Incarceration: Rehabiliate and Protect? Or Punish?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

The ideal situation, then, puts the criminal frankly into a state of enslavement to his victim, the criminal continuing in that condition of just slavery until he has redressed the grievance of the man he has wronged

Sort of like, there's a guy who causes an auto accident, has no insurance, so the judge sentences him to be the other guy's butler. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

edit: Sorry, had to do that. This is actually a very interesting thread, but the suggestion of Seinfeld the anarcho-capitalist was too hard to resist.

[KipBond]

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But I'm wondering if it should ever be the role of a civilized society to punish. Aren't rehabilitation and protection from the public the only roles society should be concerned about when it comes to incarcerating a fellow human being?

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I think the justice system should do 3 things:

<ul type="square">[*] keep the person from doing further harm[*] rehabilitate the person to prevent further harm[*] correct the harm that was done[/list]
If a person X harms person Y, then it does not correct the harm done by causing harm to person X. People who seek revenge think so, though. What would be better would be to force person X to try to make right the harm he did. That takes creativity, and is always up for debate as to what X can do to make up for the wrong he did to Y. If there's a monetary value, then repaying that would be pretty easy. But in cases where there is none (e.g. X killed Y), then he may be repaying that debt for the rest of his life. But, it's still better than not having him make up as much as possible, I think.

[tolbiny]

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No we're just taking into account the chance of them not getting caught.

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Exactly, because they DID get caught already. They committed one crime, and got caught. Now you want to suppose that that they have (or will) commit many more crimes and to include punishment for those crimes in with the one you actually did catch.

[chezlaw]

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No we're just taking into account the chance of them not getting caught.

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Exactly, because they DID get caught already. They committed one crime, and got caught. Now you want to suppose that that they have (or will) commit many more crimes and to include punishment for those crimes in with the one you actually did catch.

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No, the punishment regime is set in advance so anyone consider committing a crime should be deterred by the punishment they will get for that crime if they get caught for that crime.

I'm not quite sure what your issue is here, its seems obvious that if we were considering tax evasion we would be deterred by the punishment if we got caught, and that the larger the punishment the more chance we would need to think we had of getting away with it.

No-one else is involved and its not about deterring us from further tax evasion after we have been caught this time but it is to deter us from the tax evasion we are currently considering.

chez

[m_the0ry]

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Economic ostracism has always been a devastatingly effective social punishment. Cutting someone off from the benefits of the division of labor has enormous consequences.

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Not only did you just contradict yourself fully by saying first that justice is about making the victim whole and nothing else, but this is an absolutely absurd solution to criminal behavior. Making lawlessness = homelessness helps society how? Really, I would love to hear an explanation.

As for incarceration 'hurting the state and free market' you need to do a little more research. There is a reason why the United States locks down 25% of the people incarcerated *worldwide*. It's because the system is privatized and subsequently became a slave labor racket.

[Borodog]

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Economic ostracism has always been a devastatingly effective social punishment. Cutting someone off from the benefits of the division of labor has enormous consequences.

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Not only did you just contradict yourself fully by saying first that justice is about making the victim whole and nothing else,

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Not a all. Credit ratings are a function of the market. A bad credit rating would result from criminal behavior, but it is not any kind of sanction that is mandated by a court, nor does it need to be enforced by anyone.

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but this is an absolutely absurd solution to criminal behavior. Making lawlessness = homelessness helps society how? Really, I would love to hear an explanation.

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By excluding uncivillized individuals from society, the average level of civility necessarily increases. Besides, who said anything about homelessness? It's litteraly impossible to be homeless in a libertarian society, since all property is owned. Homelessness = trespass.



[/ QUOTE ]As for incarceration 'hurting the state and free market' you need to do a little more research. There is a reason why the United States locks down 25% of the people incarcerated *worldwide*. It's because the system is privatized and subsequently became a slave labor racket.

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"Privatized" != private. Privatization is just a tricky way of granting a governent monopoly. Just because the governent creates a "privatized" prison industrial complex does not imply that prisons could exist on the free market, or if the did, that the would operate in the same way. They obviously could not, without government subsidy and monopoly protection.

[Borodog]

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I like it!

Seriously, one of the best posts I've ever read. Good not only because I agree with it, but because it offers a logical alternative.

But I wonder how this would play out when it comes to gangs or crime syndicates. They harm or kill someone, that someone gets to harm or kill them, etc., etc. The problem here is that gangs and crime syndicates have the resources to make this a never ending cycle. Although, I guess that's the way it is now too. It's just that if the first aggressor is more heavily backed, I'm not sure this system of yours would work. People would be too afraid of further retaliation.

Otherwise, I really like your thoughts on this.

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Lestat,

You need to understand why gangs and "organized crime" is so systematicly violent. This occurs whenever groups are prevented from solving disputes peacefully (the far less risky and costly way to do it). Because rival gangs cannot bring suit in the state's monopoly courts, they turn to violent dispute resolution. The same thing happened in the so-called "Range Wars" of the American west, when Federal courts refused to recognize or enforce the claims of ranchers. Vilence inevitably ensued.

In fact, the very existance of organized crime and gangs are responses to state momopolizations, market interventions, and exlusion from access to state monopolized services. Government reserves certain markets for violent criminals by outlawing them (drugs, prostitution, alcohol, gambling, free labor, etc). Gangs arise as mutual defense collectives because the state monopoly police and courts not only so not protect or serve those in question, the largely make their livings persecuting them and effectively carrying out ongoing war against them.

[Lestat]

Interesting. So you're of the opinion that drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc., should be open market and legal? I'm not sure I disagree with that. I think there are places in Europe where these things are legal and there is much less violent crime because of it.

I thought I finally had a post that didn't involve religion, but it turns out it might play a huge role in this conversation. Probably the biggest reason these things are illegal is due to opposition from the moral right.

Real interesting perspective Borodog.

[MrBlah]

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By excluding uncivillized individuals from society, the average level of civility necessarily increases. Besides, who said anything about homelessness? It's litteraly impossible to be homeless in a libertarian society, since all property is owned. Homelessness = trespass.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't get this. Wouldn't this just mean that those criminals excluded from society would start living at the expense of those who are too poor or too stupid to get proper security?

Also, what would you do with those serial trespassers? Exclude them even more from society?

I only have a very vague idea about libertarianism and similar ideas, so these question are probably quite stupid, but please enlighten me.

[LooseCaller]

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The ideal situation, then, puts the criminal frankly into a state of enslavement to his victim, the criminal continuing in that condition of just slavery until he has redressed the grievance of the man he has wronged

Sort of like, there's a guy who causes an auto accident, has no insurance, so the judge sentences him to be the other guy's butler. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

edit: Sorry, had to do that. This is actually a very interesting thread, but the suggestion of Seinfeld the anarcho-capitalist was too hard to resist.

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i am somewhat confused as how putting someone into forced labor is different from prison. assuming the person doesnt want to do this he would:
a)probably do a bad job
b)make attempts to avoid work or run away

this would require heavy policing of his activities both on and off the job. an ankle bracelet would probably work to some extent, but there would need to be on-the-job supervision to ensure that actually performed the tasks assigned to him. and what happens if he just says "[censored] it, i dont want to do this." eventually you're going to encounter increasing resistance by the criminals to this punishment system, which will in turn lead to increased control of the the criminals by the authorities and i dont see how this doesnt eventually wind up with him in a heavily guarded building making license plates.

and since you need to fund the supervision in some way, where is the money coming from? the victims who were supposed to be recompensed? does this then mean that the criminals have to work off their debt+x, where x is the overhead of monitoring them? admittedly this provides some incentive to play along and do a job, but i still think the idea, given time in the marketplace, would still devolve into a prison that earns some money for the victims.

unless of course this is something you are fine with. i just mean, logistically, i dont think it would be that different.