Funny how the right thing to do and the hard thing to do converge so often.
Not every criminal is an angel, I understand that. But even if we assume that they all have demons within aching to unleash themselves on the rest of society, it seems a rather poor course of action to encourage those demons by constraining all other avenues and options. But then I also find the idea of “doing your time” strange. If we care about protecting society, then we should worry more about the liklihood of recidivism. If we care about deterrence, then we would spend more time scientifically studying what deters people from committing crime and applying those principles. But we care about “doing time” and “paying debts.” You can’t really extract justice from human suffering. It’s just the brutal impulse to exact pain on others manifesting itself through a legal framework.
The moral distance between you and a criminal is shorter than you think.
It’s perfectly normal and human to want to set fire to Brevik or, at least, to keep him in a box forever. The wise thing to want is to extend him exactly the humanity he denied his victims.
The application of “paying debt to society” is both a calvinistic and puritanical lense to view criminal justice. It beats eye for an eye, but is fundamentally flawed. There are so many flaws, it is unreal.
Every. Male. Relative I have that is closely related has or is doing time. Or dead. I know you know the answer to this, how much did society or my family benefit from incarceration or institutionalization of half the people I love? Yeah, just sucks for everyone.
I may go full popo on this, but what the hell is recidivism in the first place? If our guiding principles are liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then why the fu…
Wait a second, I accidentally channeled “college japhroaig” :D. I’ll put him back to bed.
Oh that? We are all sinners. That’s who and what we are. Alcoholics never change, and neither do criminals. For the same reasons. Sinners stay sinners and only by the grace of our Lord and Saviour can they find redemption.
Our justice system is more Christian than people care to consider or admit. We’ve secularized it, but that influence is baked in deep.
Honestly? I wasn’t raised Christian. I didn’t get it till I studied the Bible. Then, it was like seeing the code in the Matrix- I started seeing it everywhere in American (supposedly) secular civil society. You think the people who wrote the KJV didn’t have an abiding influence on English, and therefore American, law? Think again.
I wasn’t raised Christian as well. But even a mental Hobbit like myself can connect the dots if you study history. Ironically, even as an atheist, I am protective of religious people. It has been used as a blunt instrument so many times, in so many ways, for both grace and destruction, sometimes it needs to be tempered.
Run a tiny risk for huge reward? I know lots of people who said "Sure! I won’t get caught!"
Some of them got caught. Only one came out of the experience better for it, because he decided free education would help fill his time, and the education saved him.
I’ve seen the justice system close up, and it’s not just at all. Today’s privatized prison systems are worse in many ways than the overcrowded crumbling wrecks of the 70s. I don’t see the new and improved version working to “rehabilitate” any better than the old version.
Have you seen Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next? The segment on the Norwegian prison system is relevant here, and eye-opening. The emphasis is all on rehabilitation - real, not just lip service.
(To those about to say Moore is cherrypicking his examples: that’s the whole point.)
Sure have. Michael is a person who has done far more good in his life than I ever will, though we would both be the first to admit to being profoundly… Flawed… People.
Xtians just love stories of criminals, junkies and alcoholics who hit rock bottom, then are only saved by finding Jesus. If you believe that we are all basically evil without religion, then these tales fit right in to your worldview.
It also gives them a ready-made narrative for when they do something bad. They briefly slipped away from God, so naturally their weak and sinful nature took over, but they prayed a lot and they’re all better now.
There’s more than one way to look at justice. The utilitarian approach, where justice should be the option that benefits society the most, and that seems to be what you believe in. It’s mostly what I believe in too, but there is at least one moral quandary, granted it’s not one that comes up often.
What happens when you have a person perfectly able to make money, a lot of money, legitimately, but turns to criminal acts to acquire more?
OK, the Quakers were very involved in creating the penitentiary concept, and it had some unforeseen consequences to say the least. But they are also one of the very few groups doing significant work for prison reform today. In my state, American Friends Service Committee is more active in prisoner rights than anyone else, including the ACLU, and is doing it with a tiny budget.
The Quakers have a historically based social conscience. That’s why they do so much work with American Indian rights, too, because looking back Quaker interactions with native folks were often not what modern Quakers would have hoped.
