongly in innocent until proven guilty, speedy trial, due process, beyond a reasonable doubt, preponderance of evidence, trial by jury of peers, and all that fun stuff, and I acknowledge even all that goes wrong sometimes. However, assuming full uncoerced confession and irrefutable evidence and eyewitness testimony, why do we still make a (say, serial killer) suffer in death row instead of just execute them immediately? Revenge?
I disagree - I think you are conflating 1. "how to punish someone" vs 2. "whether to punish someone".
You are arguing that we should change 1. by allowing violence. But in the examples you gave, it's not an issue of _how_ those acts are punished, but whether they are punished at all.
In other words, maybe we need to enforce current punishment more strictly rather than increase the pain of currently loosely enforced penalties.
Punishment is actually not my intented point, it's having negative repercussion for a large class of antisocial behaviour.
Being rude and verbally abusive in many situations for instance gives you a stricly positive outcome, from a game theory perspective. I'm arguing to add something in the mix to make that outcome negative, and corporal punishment and shaming are the only things I can see.
> I've become convinced that a moderate level of retaliatory violence could lead to a better society.
I'm against this based on purely ideologic principles but... when I try to think about this question objectively, I don't find compelling arguments against it (other than it doesn't work, but I'm not quite sure about that).
Intuitively, I think that violence brings violence, and making violence legitimate will generate more rather than less violence.
I agree that it's a potentially slippery slope, which would need to be carefully addressed and constantly balanced. Not all laws need to be eternal, some just apply to the current social status.
I think your principles also come from us not defining any clear separation between minor violence (a slap, a shove, anything that completely heals within a week and is a singural episode) and major violence (breaking a bone, acid attacks, etc) -- in the same way there is a distinction between asault and battery.
> There seems to no longer be any negative consequences for many minor antisocial acts (types of bullying, shoplifting in some parts, even reckless driving/endangerment).
This is a current media panic and PR campaign, not a reality.
edit: It's made up. After the administration changes hands, the perception (which, I've been assured, is actually more important than the reality) that crime is out of control will evaporate. Coverage of crime in SF after the Boudin recall has disappeared as completely as "concentration camps on the border" did after Biden was elected.
I grew up in a place and time where everyday life was permeated by a constant threat of violence. What I can tell you from my experience is that idea of minor retaliatory violence is kind of ridiculous.
The thing about violence and retaliation is that it can and will escalate very fast. What are you going to do when you tap them on the knuckles and they come back blasting? My advice is that you should avoid violence unless backed into a corner and all other options are exhausted.
It sounds as if you lived in a place where the rule of law was also absent, and you are right that violence can often spiral. Could you say where this was?
What is was envisioning was a decriminalization of minor violence as long as we can't criminalize general rude behaviour and I just wanted to explore that idea.
The hood lmao. There was a war in drugs and crimes were prosecuted zealously. Your mistake is thinking that someone will act rationally when hands are laid on them.
So leaning into your idea, where would the line be between minor and major violence?
Now suppose someone kills another person. They claim the victim attacked them and they were in fear for their life. The victim’s friend claims that the victim was engaging in legal “minor” violence in response to some perceived slight. How do you adjudicate this?
Right now there is an exception for violence committed in self-defense for instance. You still can't claim self-defense if you murder someone that shoved you. That's why I think things would get worse, you'd still be on the hook for serious escalation. My definition of minor violence is anything that doesn't leave a trace for more than a few days, so I know it's not legally precise.
I'm just arguing for a fringe solution right now, but from the outside it seems that long prison sentences for minor offenses have destroy lives and communities in many US inner city areas, and almost anything might be an improvement. How was your experience with rehabilitation of minor offenders?
I agree with the problem, not sure about the solution. We don't have a good small/middle ground crime punishment. I actually don't hate the idea around the Chinese social credit score system (China's use of it is abusive, horrid, and dystopian). giving people points and taking some away for minor crimes that then spill over to privileges or benefits of society seems like a decent idea, one better than hitting them with sticks.
Interesting that you're ok with some system of social credits. Even in the ideal scenario, I see two major issues with it:
1. People often don't perceive purely numerical losses properly, just like credit cards make people overspend compared to cash.
2. It sounds like in order for it to be effective, it would need to have very low forgiveness. If the punishment has a high duration, it makes rehabilitation difficult.
We do need to figure out deterrents for minor bad behavior in modern society, and first need to have a list of criteria by which to judge these deterrents.
There's a lot of difficulty in actually measuring the long-term effects of punishment and policy on society that gets breezed over when we are faced with a brute contrast between retribution and deterrence. It's fine to point out that branding criminals on the face created more repeat offenders, but most other effects are more subtle. I wish I could hear less ethics and more epistemology when the philosophers come to talk about justice.
This seems to really dance around the fact (getting very close a number of times) that the primary reason for punishment is that if you don't punish the perpetrator, the victim, their family, and their loved ones will consider the matter unresolved, and attempt to carry out what they think would be an adequate punishment themselves. Then the perpetrator and their family would retaliate, and society eventually dissolves in the tit-for-tat. The justice system is something that you use to prevent a civil war.
A secondary reason is touched upon here, but if the perpetrator of crime is not punished, only isolated comfortably, committing crime becomes attractive in and of itself to the portion of people who are currently less comfortable than prisoners. That's why the treatment of prisoners is a great metric for the quality of a society: it sets a baseline for the way non-prisoners are treated. You can't give prisoners free, high-quality education, no matter how helpful it would be to prevent crime after they're released, if you're not giving it to the general public, or else the general public would commit crimes to be educated.
Punishment is a form of compensation of the damage inflicted.
The perpetrator of a,crime must compensate the damage to the victim(s), at a somehow excessive rate to prevent crime from being a viable business model.
This is relatively simple (though not easy) for property-related crimes. It's much harder for crimes like battery or rape.
That said, staying in a prison is about the least productive way to compensate, or to repent. Prisons, as seen in USA, should be abolished and replaced with other institutions.
Property crimes can be paid for with labor, with less limitations of freedoms than in a prison. Education should be provided not just for rehabilitation (which is a worthy aim), but to also produce the compensation faster, while earning the basic upkeep.
Non-property crimes should likely be paid for in repentance work, on top of material compensation work: by working at places that expose the perpetrator to the woes of people who suffered through consequences relevant to the crime. Maybe something like menial work at a hospice.
Punishment isn't any sort of compensation. Victims receive compensation. Compensation replaces a portion of the loss represented by crime. Perpetrators receive punishment, and it doesn't replace anything. It actually represents even more loss (in the US to the tune of something like $40K a year per prisoner.)
edit: Punishment for the victim is like a gift-wrapped empty box. It doesn't fix anything that the crime did, and the system pretends like they're doing it for the victim. The system punishes perpetrators in order to stop the victims from doing it themselves. It's not a favor.
A model like this is prone to devolving into forced servitude or even slavery.
Also any non trivial work requires a degree of care by the laborer to ensure quality, how does this model enforce quality? Physical force? Extending servitude?
I am far from a fan of incarceration state. However criminal justice discussions frequently ignore or discount the drawbacks of proposed solutions.
Imo there is no political ideology that has a properly self-consistent philosophy for justice. I’ve always considered a part of the issue to be that revenge is clearly a very important element of the existing system (whether it should be or not), and nobody wants to talk about the importance of revenge, so it just gets thrown on the pile of issues with the justice system that never get talked about.
I disagree. Victims of assault aren't after "revenge" - they're after safety. The goal of prosecution and jailtime specifically is to ensure that the perpetrator doesn't do it too them again, and to society to ensure the perpetrator doesn't keep doing it.
Most victims would prefer absolute assurance the perpetrator cannot come near them again - i.e I suspect if offered "give them jail time" or "force them to stay out of your half of the country, with GPS tracking to ensure compliance" then almost all would choose the latter.
You can’t make generalisations about “victims” like that. I’m sure there are victims of crime who don’t care whether their perpetrators are punished or not, but ensuring that a criminal is sufficiently punished for their crimes is a very important element of the justice system. This is plainly obvious, and whether perpetrators are being sufficiently punished is routinely the subject of public controversies. This component of the justice system is entirely about revenge.
For every “I just want to move on with my life” victim you can find, there’ll be a dozen court rooms cheering an excessively long sentence, or “I hope you rot in jail” victim impact statements.
You're simply making a generalization in the opposite direction, and since neither of us is presenting hard statistics you have no special claim here.
Perpetrators being insufficiently punished is the subject of controversy because of the nature of the crime: it is not unreasonable to think that someone who murders a person should never be let back out into the community (because they have shown they're a clear and present danger to anyone).
The same basic problem exists with rapists: victims fear that the rapist will be released, but more importantly fear that they will either return and re-offend, or re-offend anyway - again, public safety.
In both these situations, the actual goal being expressed is "this person makes me feel unsafe, if they are somewhere they literally cannot ever get near to me, then I would feel safe - and so that period of time should be as long as possible".
A rapist in jail for 15 years is 15 years they cannot possibly commit another crime against the victim or the community (ignoring the grotesque situation prisons have in that regard as a separate but very valid issue).
Controversies over jail time exist due to deficiencies and lack of control over actual safety concerns, and where they do not they exist as absurdities: i.e. murder - permanent deprivation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - somehow being less seriously punished then drug possession - literally no possible impact to anyone except the possessor, and maybe some handwavy indirects surrounding the drug trade.
I’m not making generalizations at all. You are claiming to have knowledge of the motives of all victims of crime. I am claiming that some victims of crime, as well as some other 3rd party members of society, have a particular motive some of the time, as evidenced by all of the occasions when it becomes a matter of public controversy.
I could go and find examples of this, but that would just be a waste of my time, because if you are not prepared to accept that such perfectly obvious events take place every day, then you’re clearly not actually trying to discuss the topic.
It is not uncommon in my experience for victims to keep on getting victimized by the very prosecution and judicial process that is supposed to be working for them. As an example, during a home invasion the perpetrator came into our home wielding a knife looking to kill a family member (or more). Fortunately the perpetrator was overcome after much physical altercation by multiple family members. In his prosecution the perpetrator was not charged with attempted murder even though that's what he was doing (and yelling). The prosecutor charged him with burglary on the basis that it had the same maximum (25 year) sentence as attempted murder but a much lower burden of proof. So he was more likely to get a prosecution (and career advancement). We did not care if the prosecution was successful. We wanted him charged for what he did, whether it failed in the courts or not. We came away from the experience more feeling like victims from the entire judicial process than from the attempted murder (which we actually did something to thwart).
The same type of story gets told over and over again by victims. Punishment is doing nothing for the victims who I know.
> The prosecutor charged him with burglary on the basis that it had the same maximum (25 year) sentence as attempted murder but a much lower burden of proof.
Not doubting your story, but this seems like a very weird reason to me; there's no reason they couldn't be charged with both, and it's extremely common for juries to return different verdicts for each charge when a defendant is charged with multiple. I'd be interested to see statistics about whether charging someone with murder along with burglary results in fewer convictions for the burglary charge, because it doesn't seem super obvious that it would be the case; I would think that the idea that the jury could "split" the verdict by convicting on the lesser charge if they were having trouble coming to an agreement and the fact that alleging someone is an attempted murderer is a stronger reprimand than just calling them a burglar would at least somewhat act as a counterbalance to the chance that the jury would decide to render a not guilty verdict on the burglary charge because they doubted the story due to the murder charge.
No jury. Again it is not up to the victims. Like most prosecutions, it was plea bargained down to a lesser charge (first offense etc). Small district court in a rural US county with population under 20,000, where "everyone" knows "everyone".
> You can't give prisoners free, high-quality education, no matter how helpful it would be to prevent crime after they're released, if you're not giving it to the general public, or else the general public would commit crimes to be educated.
Doesn't the US do exactly that with health care? I have heard of a few people committing crimes to get free treatment, but it doesn't appear to be a widespread issue.
Prison healthcare exists but is by no means a gold standard. It just needs to be good enough to not be negligence or abuse in terms of obligations. The stories are still rare enough to warrant their own news articles.
There is a long history of infamous "donut holes" in medical coverage via things like Medicaid on state by state basis. Even without the benefits people become better off as a write-off to collectors than to attempt pursuit, a state somewhat derogatorily called judgement-proof.
Yep. IIRC, if you've been incarcerated in the past year, that's an automatic in to state healthcare. They don't exactly advertise this, but it's pretty well-known.
As a victim of violent crime, that is not my experience. Whether or not the victim wants retribution seems IMO to be cultural, religious and based on education. I am in support with victims of violent crimes (including murders), and the majority of the victims do NOT want retribution, unless it involves some magical method of enlightening the perpetrator. They often feel that retribution is yet another thing (like the original crime itself) that is being projected onto them involuntarily. Let it go already. If you do not let it go, you own it as physical pain and sickness in your own body.
I liked the article as a historical survey but didn’t gain any new insights from it.
There are several reasons we punish in the modern day; retribution is just one of them:
1. Retribution, to give the victims a sense of justice and avoid potential collateral damage from vengeance and feuds.
2. Compensation, to help make the victim whole, to whatever extent possible. This is related to but subtly different than (1).
3. Segregation, to prevent the perpetrator from victimizing others.
4. Deterrence, to dissuade would-be perpetrators.
5. Rehabilitation, to try to reduce or eliminate the factors that caused the perpetrator to commit the crime.
Different people have different opinions on the morality, efficacy and value of the various reasons. Haidt et al have postulated that different worldviews are associated with different factors in people’s moral calculus, so I would not be surprised if, on average, conservatives favor a more retributive punishment system and, on average, liberals favor a more rehabilitative one. But since we all have to live with the same system, we compromise. I don’t think that there is one true approach that is the pinnacle of morality.
> the primary reason for punishment is that if you don't punish the perpetrator, the victim, their family, and their loved ones will consider the matter unresolved, and attempt to carry out what they think would be an adequate punishment themselves
The article is about society in general, but on a personal level I have a "no punishment" policy with my son.
I never punish him and never have.
Whenever he behaves in a way that's not OK with me I first ask myself "does he understand my expectations here, have I already explained my expectations to him?". Usually not, so I explain that his behavior isn't acceptable and why. I very rarely need to do this.
The one time he behaved in a way that made me really angry I dealt with it at the time by speaking to him about it and also with the other people involved and there was still no punishment.
I don’t know your relationship with your kid, but I’m confused when you say you don’t punish your kids. Maybe you use the word “discipline” them or think that because you don’t physically hit them you never punish them. Talking to/lecturing can be seen as a form of punishment. Refusing to punish a child for their poor behavior could be interpreted as neglect.
Lecturing being a punishment is too flimsy a proposition to build a credible argument on top of. Hardly anyone could see it that way for more than a few seconds without pulling a muscle. At worst it's simply asserting your status as the parent.
Maybe I’m weird, but I hate being lectured, to the point where I’d much prefer physical pain towards me (within reason of course).
I would rather get punched in the face than be forced to listen to the average person speak for more than 5 minutes, my father, maybe I’d give him 3 minutes of lecturing before I’d prefer the punch, we don’t have a great relationship. Many children probably feel the same way.
I suspect there are still consequences here, but GP commenter does not regard them as punishment. I can't imagine parenting without any consequences. Like, I'm going to grab your arm if you run into the road, obviously. Where you draw the line on that depends on the parent.
Along with setting expectations, you can set consequences.
"If you do X, I will do Y."
With that understanding, you've left your child a choice, and you are not being an authoritarian parent, provided your consequences are within reason. Many parents will simply do Y without letting their child know the consequences ahead of time. That can lead to disdain of the parent, rightfully so!
If your boss asks you to setup a meeting, and you invite a salesperson he didn't want there, and he demotes you from being "meeting organizer" for that, is it justified? Was he clear it was an engineering meeting, or tell you not to include salespeople? It depends on the context. Maybe you needed to learn something, maybe he did, or maybe you both did.
Many parenting books do not regard this as "Punishment", yet it is still discipline. See "Positive Discipline" for more on this topic.
Some punishment might be ok but the prison system in many states is more like torture. One example is that some of them design the cells to have maximum echo... When you speak it drives you crazy.
> Politicians of all stripes encourage such anxiety
Encourage? More like enable. That is, those (i.e., politicians) that benefit and leverage the problem have little incentive to solve the problem (i.e., poverty, mental health, etc.)
> But in fact, our era is the safest and least violent in human history. We are less likely to killed, assaulted, or otherwise physically harmed today than ever before.
Yes. But that's on average. There are areas where danger is real. Perhaps not relative to history, but relative to where Karen lives the marginalized are highly disadvantaged.
I live in NJ. I'm able to get the local news from Philadelphia. There are shootings daily / nightly. Those events are not evenly distributed across PHL.
Why punish? Indeed, why?
Human justice - legal, lawful justice, has nothing to do with Justice at all, and is nothing but the visitation of revenge on the wrongdoer.
I would hate to punish anyone because it would coarsen me to supervise somebody's pain. On the other hand, no punishment ever helped me to become a better person.
The only thing that ever helped me in any case was love.
I say "Abolish punishment"
It only harms both its new victim and ourselves.
These types of analysis start out the basic proposition that systems are designed for a specific goal from the start and that we should judge them based on those goals. Our justice systems have emergent properties that have arisen after many years and are due to many historical accidents vs. a planned or purposeful approach. They should also be judged on their outcomes, not their professed goals.
I will talk about the US, since that's what I have the most experience with and it's where MIT is located. The US does not adopt either of those strategies mentioned in the article, even if it does dress itself in the rhetoric of either moral justice or practical utility (the former is heavily favored). The outcomes of policing, legal system, and prisons is that poor and Black people are heavily oppressed and only the property rights of the weathly are taken seriously. White people's drug crimes are punished less than Black people's drug crimes. Heck, even the criminalization of drugs is oppressive against the already oppressed.
What is wild is that we don't see the police and judicial system as an occupying force. Why do police departments need MRAPs, M-16s, and plate carriers? Why do we have to keep gasing, shooting, and beating our own citizens? Why does the NSA and CIA feel the need to monitor our every word?
We can do better, but we have to admit that our system is not working for a lot of people. This is a blameless post-mortem, so all I want to do is fix our system, not assign blame. We have to make this better, for the sake of all.
It's weird to see this topic discussed historically without mentioning Foucault (Discipline and Punish, English Title), even if just to dismiss him. I have to assume Baldwin read it, and can only assume that he dislikes that book so much he doesn't want people to read it.
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[ 7.3 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadThe more the state allows people to infringe on others rights, the less reason for it to exist.
Generally, I disagree with the assertion, and I would not be seeking to refine how we punish to be more effective and consistent.
The goal ought to be to remove a person from their situation, show them a better way to live and slowly and patiently attempt to re-form them as people through real growth (skills, character, etc.) so that they can go back into the world better and don't need to reoffend. Obviously there's a long way to go to get there, but I think many countries have tried the other path and I'm not convinced it works.
But it doesn’t get much at why we do this in the first place. Why do adults punish children? Why do so many people belong to religions with strict and explicit punishment dogmas (e.g., going to hell for offending a higher power). It doesn’t provide a rhetorical or moral framework for differentiating punishment from abuse or torture. I think these are more interesting questions, although perhaps not fair to expect from a historian.
Clearly punishment is satisfying to us. Revenge stories are as old as literature, and widely celebrated. I think that in a large society it’s an obsolete and harmful impulse. The article references Plato’s views: “Plato discussed punishment in terms of learning virtue and deterring future acts rather than just in terms of taking vengeance for the past, which he dismissed as a primitive, animalistic motive.”
It’s interesting to me how long it takes for views like this to take hold and create a more just society, and how easy it is for cultures to backslide. Revenge is a powerful impulse.
Should we punish children for bad behavior? How do we discipline without punishing? How can we discipline our kids but avoid making them feel bad?
I worry that the collapse of discipline, among other things, leads to a great number of young people about to enter the world with totally misaligned expectations about surviving and thriving as an adult.
Which of these are desirable?
Is it possible and efficient to instill the former using punishment?
Also, self-discipline tends to follow age. If punishing little kids helped, then why do kids often become terrors in their teens and twenties, then eventually grow up, mature, and become more responsible?
Of course some people never grow up, but many of them were smacked around as kids anyway.
Is this not already the case? I’m not entirely sure how one might measure this, but boy does my gut tell me that its already happened.
I think this may actually work better for kids. I think so often we praise/shame them, and they can get caught in a cycle of unpredictable self-worth. I dunno, for me, I like to let people know how I will most likely react to certain actions and tell them that even if I react that way, I will still love them. Punishing (with the intent to hurt them) often hurts me, so I'd rather not try to hurt them. That being said, I do want people to know if they punch me in the face, I may punch them back, leave the bar, or strongly distance myself from them physically. I just want people to be more aware of consequences rather than feel like they're a bad person for choosing their actions.
In disputes where I'm playing referee between two of my children, I gravitate away from deciding who is right and who is wrong. Instead direct conversation around, what happened, what people need, and how we can satisfy those needs within the creative realm of reasonable possibility.
As a baseline for issues that don't have a clear needs-based line to follow, I consider the systemic issues involved and re-engineer systems to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior. Most often this takes the form of natural consequences.
Finally, I don't have angelic children. The reason it works is because we've been doing it for years, not because my children are more compliant, or I'm some saint. We all get upset, angry, and do things we regret. What we are all invested in is having a shared desire to make things better than we found them.
What I am skeptical of, however, are responses which attempt to frame children as willfully non-compliant. That says more about the person describing the behavior than the behavior itself.
I certainly didn’t endorse all forms of discipline or abuse of discipline, sorry if that wasn’t clear.
It's not clear what those questions mean.
I also wonder how people rationalize seeking punishment. More often than not, no forced act can undo wrought damage, particularly emotional damage, and people don't really feel better seeing others suffer, even if that's what they believe they want.
People also are extremely prone to forgetting the core intent of society's justice system and prisons, which is (or should be) reform, which is sad. Many balk at the idea that prison is humane in any dimension. We have a lot of growing to do :(
Provide for jobs, pay a reasonable market wage, a fair amount of paid time off and/or sick leave.
Then teach them how to pay bills and prioritize. Charge reasonable rates for accommodations, food, and amenities. Let people upgrade their room for an increased monthly fee. Maybe they can pay for cable. If someone wants a steak on their birthday, they can splurge and get one -- but it will cost them more than their usual meal.
Now you're probably asking: "but what if they refuse to work?" I say: the same thing that happens outside a prison. You don't work, you don't get paid. You don't get paid, you can't buy food. You can't buy food, you don't eat. The problem will solve itself after a while.
If you haven't, consider yourself lucky. Some of us aren't so.
Prisons can and should do better. But you are incredibly naive if you think there aren't people in the world whose only deterrence is prison or violent retribution.
If you are thinking about citing the Italian study[0] that people always cite in respond arguments against deterrence. My response is that it's way more likely that 1 month less in prison is what caused the lower re-offending rare, not the threat of 1 month more in prison if they re-offend.
[0]: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/599286
The linked article suggests that this sentiment actually comes and goes historically.
How do you know that in the long term, we're not evolving in the opposite direction, to not impose harsh punishments?
Which is why permanent incapacitation - mostly by the sword or the gallows, but sometimes by being sent on the galleys, into the mines etc., which was scarcely more survivable than an actual execution, only that it took much longer to die - was the usual judicial punishment. At the very least, the criminal was branded so that he would be instantly recognizable forever.
Nowadays, the police has a lot more tech at its disposal. If it is willing to do so and financed to do so, it can catch basically any criminal it wants to. That is why our laws no longer resemble the Bloody Code of early modern Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code
I think we 1) assume the other is not hurting, which is very often false, as the other person may hurt us because they feel hurt and assume we aren't hurting and 2) instead of trying to make them feel hurt, we can tell them that we're hurting. However, I think we mostly don't do that strategy because it often requires us to cry and most cultures shun crying.
So we seem to end up feeling hut, hiding that hurt, and assuming the other doesn't feel hurt, probably because they're so good at hiding it.
I don't think it's about undoing the damage, it's about evening the damage. If you punch me and I feel hurt two days later, then I may still want to punch back. If I have healed physically and emotionally, forgiven you completely, do you think I'm as likely to punch you then?
It's easy to imagine that it's personally for spite, but evolutionarily for deterrence (i.e., spite is an evolutionarily effective way to encode deterrence).
[0]: https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...
If it’s a random stranger, someone you won’t encounter again, or you live in a society where violence is very rare, then it’s probably a moot point.
We evolved in small tribes where everyone knew everyone, and just about everything that happened would quickly be known by the whole group. Combine that with scarcity and a higher propensity for violence, and being seen as an easy target would be something to avoid at all costs.
Maybe you could argue that by crying, the older child was getting revenge on the younger because he knew his parents would come to scold him. Or maybe the kid just wanted comfort because he lost something he cared about. It was hard for me to know whether his intention was to receive comfort and attention or to have his parents shame his brother, maybe both?
> Combine that with scarcity and a higher propensity for violence
I guess I don't see this as a given as much as it seems you do. I suppose I think people act violently out of pain, most of us just lashing out at each other because we think they hurt us first, more cooperative by nature than competitive, but maybe I'm describing your views inaccurately.
Granted the initial 3 sequel books were large tomes about the corresponding guilt, repentance, and consequences stemming from that initial idea.
Because it works at changing their behavior.
Now we can argue the merits of positive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement all day. But when a technique is effective at changing unwanted behavior, then it will be used.
Punishments are absolutely necessary because some kids don't know when their parents disapprove of their behavior otherwise. I'm not talking about beating kids btw, I'm talking about scolding, "go to your room", and timeouts.
I don't think corporal punishment is worthwhile. There's some studies that shows that while effective at changing behavior, it also teaches the kid that violence is sometimes necessary, a lesson that I'm not sure if we should be teaching them.
But punishments in general? You don't want to reach for them as your first tool in your parenting toolbox. But you really can't just positive-reinforcement "you're doing a good job" all day to your kids. Its disingenuous and the kids pick up on that.
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> It answers the question in the title mostly by asking what, from today’s perspective, are the rational uses of punishment?
To change a person's behavior. If someone keeps lying, cheating, and stealing in society, we want to make them to stop so that they can reintegrate and become a beneficial member of society.
Perhaps we've gone too far with jail times in the USA, but the foundational theory is quite simple and effective here. Anyone who has ever trained a dog or other animal knows how to use animal psychology / punishments / rewards to change the animal's behavior.
Human psychology is more complex than animal behavior, but it shares a lot of similarities. Positive reinforcement (aka: rewards) and negative reinforcement (aka: punishments) are both useful within the framework.
Revenge is an emotional response by those who have been wronged in the past.
Punishment can mean many things (so perhaps we need more specific words), but I believe in this context it is meant to be a rational, conscious act to influence behaviour - though there are other kinds of punishment, and it can be difficult to distinguish. A parent may raise their voice very intentionally, without actually being angry, to gain attention, distinguish and underline a point, or elicit quick obedience (i.e. a "STOP!!!" when a child is about to dart on the road), but they may also raise their voice out of impulse, emotion, frustration, with no specific goal in mind and thus no clear direction or "win conditions".
(I've only recently learned of the phrase "omnidirectional ass-chewing" [1], which is a very intentional demenour and environment for receiving marines to put them into a constantly stressful environment to train focus. It LOOKS like random angry yelling, but is in fact extremely studied, careful, and intentional. )
1: Section 6, "Yelling" https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/03/why-is-boot-camp-so...
Isn't that true, though? Violence is sometimes necessary.
Teaching a child that violence is never necessary is just as bad as teaching the child that violence is always necessary.
The exceptions are rape/sexual violence and self defense, and other crimes of that magnitude.
Even if two boys are fighting it out, I'm not sure if the right answer is to kick their ass and spank them / humiliate them over it.
People used to beat their kids up over bad grades or missing homework assignments. That's too much violence for sure.
Sure, but we're teaching kids lessons for when they're adults, right? Is it really a good idea to raise a generation who will not act out of self-defense?
> Even if two boys are fighting it out, I'm not sure if the right answer is to kick their ass and spank them / humiliate them over it.
I don't think violence is an answer for that.
> People used to beat their kids up over bad grades or missing homework assignments. That's too much violence for sure.
That's way overboard, and not what I had in mind. Rewards and punishments with kids is complex, and I don't want to come off like I am trivialising it all.
Humans (and chimps, and dogs) have all been studied in-depth, and at this point we know for certain that the idea of fairness is not a uniquely human one.
Take for example this very common scenario: an older/stronger child slapping a younger/weaker sibling.
The victim in this case is likely not going to believe that any non-physical punishment is fair(In fact, it isn't fair), and all it would do is breed some resentment.
If it happens just once or twice, sure, the victim can move on. If it happens all the time and the only result is that the parents take away TV for the aggressor for a few days, then that's going to result in plenty of long-term resentment.
Even worse, sometimes if the victim responds, they're going to get punished as well because some parents don't usually care to adjudicate.
Schools are even worse - the victim is more of a legal liability to the school than the aggressor, hence schools are more likely to pretend it never happened, or to punish both parties equally.
Taking all this into account, I tell my boys that they should never hit first, and that if anyone ever hits them the only appropriate response to to hit back.
They've[1] never hit anyone thus far, but they are also not afraid to hit anyone who hits them, because that's only fair.
[1] The younger one is only 3, so not yet a proper data point.
Perhaps this is my response to office gossip. But I'm talking about my coworker who regularly brags about corporal punishment and how he's a good father for hitting his kid on the regular.
There's a lot of people out there. I don't think you and I are in much disagreement, although perhaps I didn't write my words in a way that suited your perspective.
There's still a generation of parents who think that hitting their kids is the right response, be it from occasional spanking, or even wholesale beating them up to teach them a lesson.
Beating up kids / corporal punishment isn't about "self defense", but instead about "learned helplessness". Its a different strategy to parenting, and some people still believe in it.
Depending on country and legislation, you may want to report this. In some places you may even be legally obligated to report child abuse, which this sounds like.
It is not your (or mine) place to judge whether your coworker actually abuses his children (or if it is "just" talk, for example), only to report to the relevant authority so that they can investigate. Please, if you are worried for them, act
People have gotten their kids taken away for silly things. It’s a very real fear, even for genuinely good people. Unless it’s truly horrible abuse, I’d postulate that it’s better for a kid to stay with their parents. If you call Child Services on that parent, there is a real chance that you make the kids life significantly worse than the abuse they’re receiving at home.
The CPS do make mistakes sometimes, and I am not from the US, but I find it hard to believe the either-we-take-your-child-or-do-nothing dichotomy. A general problem with these cases is that only one part can go to the media, whereas the other part is bound by their confidentiality requirements. And those who successfully receives other forms of support may not want to talk publicly about it.
Also, we are generally not in a position to assess or grade the abuse, which is why there should be a low threshold for reporting suspected abuse. If there are physical abuse, there may be other forms as well. It may escalate. Depending on their resilience, the children might be traumatized or have their development impaired. Whereas the CPS have the means to do such investigations and judgements. Perhaps they are already doing investigations on the family?
And if the CPS do make a mistake, it would not be the fault or responsibility of the lay-man who reports, although it may feel differently
So if you overhear someone saying they spanked their child you are saying you should call CPS and say that you suspect child abuse that should be investigated?
> And if the CPS do make a mistake, it would not be the fault or responsibility of the lay-man who reports, although it may feel differently
No, this is not how it works when you know you are reporting people to a flawed system. See “swatting” or just generally how well received calling cops to intervene in a poor minority neighborhood goes.
If that gives you reasonable suspicion that a child is being maltreated or abused, then yes. If you have reason to suspect that the child is in immediate danger from being hurt, then you should probably call the emergency services directly
> No, this is not how it works when you know you are reporting people to a flawed system. See “swatting” or just generally how well received calling cops to intervene in a poor minority neighborhood goes.
To my knowledge, swatting is fundamentally different as it involves both conscious deceit and a motive to harm. Something being a consequence of your actions is different from you having ethical responsibility for the outcome. I guess the question is how flawed? Is the CPS in the US really as dysfunctional as you seem to assert?
Someone saying they spanked their child is not reasonable suspicion of abuse.
> Is the CPS in the US really as dysfunctional as you seem to assert?
It's just as flawed in most countries, it's just that few people interact with it so they never get a sense of how out of proportion the CPS response is.
Lets look at the scenario you painted: Mummy/Daddy smacks toddler firmly on the well-padded (diaper) bottom.
You think that's abuse. So does the CPS. They remove the child "while they investigate", which could take anything from a week to a year in most countries (the investigation is done in most jurisdictions in tandem with the court proceedings arising from this, which take long[1]).
You have to ask yourself whether the child is more harmed by the smack or by the removal from the parents, from the family unit, etc.
There's no contention that the period in question is an important bonding period for the child (tons of research), prevention of which can cause lifelong issues.
The argument of CPS in most western countries is that the smack is more damaging than breaking the childs bonds with the family.
Many people don't believe that. I want to know whether you believe that the smack is more damaging to the child than the removal from the family.
[1]The reason it takes so long is because someone claimed abuse, and that claim has to be investigated. Unlike the scientific process, where human testimony is the lowest form of evidence and usually ignored, in the legal system human testimony is the highest form of evidence.
Yeah, if its regular he's probably doing it wrong. In 16 years of parenting, I've smacked my kids a total of maybe 5 times.
> There's still a generation of parents who think that hitting their kids is the right response, be it from occasional spanking, or even wholesale beating them up to teach them a lesson.
I don't think physical punishment is the correct response to anything but physical violence, and even then it's a rare response and should be proportional.
I just don't think that it should be completely off the table as a response to physical violence. I also think the kid should know that it's on the table.
"Consequences for your actions" should mean something; the consequences should be proportional and similar to the actions.
"Consequences for your actions" should not mean "I lose TV if I hit my brother repeatedly when I am angry".
>Beating up kids / corporal punishment isn't about "self defense", but instead about "learned helplessness". Its a different strategy to parenting, and some people still believe in it.
It isn't about learning self-defense, it's about learning that even if they will never hit someone, they're living in a world where violence is never off the table. They need to be prepared for that.
We can probably assume that people who want to model this behavior also tackle things like self-defense, protection of the innocent, righteous wrath, etc when it's appropriate to discuss them.
It's doesn't need to be strictly true. This isn't a mathematical proof, but a behavior used to influence other behavior.
> Teaching a child that violence is never necessary is just as bad as teaching the child that violence is always necessary.
I'm not sure what kind of thinking leads you to this conclusion, nor is it clear what this statement means if I'm being open about it. "Violence is always necessary"? If someone doesn't get out of your way you are supposed to shove them? If someone honks their horn at you, you should smash their windshield? If someone tells you something you don't like you punch them? You'd never learn anything of substance with this viewpoint.
violence is never necessary != violence is always necessary
The tradeoffs for survival (much less society) are unequal.
Now, if someone attacked me, would I defend myself? Absolutely, as a last resort. And it's true that children should be told it's okay to defend themselves by whatever means necessary. I don't think this distinction is particularly difficult to understand.
Corporal punishment in particular socializes children to let themselves be attacked and not defend themselves.
I was spanked as a kid. As an adult I've violently defended myself without hesitation from an unprovoked attack by a criminal stranger in the parking lot of a big box store. So that part doesn't seem to me to be true.
"Comply and let me inflict pain on you" seems very weird when it's equally true that "comply and be bored for a while" is right there as an option.
It's hard to say exactly what causes that. However, the idea that it teaches children to defend themselves doesn't make sense to me because children who are spanked are not defending themselves.
I think the problem is that "corporal punishment" as a term is just too broad. You just used it upthread as "getting a spank" which is relatively minor.
The studies I am aware of showing negative effects use the term to mean "regular and systemic caning".
Those are two very different things; the studies are not studying the thing you referred to.
You're bigger, so you can physically overpower them. The rules bind the child but not the adult - after all if child uses violence to try and get what they want, you'll just respond with more.
The violence used by society at large doesn't work that way: no one person can successfully fight off 5 people detaining them. One person with a weapon destroys any physical advantage. No one person can physically overpower civilization, and so hey, this is all about rules, negotiation, and enlightened self interest after all.
People sometimes ask, when will humans finally stop killing each others in wars and crime. I believe that not until violence goes off the table completely as an option. Not sometimes, not only for hideous criminals, not for stopping violence, not as a play, not as teaching implement. Literally never, not-even-coming-to-mind never, physically-incapable never, gone-in-any-form-from-the-culture never, no-hunting-animals-too never. Otherwise it will always be the ultimate option which can always escalate.
Slightly less extreme and horrifying than omnicide but persistent are somehow inflicting widespread learned helplessness that somehow persists across generations. Even if we could all be "honey-beed" and all die from inflicting serious harm, any defect would make the "violence capable mutants" monarchs.
I think a common criticism of this stance is, that it does not ask why a person does something that others want to punish. Obviously there sometimes are no answers, but often it's poverty and lack of options. So this begs the question, why people come to steal and murder etc.
I personally don't believe that "punishment" is usually well invested in a person. Rehabilitation and support structures are probably the better option.
I am also realising that it gets very interesting for white collar crime "without a victim" such as tax evasion or manipulation of stocks. My intuition is to punish exactly these crimes, but I think that's my bias showing.
Use of punishment in dog training is actually pretty hotly debated. Not that it doesn't work, but that it has consequences beyond what are intended and that substitution, redirection, and rewards result in a happier and more obedient pet.
Which is more less how society should treat humans as well.
If we're going to have an article called "Why Punish?" there should really be a companion article on "Why Steal?" And given the right conditions literally every one of us will steal to survive. Every single one of us are still just animals at our core anyway, that means you dear reader.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up (Oki position), he uses a Dragon Punch / Reversal and punishes me.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up (Oki position), he uses a Dragon Punch / reversal and punishes me.
I attack my opponent when he's waking up. He uses a dragon punch/reversal and punishes me.
I block while my opponent is waking up. He uses a dragon punch, loses to my block and I punish him.
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An entire genre of video games, fighting games, revolves around conditioning your opponent and getting into their head. The rock-paper-scissors battle of attack vs block vs grab takes place so quickly, you often don't have the time to react (though some players do have insane reaction speeds).
When you can't leverage reaction, you leverage conditioning. And over the long term, the only way to really learn the game at a high level is by getting your bad habits repeatedly-punished by a stronger player.
Perhaps its not "efficient" to learn, but in this case, it is the only way to learn. Expert players are bad at vocalizing what is or isn't working. There are very few coaches, and almost none of them know how to take you to the highest level (even if they themselves have reached peak form).
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There's other forms of punishment as learning. Ex: fall into a pit in Mario. You die, so you try again.
Or "Boar Lure" in AoE2. If you fail, your villager dies, and/or you don't get the precious early-game food you need to sustain your production.
Or in Basketball. If you get crossed up, you fail to block the opponent and they get a free shot at the basket.
People often punish out of anger and their kids are badly behaved as a result.
Perhaps? I dont think that is even debatable at this point. I would encourage you to research actual treatment of prisoners in the US, we in the US are critical of nations like Russia, and China while willfully ignoring the abuse that occurs every day in US prisons.
>Anyone who has ever trained a dog or other animal
This right here is the exact reason for this abuse, it is common for the US prison system, and the correctional officers to dehumanize the prisoners and treat them like animals, not cuddly pets or dogs, but like the worst animal abuse stories you here from the traveling carnivals that used to keep Elephants and Loins for show.....
We need MASSIVE reform of both the criminal system, and prison system. I am not talking about being "weak" on crime like seems to be the norm today, refusing to prosecute crimes, and letting people out immediately but "tough on crime" does not have to involve the dehumanizing treatment, and outright abuse that occurs that leads to nothing productive, no rehabilitation, and more often than not non-violent criminals go in non-violent but come out extremely violent.
There is NOTHING redeeming about the US Prison system
No, this isn’t true at all. My teenager has never been punished once in his life, and he’s turning into an excellent human: hard-working, compassionate with self and others, honest.
I would define punishment as “intentional infliction of suffering for purposes of behavior modification.” As stated, that’s flatly unethical, especially with your own family.
Now, he experiences consequences of his actions all the time. Scratch the counter-top? Win an afternoon of helping me refinish it. That works because it’s directly connected to his actions, and because I treat it as a learning opportunity rather than yelling at him or banishing him.
There are more possibilities than “punishment or permissiveness.” Kids need structure and to understand and experience age-appropriate consequences for their actions. But that doesn’t mean they need arbitrary suffering imposed by people they’re supposed to love.
If those are outside the realm of possibility for you guys, that’s awesome, you probably have an awesome kid. But for most parents I know, their teenagers have seriously test their limits at least a few times and it seemed like a punitive approach worked well. Depending on the “crime”, grounding them at home or taking away their phone/car/screens for x amount of time is a perfectly reasonable punishment IMO. It certainly worked well enough on my four siblings and I when we did dumb crap as teenagers.
In psychology it's often defined as any behavioral method used to decrease an undesired behavior - split into positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment is adding stimuli that they don't like (physical punishment is included here, but lecturing can be too), and negative punishment is removing things that they like. If a child asks rudely for ice cream and you don't give it to them because of the way they asked, that's a form of (negative) punishment.
Your countertop example is too - from a behavioral perspective, that's just a form of (positive) punishment - you're making them do something they don't like in response to unwanted behavior. You might have an added rationale to connect things, but that's still what the behavioral effect is.
Not rational, legible (and tenable). Our inability to recognize (and accept as valid) consequences doesn't not make them unsound.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
https://citycrimestats.com/statistics/
https://applieddivinitystudies.com/sf-crime-2/
It's entirely possible that a city with a progressive DA that doesn't prosecute certain types of crimes sufficiently or judges that don't actually pull criminals off the streets, end up with a social atmosphere where citizens don't bother reporting crime as much, because they know nothing will be done about it anyway.
Basically, stats are hard, crime stats are really hard, and someone who tells you Crime rates did X because Person A did thing Y without a 20 page paper probably doesn't have a clue, including me.
[1] https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/170-atlanta-police-offic...
[2] https://data.philadao.com/Arrest_Report.html
Well, yeah ... if shoplifting isn't reported as a crime, then it doesn't matter how high the shoplifting rate goes, then official crime rate will still be low.
TLDR: If shoplifting is unreported, then reported levels of shoplifting will be zero.
The closest thing we have is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), but so far they only have data through 2020.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs#publications-0
From what I can see the trend has more to do with covid restrictions lifting than anything else. Violent crimes and gun-based homicides are the things that have risen most sharply, so that has little to do with larceny.
And generally speaking, if you are frustrated by shoplifting, you should be even more frustrated by civil asset forfeiture, which deprives Americans of more wealth than all burglaries put together. However, it is state sanctioned with no real recourse or insurance to protect victims.
It was more about emotional investment into "gotta imprison as many people as possible".
In small cities the pattern was the same except the peak around 1990 was a bit lower, the decline through mid-2000s only got down to a little below '80s levels, and the 2015ish rise wasn't as big (although because the earlier decline didn't get much below '80s levels the small city rates were higher than big city rates).
This article has a nice graph of this from an FBI report [1].
[1] https://thedispatch.com/p/mismeasuring-the-shoplifting-crisi...
When such contract is broken and punished I am appalled not because I want vengeance, but because I am relying for my life to keep such contract.
Punishment is a deterrent, not vengeance.
Ethics and morals must not die.
I am really trying not to be cynical about the article's framing.
It's really quite telling that in countries where religious strictures are held to be more important than individual freedom, like the US, the prevailing attitude is that "people will only do the right thing if they are afraid of being punished if they don't".
Whereas, in a country like the UK, with considerably more rights and freedoms and less reliance on Judeo-Christian religion, the idea is that "people will do the right thing, because they expect others to do the right thing in return".
I can be both afraid of being punished and can think that people will do the right thing.
I sort of eluded to this, but you said it better, and help me crystalize it.
Kids are mote likely to move freely around the town too.
There is no concept of "jaywalking", and indeed the idea that you'd get fined or even arrested for crossing the street is considered bizarre.
You won't be sent to prison for the rest of your life for having a microscopic crumb of hash.
You won't get bankrupted by hospital bills from a minor injury.
You're not expected to work until you drop, with no paid annual leave or or sick leave.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
Very few individuals believe their actions unjustified or that they are "the bad guy". If we went only be individuals self-assessment of their actions, there would be very few criminals.
More people are willing to take drugs illegally than they are to steal, because taking drugs does not directly deprive someone else of something. If you want to compare different kinds of theft, look at the difference between piracy versus shoplifting versus housebreaking. Most people of even a fairly high moral compass are okay with torrenting stuff because Disney has enough money and even a huge amount of people illegally downloading a movie that they wouldn't have paid to see anyway doesn't really "harm" Disney in any way. It is "theft of service", in that there are still the same number of physical copies and no-one has lost any physical goods, but someone somewhere has not been paid for their time.
If you shoplifted a DVD, there would be one less DVD in that shop, that ultimately someone has paid for so it can be on the shelf. This breaks down further - you might shoplift it from Asda because (again) Asda has enough money, but you might not shoplift it from Wee Mad Bob's Magic Videos, because everyone knows Wee Mad Bob and he's an great guy who's struggling enough to keep his shop open, especially with the big new Asda opening up a video section.
If you broke into someone's house, you'd be taking the conscious decision to enter someone else's space, and remove something they have chosen to have in their home. That crosses far more morality contour lines than buying a bit of shitty homegrown from some guy down the pub.
TL;DR the US is more right-leaning and right-wing views tend to be amoral and "stealing is okay as long as you don't get caught", whereas Europe is more left-leaning and moral, and "stealing is not okay, because you wouldn't like it either".
I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally.
Are drivers sometimes headless? Yes. Are they murderous? No. Otherwise you and I would be dead now.
If the argument is that everyone would road rage and drive dangerously if there weren't legal consequences, I dispute that. Many people don't do it simply because they don't feel like doing it.
The consequences for rule breakers exist in part to deter those lacking the wisdom to understand why the rules were created in the first place, not because society believes that class of rule breakers wants to hurt others.
Those who believe they are skilled enough to avoid hurting others also believe they won't get caught by the police running a red light.
The question is, which is the worse consequence, getting a ticket for running a red light, or killing another person in a crash? I would say the latter, in the minds and hearts of most people.
I think lot less people would run red lights if they were reliably punished for it and the punishment were non-trivial. This is why I support Finnish model of income based fines. You end up paying some fraction of your monthly income. So it will hurt rich and poor more equally.
The fines are often very trivial for certain fraction of population.
So we're talking about a how to affect the size of a minority subpopulation in an otherwise rule following society. Here the consequences give rule-breakers pause.
"Is running this red light really worth the fine?"
"I already have 5 points on my license and I'll lose my job if it gets suspended"
That's the value of consequences. You'll never stop all rule breakers or enforce consequences with perfect fairness, but some will be deterred which makes the system worthwhile.
I don't think that's what we were talking about.
WaitWaitWha: "Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them."
Me: "I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally."
WaitWaitWha seems to be arguing that we don't have "an otherwise rule following society", and only the punishment is preventing widespread rule breaking. Whereas I was arguing that we do have an otherwise rule following society regardless of the punishment. I would also argue that punishment doesn't actually do much to deter the people who don't respect the rules in the first place.
Indeed, I would say that speed limits are the least respected because speed limits are rather arbitrary. Speed limits change over time (they were set to 55 in the 1970s to save gas, not to save lives), and they vary widely by locality. Not to mention that speed limits don't vary by day/night or by weather, which makes no sense. Whereas red and green lights have had the exact same meaning the whole time, and the consequences of violation are rather obvious, because a red light means cars may drive through the intersection perpendicular to you, one of the most dangerous situations you can imagine.
> I agree, there are places where a traffic light is little more than ornamentation
I don't know what you're agreeing with, because I didn't say or intend to imply that.
> "Is running this red light really worth the fine?"
Well, the primary thought has to be "Can I make it through without dying?"
> If you have a whole society that mostly doesn't have inherent respect for social norms or laws, then it would be incredibly difficult to enforce those norms or laws effectively.
The latter sentence is predicated on the existence of a society that ignore rules, I'm allowing that such societies exist but the context is not applicable to the average Western drivers.
> WaitWaitWha: "Why is it that I am comfortable crossing the intersection when I have a green light? Because I have confidence that those who would break the social contract of following agreed upon laws will be punished, so they are deterred from breaking them."
> Me: "I would say it's because most people have no desire to murder other people, even if they could get away with it legally."
There are three populations at work:
* People who will not run the red light because they respect the rule of law
* People who would run the red light, but don't because they fear the consequences of breaking the law
* People who will run the red light regardless of consequences
I won't speak for WaitWaitWha, but what I am arguing is I would not feel safe relying on just the first group. If the first group is 90% of people (which is still "most people"), the second group is 9% of people, and the third is 1%, I don't like those odds. We don't know what the breakdown actually is, but I feel better knowing both the first and second group won't run the red light in a society with consequences and in that vaguery I feel safe.
> Well, the primary thought has to be "Can I make it through without dying?"
No, the kinds of people running the red light and perform other reckless actions rarely contextualize that widely. That's why we need legal consequences in the first place. They don't consider in the moment the risk to their own and others lives, because they think their skill or a sense of invincibility prevents such bad outcomes from happening. Legal consequences pose a barrier that they can mentally recognize as independent from their own invincibility complex.
It was a counterfactual hypothetical.
>There are three populations at work: * People who will not run the red light because they respect the rule of law * People who would run the red light, but don't because they fear the consequences of breaking the law * People who will run the red light regardless of consequences
This is missing the 4th and most important population:
* People who will not run the red light because it's likely to kill themselves and/or others.
That's the population I rely on.
> They don't consider in the moment the risk to their own and others lives, because they think their skill or a sense of invincibility prevents such bad outcomes from happening.
Do you have any empirical basis for this claim? Does it come from personal experience? We can't read minds, except our own.
I think it's bizarre to say that risk is not a factor, since nearly all red light runnings occur right after the yellow, when the relative risk of a crash is lowest, rather than in mid-cycle, when the risk of a crash is highest. Unless the streets are deserted. Hardly anyone ever thinks they're invincible enough to thread the needle of present perpendicular traffic.
Even when the streets are deserted, red light runners don't just plow through mid-cycle. They treat the red light like a stop sign.
I personally hear punishment and think of an intention to harm, whereas hear consequences as lacking that intention, more of an intention to inform.
For example, say that if someone runs a red light, they will receive a bill for $500. Am I giving them the bill because I believe they are a bad person and deserve to be punished? Or as a way to let them know that these are the rules and the consequences of the rules?
I'm ok with the latter and can feel very sad at the former, as I think it just perpetuates pain and increases distance in society.
People are not informed by speeding tickets. There is no element of surprise there. They knew the rules, they broke them anyway. Same with theft and so on. I could understand it for some obscure tax law, but basic things like this, no.
Maybe you reached for the wrong verb there, but they are not ignorant of the rules.
I think there are many more consequences than just the first-order ones and I do believe most of us are uninformed or ignorant of the full scope.
Don't ever go to Phoenix.
The U.S. has one of the harshest prison systems in the developed world, and an outrageous recidivism rate - 76% of prisoners are arrested again within 5 years of release [1].
Norway, on the other hand, has some of the most humane prisons [2], and a recidivism rate of only 20% [1]
[1] https://harvardpolitics.com/recidivism-american-progress/
[2] https://norwaytoday.info/culture/what-are-prisons-in-norway-...
You can't just take two cherry-picked examples and proclaim the ‶idea of punishment as [...] dead and buried″.
My dude, the other guy provided 100% more data than you!
Well... he can! He can prove, with one example, that the other person's thesis doesn't fit the facts.
And he did that.
So, yeah.
A correlation is an observation that seemingly unrelated events occur in proximity to each other, temporally or otherwise.
I repeat: can you show how a single data point can contradict a statement about the absence of correlation originally claimed?
>The idea of punishment as a deterrent is hopefully dead and buried at this point.
That's an absence of correlation claim?
Maybe the examples shown gave the impression that an anti-correlation was claimed, but that is purely an invention of the reader.
The real flaw in the argument of the parent is, that in a direct comparison between Singapure and Norway Norway still wins: If roughly the same recidivism rates are achieved in a very punitive and a very supportive system, the supportive system is superior according to utilitarian principles.
Wouldn't that depend on subjectively balancing costs and benefits of the other involved factors? For example, Singapore's system may (or may not, frankly I don't know and it's not important to the logical point I'm making) cost less than Norway's system. In that case, the question would be what value the society places on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive.
Right?
So when I pointed out a "flaw in the argument", I meant the argument as presented, without additional refinements (as you are trying to develop).
A minor detail: When discussing a normative question, it is important to carefully distinguish between normative and descriptive aspects. The descriptive aspects are everything that is the case. The normative aspects are everything that should be the case. Therefore, the question is what value a society should place on finding solutions that are supportive rather than punitive. -- And the idea that norms are up to a certain point "subjectively" is in itself a description whose normative relevance asks for an intense debate.
[1] There might exist a few exceptions, such as fundamental logical theorems. But this is too far off from our case.
If the recidivism rate is 20% regardless of if the punishment is harsh or not, I don't see why the conclusion should be that the harshness is supremely important. The harsh punishment does not better than the lenient ones!
Likewise: with the rate is 70% and 20%, but the punishments are equally hard in both places, why on earth is the conclusion that clearly the punishment is universally effective at keeping the rate of recidivism low?
What the original posted was arguing is that harsh punishment is not an effective way of reforming criminals, as measured by the recidivism. The example merely needs to illustrate that recidivism and harshness don't go together.
What shakow did was simply adding another example proving this point, and then acting like they'd provided a contradiction.
Yes, that's the whole point of a counter-example...
If I try to prove the all odd numbers are prime (look, 1, 3, 5, 7, ... – it works!), you telling me that 9 is not is enough to disprove my theory.
It only takes a simple thought experiment to see why that idea is stupid. How many additional murders do you think there would be if the punishment for murder was a day in prison instead of 10 or more years? How many aggrieved ex-spouses, neighbors, and coworkers would turn to violence to solve their problems?
The answer is: a lot.
Otherwise your comment is little more that a dark speculative fantasy.
You don't need the MAJORITY of the population to be homicidal maniacs, only held in check by the thread of punishment to see a marked rise in homicides.
I'd guess that even with a low rate of one out of every thousand people being homicidal maniacs only kept in check by the threat of force, you'd get 200x or more homicides than you have now.
After all, a homicidal maniac will, almost by definition, kill repeatedly, and since (in this hypothetical situation) they are not punished for it, there's simply no reason for them to stop doing it.
One in a million I could believe, but numbers lower than I have difficulty believing.
Even if the state doesn’t punish anyone, and even if there was no physical retaliation. I imagine that murdering people would quickly result in your social ostracisation. Who the hell wants to spent time with a nutter who’s gonna kill you for rubbing them up the wrong way? I think most people would find better friends and colleagues.
I wasn't making a claim about the actual rate, I was contending your claim that
>>>> Or at least a logical explanation, as to why you think the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs, held in check by the threat of prison time.
The GGP only claimed that the homicide rate will rise if there was no punishment for it. You decided that he meant that the majority of the population are homicidal maniacs.
I was merely pointing out that even with a small percentage (0.001%) being homicidal maniacs, the rise in homicides will still increase by two orders of magnitudes or more.
> Such a rate doesn’t even vaguely match up with my experiences of people.
Well, of course - people are punished for being homicidal maniacs so I don't expect them to go around advertising the fact. Your experience of not knowing very many matches the reality that those that do get found out are removed from society.
This isn't the real problem, most people aren't murderous, they're kind. The problem isn't retaliation against mundane grievance, which is taken up by people with no sense of proportion and consequence anyway, but the response to crime.
If a hit-and-run drunk driver runs over my child, and the legal system refuses to punish them, I (and most people) are going to take on that punishment as my responsibility. I may not carry it out, but if I don't I'll take the guilt for not punishing that drunk driver to my grave. There's a ton of pressure on me to hurt that person. After I do, their loved ones may retaliate against me in the same way. If I fail and I'm killed myself, that raises the level of grievance among my family and friends. Even people on the sidelines have to become involved.
The question is whether harshness and cruelty themselves are deterrents, or if a humane rehabilitation scheme would do better at reforming murderers into non-murderers. The evidence suggests the latter.
Much of crime is a matter of impulse control. Most people don't do a cost benefit analysis, weighing the odds and severity of punishment. They get angry or greedy or whatever and they act.
I wish I could find a video where a specialist in criminal rehabilitation says that most of the guys he works with ruined their lives in 10 seconds, with just one bad impulsive decision.
No, it isn't. Your claim is "punishment as a deterrence is dead".
I am claiming that:
If the punishment for murder is 20 years in prison, there will be X murders per capita. If the punishment for murder is nothing, there will MUCH more than X murders per capita. How much exactly? I don't know. But I know damn sure there will be a lot more.
You can have a real debate about where the point of diminishing returns and how it models. Is it linear or does it decay exponentially? Is one year sufficient or does it take five or ten?
You come here with a bold claim like "punishment as a deterrence is dead". It absolutely, unequivocally is not. If you want to have a more nuanced conversation, you need to make a more nuanced claim. Because the one you made is ignorant and obviously false.
The US has managed to set up a cruel and heartless system that punishes poor people, costs enormous money and destroys the social fabric of whole communities.
For a comparison between two places that are more similar than the US and Norway that took different approaches to punishment due to the pandemic, see this article comparing Albuquerque, New Mexico and Wichita, Kansas [1]. It suggests that what is important is the speed and certainty of punishment rather than how severe that punishment is that serves as a deterrent.
Here's an interview with the author of that article about this [2].
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/two-cities-took-different...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/24/1113281623/pandemic-court-clo...
They found out the hard way that there are some very, very bad people out there, and they got sick of them. A very small number of sociopathic folks are not deterred by anything but the certainty of punishment.
In the worst case, all you can do is ensure that they can't prey on everyone else. Lacking capital punishment for most crimes, we're left with imprisonment, or Clockwork Orange.
Secondly, as I said, there is a non-negligible criminal population that's already been raised, so all the talk about raising your kids or your dogs properly is kinda irrelevant.
For a really sociopathic person, therapy is just finishing school: it teaches them how to fake normal human emotions more effectively.
There seems to no longer be any negative consequences for many minor antisocial acts (types of bullying, shoplifting in some parts, even reckless driving/endangerment). It's impossible in practice to legislate being an asshole, so until recently we relied on group shaming or the thread of a minor beating from someone wronged to keep this sort of behaviour in check.
Because of past cruelties, we've determined that all amount of verbal and psychological abuse is milder that a single slap, and I'm honestly wondering if we're leaving too many usable options to better society on the table.
That, combined with shaming and some amount of indoctrination of morals and ethics in our youth seem to have been abandoned completely, instead of being mostly toned down.
We could even stream it online. Show advertisements and have it pay itself.
[My personal point of view is that] the society should not punish, it should try to prevent future crimes. For example, capital punishment: according to studies I've read, it is not a real deterrent, and false positives are likely (innocent people are killed) -- therefore I'm against capital punishment (if the capital punishment were effective to prevent murders, I'd reconsider it).
If light corporal punishment were shown to be just as efficient at prevention as a 1-year in jail sentence, would you consider it?
I am not fully on board with that, but, on the other hand, I cannot pretend to myself that I'd consider "Eichmann being hanged" somehow morally bad or evil. In a sense, he had it coming, like many of his peers. More recently, the people who raped and killed their way through Bucha, deserve the same treatment.
But I can see that them hanging won't deter further butchers of next Buchas. People commit such crimes while feeling virtually sure that they won't ever be punished for them, and they are often right - too many war criminals expired in a luxurious bed at home. Notably, Stalin's executioners were never tried by an international tribunal unlike their Nazi counterparts, because the USSR won the war.
If the butchers of Bucha were to hang, it would be mostly motivated by vengeance.
You are arguing that we should change 1. by allowing violence. But in the examples you gave, it's not an issue of _how_ those acts are punished, but whether they are punished at all.
In other words, maybe we need to enforce current punishment more strictly rather than increase the pain of currently loosely enforced penalties.
Being rude and verbally abusive in many situations for instance gives you a stricly positive outcome, from a game theory perspective. I'm arguing to add something in the mix to make that outcome negative, and corporal punishment and shaming are the only things I can see.
I'm against this based on purely ideologic principles but... when I try to think about this question objectively, I don't find compelling arguments against it (other than it doesn't work, but I'm not quite sure about that).
Intuitively, I think that violence brings violence, and making violence legitimate will generate more rather than less violence.
I think your principles also come from us not defining any clear separation between minor violence (a slap, a shove, anything that completely heals within a week and is a singural episode) and major violence (breaking a bone, acid attacks, etc) -- in the same way there is a distinction between asault and battery.
This is a current media panic and PR campaign, not a reality.
edit: It's made up. After the administration changes hands, the perception (which, I've been assured, is actually more important than the reality) that crime is out of control will evaporate. Coverage of crime in SF after the Boudin recall has disappeared as completely as "concentration camps on the border" did after Biden was elected.
The thing about violence and retaliation is that it can and will escalate very fast. What are you going to do when you tap them on the knuckles and they come back blasting? My advice is that you should avoid violence unless backed into a corner and all other options are exhausted.
What is was envisioning was a decriminalization of minor violence as long as we can't criminalize general rude behaviour and I just wanted to explore that idea.
So leaning into your idea, where would the line be between minor and major violence?
Now suppose someone kills another person. They claim the victim attacked them and they were in fear for their life. The victim’s friend claims that the victim was engaging in legal “minor” violence in response to some perceived slight. How do you adjudicate this?
I'm just arguing for a fringe solution right now, but from the outside it seems that long prison sentences for minor offenses have destroy lives and communities in many US inner city areas, and almost anything might be an improvement. How was your experience with rehabilitation of minor offenders?
1. People often don't perceive purely numerical losses properly, just like credit cards make people overspend compared to cash.
2. It sounds like in order for it to be effective, it would need to have very low forgiveness. If the punishment has a high duration, it makes rehabilitation difficult.
We do need to figure out deterrents for minor bad behavior in modern society, and first need to have a list of criteria by which to judge these deterrents.
Article raised insignificant, pathological counter-arguments:
If robbery is punishable by death, then thieves are more likely to kill their victims to squelch witnesses.
Since suicide was religiously verboten, suicidal mothers engaged in capital crimes to enlist the authorities to off them.
How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53283/how-inuit-parents-teach...
however I don't know how this translates to the whole of society vs a small community
A secondary reason is touched upon here, but if the perpetrator of crime is not punished, only isolated comfortably, committing crime becomes attractive in and of itself to the portion of people who are currently less comfortable than prisoners. That's why the treatment of prisoners is a great metric for the quality of a society: it sets a baseline for the way non-prisoners are treated. You can't give prisoners free, high-quality education, no matter how helpful it would be to prevent crime after they're released, if you're not giving it to the general public, or else the general public would commit crimes to be educated.
The perpetrator of a,crime must compensate the damage to the victim(s), at a somehow excessive rate to prevent crime from being a viable business model.
This is relatively simple (though not easy) for property-related crimes. It's much harder for crimes like battery or rape.
That said, staying in a prison is about the least productive way to compensate, or to repent. Prisons, as seen in USA, should be abolished and replaced with other institutions.
Property crimes can be paid for with labor, with less limitations of freedoms than in a prison. Education should be provided not just for rehabilitation (which is a worthy aim), but to also produce the compensation faster, while earning the basic upkeep.
Non-property crimes should likely be paid for in repentance work, on top of material compensation work: by working at places that expose the perpetrator to the woes of people who suffered through consequences relevant to the crime. Maybe something like menial work at a hospice.
edit: Punishment for the victim is like a gift-wrapped empty box. It doesn't fix anything that the crime did, and the system pretends like they're doing it for the victim. The system punishes perpetrators in order to stop the victims from doing it themselves. It's not a favor.
Also any non trivial work requires a degree of care by the laborer to ensure quality, how does this model enforce quality? Physical force? Extending servitude?
I am far from a fan of incarceration state. However criminal justice discussions frequently ignore or discount the drawbacks of proposed solutions.
Most victims would prefer absolute assurance the perpetrator cannot come near them again - i.e I suspect if offered "give them jail time" or "force them to stay out of your half of the country, with GPS tracking to ensure compliance" then almost all would choose the latter.
For every “I just want to move on with my life” victim you can find, there’ll be a dozen court rooms cheering an excessively long sentence, or “I hope you rot in jail” victim impact statements.
Perpetrators being insufficiently punished is the subject of controversy because of the nature of the crime: it is not unreasonable to think that someone who murders a person should never be let back out into the community (because they have shown they're a clear and present danger to anyone).
The same basic problem exists with rapists: victims fear that the rapist will be released, but more importantly fear that they will either return and re-offend, or re-offend anyway - again, public safety.
In both these situations, the actual goal being expressed is "this person makes me feel unsafe, if they are somewhere they literally cannot ever get near to me, then I would feel safe - and so that period of time should be as long as possible".
A rapist in jail for 15 years is 15 years they cannot possibly commit another crime against the victim or the community (ignoring the grotesque situation prisons have in that regard as a separate but very valid issue).
Controversies over jail time exist due to deficiencies and lack of control over actual safety concerns, and where they do not they exist as absurdities: i.e. murder - permanent deprivation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - somehow being less seriously punished then drug possession - literally no possible impact to anyone except the possessor, and maybe some handwavy indirects surrounding the drug trade.
I could go and find examples of this, but that would just be a waste of my time, because if you are not prepared to accept that such perfectly obvious events take place every day, then you’re clearly not actually trying to discuss the topic.
The same type of story gets told over and over again by victims. Punishment is doing nothing for the victims who I know.
Not doubting your story, but this seems like a very weird reason to me; there's no reason they couldn't be charged with both, and it's extremely common for juries to return different verdicts for each charge when a defendant is charged with multiple. I'd be interested to see statistics about whether charging someone with murder along with burglary results in fewer convictions for the burglary charge, because it doesn't seem super obvious that it would be the case; I would think that the idea that the jury could "split" the verdict by convicting on the lesser charge if they were having trouble coming to an agreement and the fact that alleging someone is an attempted murderer is a stronger reprimand than just calling them a burglar would at least somewhat act as a counterbalance to the chance that the jury would decide to render a not guilty verdict on the burglary charge because they doubted the story due to the murder charge.
Doesn't the US do exactly that with health care? I have heard of a few people committing crimes to get free treatment, but it doesn't appear to be a widespread issue.
There is a long history of infamous "donut holes" in medical coverage via things like Medicaid on state by state basis. Even without the benefits people become better off as a write-off to collectors than to attempt pursuit, a state somewhat derogatorily called judgement-proof.
There are several reasons we punish in the modern day; retribution is just one of them:
1. Retribution, to give the victims a sense of justice and avoid potential collateral damage from vengeance and feuds.
2. Compensation, to help make the victim whole, to whatever extent possible. This is related to but subtly different than (1).
3. Segregation, to prevent the perpetrator from victimizing others.
4. Deterrence, to dissuade would-be perpetrators.
5. Rehabilitation, to try to reduce or eliminate the factors that caused the perpetrator to commit the crime.
Different people have different opinions on the morality, efficacy and value of the various reasons. Haidt et al have postulated that different worldviews are associated with different factors in people’s moral calculus, so I would not be surprised if, on average, conservatives favor a more retributive punishment system and, on average, liberals favor a more rehabilitative one. But since we all have to live with the same system, we compromise. I don’t think that there is one true approach that is the pinnacle of morality.
[ed] fixed formatting of list
Are you sure about this?
I never punish him and never have.
Whenever he behaves in a way that's not OK with me I first ask myself "does he understand my expectations here, have I already explained my expectations to him?". Usually not, so I explain that his behavior isn't acceptable and why. I very rarely need to do this.
The one time he behaved in a way that made me really angry I dealt with it at the time by speaking to him about it and also with the other people involved and there was still no punishment.
I would rather get punched in the face than be forced to listen to the average person speak for more than 5 minutes, my father, maybe I’d give him 3 minutes of lecturing before I’d prefer the punch, we don’t have a great relationship. Many children probably feel the same way.
"If you do X, I will do Y."
With that understanding, you've left your child a choice, and you are not being an authoritarian parent, provided your consequences are within reason. Many parents will simply do Y without letting their child know the consequences ahead of time. That can lead to disdain of the parent, rightfully so!
If your boss asks you to setup a meeting, and you invite a salesperson he didn't want there, and he demotes you from being "meeting organizer" for that, is it justified? Was he clear it was an engineering meeting, or tell you not to include salespeople? It depends on the context. Maybe you needed to learn something, maybe he did, or maybe you both did.
Many parenting books do not regard this as "Punishment", yet it is still discipline. See "Positive Discipline" for more on this topic.
It’s an adult timeout
It’s not so much punishment or revenge as taking the convicted out of society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitative_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
Encourage? More like enable. That is, those (i.e., politicians) that benefit and leverage the problem have little incentive to solve the problem (i.e., poverty, mental health, etc.)
> But in fact, our era is the safest and least violent in human history. We are less likely to killed, assaulted, or otherwise physically harmed today than ever before.
Yes. But that's on average. There are areas where danger is real. Perhaps not relative to history, but relative to where Karen lives the marginalized are highly disadvantaged.
I live in NJ. I'm able to get the local news from Philadelphia. There are shootings daily / nightly. Those events are not evenly distributed across PHL.
I will talk about the US, since that's what I have the most experience with and it's where MIT is located. The US does not adopt either of those strategies mentioned in the article, even if it does dress itself in the rhetoric of either moral justice or practical utility (the former is heavily favored). The outcomes of policing, legal system, and prisons is that poor and Black people are heavily oppressed and only the property rights of the weathly are taken seriously. White people's drug crimes are punished less than Black people's drug crimes. Heck, even the criminalization of drugs is oppressive against the already oppressed.
What is wild is that we don't see the police and judicial system as an occupying force. Why do police departments need MRAPs, M-16s, and plate carriers? Why do we have to keep gasing, shooting, and beating our own citizens? Why does the NSA and CIA feel the need to monitor our every word?
We can do better, but we have to admit that our system is not working for a lot of people. This is a blameless post-mortem, so all I want to do is fix our system, not assign blame. We have to make this better, for the sake of all.
And deeply satisfying.