Cruel and Unusual

What do you consider ethically/morally/practically acceptable punishments for criminal actions? More importantly, why do you think that?

What punisments would you consider unacceptable? Again, why?

To my mind, monetary fines, sentences of imprisonment, and execution are acceptable legal penalties for crimes, simply because they are all objectively quantifiable in relation to the severity of a given crime. Penalties based on pain, humiliation, and such, seem too subjective in terms of personal impact and too difficult to apply in appropriate levels in respnse to a particular crime to be useful or ethically acceptable as criminal penalties.

I tend to agree with you for the most part, however, I disagree with execution being a viable option in practice. In theory there are certainly some crimes that absolutely merit it, but unfortunately if you get it wrong there's no turning back. At least someone who was wrongfully imprisoned can be released, someone wrongfully fined can be refunded, but you can't bring someone back to life.

Well, it really depends on what you want punishment to do. Do you want it to get revenge on the criminals, deterr other criminals, fix the damage that was done by the crime, or rehabilitate the criminal?

Be not afraid...

Perhaps, but if the rigor of evidence required for execution is set high enough, there shouldn't be many wrongfully convicted of capital crimes. Besides, everyone dies sooner or later. ;)

Edit: To my mind, and apparently to the people who set up the current (American) justice system, only those who are capable of understanding crimes (and therefore presumably already know better than to commit them) should be tried for them. Therefore, directed alteration of personality/values (which is what I assume you mean by "rehabilitation") is beside the point. Since mentally sound adults should presumably already know what is and isn't legal and should be able to judge the consequences of their own actions, the purpose of legal penalties should (again, to my reasoning) be to provide acute negative consequences to illegal actions, in order to reinforce lawful behavior, both in individuals and in society at large.

So, rehabilitation through the direct application of negative consequences for crimninal action, and retribution and deterrence through the same.

edited 28th Dec '10 9:31:12 PM by Wanderhome

Hmm . . . I suspect that public humiliation, stoning, and other such punishments encourage a mob mentality, but I don't actually have any research to back that up, so I can't argue against them too strongly. I guess I'm against the death penalty (which includes stoning, come to think of it), but only because you can't take it back if it turns out you got the wrong person. I think that punishing the relatives of a criminal is unfair to said relatives unless they themselves committed crimes. I'd like to argue that rape as a punishment would be cruel, but I can't come up with a logical reason why, and apparently I need to, since some people consider rape to be a natural part of the punishment criminals face in prison. I think that when barring people from entering certain areas, you need to at least leave them a place to live, but that's practicality speaking—when sex offenders are reduced to sleeping under bridges, they become much harder to track than when they have jobs and home addresses.

Don't ask me what I want punishments to be, though, because my goal is to reduce the number of repeat offenses, and I don't know of a punishment system that can actually do that (well, except executing everyone and hoping they were all guilty.)

edited 28th Dec '10 9:03:59 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

You can't really return 15 years of life to someone who was falsely imprisoned. On the other hand, it's still a lot better than being falsely executed.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Solitary without any form of entertainment would be cruel and unusual in my opinion. Without stimuli the mind creates it's own and that can be extremely terrifying.

edited 28th Dec '10 9:25:39 PM by thatguythere47

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

This one thinks that ideally, the punishment should be comparable to a crime. An eye for eye is a good principle, as is poetic justice. Murderers should be killed, sadistic maniacs - tortured to death, thieves - fined. Basically, to cause criminal the same thing they caused to their victims.

This one considers the current obsession with imprisonment unjust, and in many cases way too harsh. Thieves, frauds and so on did not take away anyone's freedom - they took property. So it's property that should be taken from them.

Of course, there are good reasons against executing murderers. The law system is not perfect. Mistake or malice can easily result in innocent being executed, and that is completely unacceptable. So in practice it should not be done, for it is better for 10000 criminals to get less than they deserve than for one innocent to be executed.

edited 29th Dec '10 1:34:00 AM by Beholderess

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I have a big problem with the idea that anybody should suffer or deserves to suffer. Suffering, in my eyes, is something that should be completely eliminated from the human experience as soon as possible. So naturally, I dislike punishment categorically and see it as a necessary evil at best, until the day when it's supplanted by less primitive methods of behavior modification. The way I see it, the legitimate aims of criminal penalties are behavior modification ("rehabilitation") of convicted criminals, isolation of convicted criminals from potential victims, financial restitution of damages, and to a lesser extent, deterrence of prospective criminals. I consider retribution (i.e. "eye for an eye" bs) an illegitimate, irrational, and unacceptable aim.

Extant punishments that I find acceptable include prison sentences of varying lengths wherein behaviors are incentivized/disincentivized via institution/revocation of privileges, fines, and community service.

I would prefer, though, that we move towards more direct methods of behavior modification, i.e. those which seek to produce neurochemical/neurophysiological changes, not merely different "choices". In most people, the environment they grow up in installs in them a type of Morality Chip called a conscience, but the installation is haphazard and any number of things may go wrong. I would like to see the criminal justice system make use of neuroscience/biotechnology to install a new, more effective Morality Chip.

Physical pain  ^*

^{violence is still acceptable when necessary to subdue out of control inmates}

, bodily harm  ^*

^{including harm from starvation/malnutrition and imposition of other unhealthy conditions, amputation, organ removal}

, and anything which serves primarily/exclusively as retribution.

@ Wanderhome: I would disagree on you with that point. It must be possible to change someone's personality and/or morals when they are adults, or we would have completely static personalities from the age of 18 onwards.

What if being in jail for a few years and having access to therapy, education, spiritual guidance, or whatever seriously causes people to rethink their lives? Sure, it may not work most of the time, but even if 15% of people go on to have better lives isn't it worth it to try?

Be not afraid...

That would depend on the cost.

Fight smart, not fair.

I would really care if the money used on them could be spent on more worthwhile endeavours.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

I think you forgot something about returns.

Fight smart, not fair.

That's hard to calculate. I do support programmes to teach inmates to be a more productive member of society. However I fail to see the benefit of having repeat offenders being given the same treatment over and over again, all the while using public funds. I also support capital punishment.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Keep in mind that many estimates would indicate that the death penalty is actually more expensive than life in prison without parole, let alone less severe penalties.

The way I look at it, it takes so long to kill someone that if they haven't disproven their guilt in twenty years, odds are it isn't going to happen.

Which pisses me off when cases come along where the death penalty clearly applies and the evidence is indisputable, but they still die of old age.

^

Yeah, because they feel the need to use a rare and expensive chemical to do the procedure, when tons of other things would do. Not to mention the bulk of the costs; the fact that they can wrap up the process in appeals court and make it take decades. If it didn't take so long and they had a more efficient and inexpensive method(and there are many, most of which are equally painless), you would find the costs cut by a very major percentile.

edited 29th Dec '10 9:36:58 AM by Barkey

My feelings on the death penalty is it should only be used only in cases where there is solid, irrefutable evidence. If the evidence for conviction is purely circumstantial, then no. Of course, I'm talking like 1st degree murder here.

Like security cam footage, or multiple credible witnesses. In that case, where there is solid evidence, I say don't bother fucking around with appeals and waste money and just put a round through the fucker's head.

If we're talking about the Death Penalty, I would be more apt to support painless methods such as Nitrogen Asphyxiation.

Please spay/neuter your pets. Also, defang your copperheads.

I've always said, why should the murderer get the consideration they didn't give their victims? Assuming it's the serial killers and other evil murdering bastards we're talking about, not someone who accidentally killed someone.

Statement taken back.

edited 29th Dec '10 2:13:05 PM by MarkVonLewis

"I've always said, why should the murderer get the consideration they didn't give their victims?" - Mark

Well, for one thing, who's to say they didn't? They may have committed murder in the heat of the moment and clearly regretted it afterwards. They may have thought their OWN victims deserved it, like some school shooters did, and executing them just because we assume they deserve it would arguably be repeating their mistake. But in any case, what exactly is the HARM of giving them consideration at all?

edited 29th Dec '10 12:19:38 PM by neoYTPism

A fair point. Admittedly my comment was made with the serial killers and scum-of-the-earth in mind.

Because civilized, compassionate human beings are supposed to hold themselves to higher standards than 'scum of the earth?' Otherwise there's not much difference between the two, save that the 'scum' aren't legally empowered in their actions.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Well, I look at it this way— why should state actors get a free pass to indulge in the same vices that murderers get jailed and executed for? Part of the reason society incarcerates murderers is the fact that the actions they commit mark them as dangerous people who cannot be trusted around the general public. Willingness to behave like an "evil murdering bastard" is kind of a worrisome character flaw.

edited 29th Dec '10 2:08:53 PM by Tongpu

True, very true. My position on this is flawed, then. I'll recant my statement.

That's exactly why I oppose the death penalty - society shouldn't sink to that level.

Be not afraid...