Alternative punishments for disabled people convicted of a crime

So, a punishment I came up with is that a person convicted of some serious crime could choose to be either blinded or deafened. But if the convict is already blind or deaf, or especially blind-deaf, I think for the former, taking away their remaining other sense would be unfairly cruel, and for the latter, it would be impossible.

Maybe somehow, the point of a story could be that the punishments are unfair to disabled people, but otherwise, what could be some alternative punishments for disabled people?

(What do you think of making someone disabled as a punishment in the first place? Do you think it's barbaric, or is it perhaps "inclusive" of disabled people? I'm not exactly sure how you would deafen someone, but I guess it would have something to do with the cochlea.)

Start cutting off fingers.

In regards to "cutting off fingers," I don't think it's necessarily that brutal. For the eyes, I was thinking of some sort of chemical that more or less preserves the appearance of the eyes other than making them cloudy, like the eyes of actual blind people. I also think a punishment like what I described would only be applied sparingly.

Loosing a an arm with no possibility of prosthetic replacement if blind or a leg with the same consequence if deaf and for the blind and deaf they get to choose.

Also what type of crime could a blind person commit that would warrant something like this without Daredevil powers.Like something bad enough to get imprisoned and even more disabled.

"Daredevil powers" are real, in a sense. Some blind people know echolocation, which enables them to "see" with their ears, by making a sound and hearing the echos across the place. Ben Underwood was a famous example.

Not gonna lie I forgot about that for a second but still the only crimes I could think of to warrant a prison sentence and more punishment.The crimes would be being a crime boss,a mass murderer, or a serial killer and two of the three would probably interfere with whatever alternate method of "seeing" for lack of a better word.

See, you want the punishments to be visible. The idea is that if others see what happens to criminals they fear those punishments more.

I haven't decided if people are formally given prison sentences, or if there's prisons at all. I think many places in pre-modern times did not have prisons as we think of them today.

And, I don't necessarily think of it as meaning to inspire fear in potential criminals. I probably wouldn't like to be blind, for example, because I like to easily move around, but I don't fear being deaf as much.

Although, I guess people who are disabled can choose to be marked somewhere on their bodies. Before that, I was wondering if maybe society would be more lenient with disabled people because they're disabled.

Give them horrible hallucinations instead, or maybe ridiculous pain. The source of which is a sub-dermal implant, located where it's easier/cheaper to hack off a limb to get rid of it than to surgically remove it. The implant then releases a chemical at certain times of the day, which causes... effects.

The convicted then have the choice of dealing with their punishment... or cutting off a part of their own body.

Hold up how low is the threshold to get this punishment.

Jaywalking

It feels like I am being made fun of.

To an extent, chopping off fingers or even hands was a popular punishment for earlier civilzations. Gouging out eyes was more a thing for nobility. It's said my namesake had his eyes poked out for being a threat to Justinian.

Being so sqeimish about it is weird.

What is the point of this? The punishment, I mean, not the thread. (Well, ok, also the thread).

You never seemed to answer me about what you thought of making people disabled as a punishment.

It's pretty fucking cruel and barbaric is what it is. Hence the question of what the point of it as a punishment is.

Because if the idea is to have a punishment that's worse than imprisonment, but not quite as drastic as a death sentence... Well it fails in that complete blindness, for the average capital criminal, might as well be a death sentence and complete deafness for isn't that much better.

I also want to put in my two cents as an advocate for disabled people, and say that I really don't like the idea of making disability a literal punishment and the worst punishment on top of that. It sends a very bad message about being disabled and comes across as torture porn. There are other ways to punish people.

Honestly, I wish you could have told me your brutally honest opinions first instead of confusing me with vague comments. If you think it's cruel and barbaric, you'd hate going on r/worldbuilding and seeing all the gruesome punishments they come up with for criminals. I actually made a thread called "What are the coolest, most horrifically brutal punishments you have for criminal scumbags in your world?", or some similar title, and there were many people enthusiastically descrbing their punishments. No one seemed to realise I was being sarcastic.

If you work with disabled people, what do you think an actual disabled person would think of the punishment I was describing? My world is in early stages, I never said it was necessarily the "worst punishmment." I'm trying to go for a world with a radically different culture than in a typical English-speaking country, and I understand if you think it might present a negative message of being disabled, but I think it would be a severe writing limitation if all fictional culture had to ascribe to Western values or notions of political correctness, because real cultures don't necessarily do.

Maybe it's a culture where people don't fear becoming disabled as much as dying, hence, "average capital criminals," not in the Western world, but in the culture I'm trying to create, don't necessarily think complete blindness or deafness "might as well be a death sentence." Or, not what I intended, maybe it's a world where being disabled is seen as shameful and disabled people are discriminated against, but it doesn't necessarily mean the author agrees with that.

For an example of a radically different culture, Australian aboringes have seemingly cruel and barbaric punishments that work for their culture. These links might interest you. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-28/news/mn-31991_1_aborigines-traditional-justice

http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/21.%20Aboriginal%20Customary%20Laws%20and%20Sentencing/aboriginal-customary-laws-and-notion-80%98puni

In actuality, I think reading about disabled culture is interesting, here's a blog post I just read. http://limpingchicken.com/2013/07/10/annoying-habits-of-deaf-people/

edited 7th Aug '17 2:58:38 PM by BloodyHellSausage

Question: how do we know you're not being sarcastic now? Short of telepathy, I mean.

(Plus, an author treating an idea as acceptable - without criticism or deliberation - comes off as them agreeing with it. There's no idea so dumb that an idiot can't believe in it, after all. Saying "Obviously I think it's stoopid" when there's little to no indication of that in what they've said or done previously, doesn't really sound sincere.)

Right, the thing about world building is that there's two main ways to do it: Either you just write your world with all of it's bits and bobs included and fit together and say 'this is how it works in this world'. Or you take a number of elements and then examine 'What would be the further consequences in a realistic world that has these elements?'.

If you're asking for input on consequences, we can only assume you're going for method two (because with method one, no input of any kind is needed). Except that then when we give input, you're coming up with all these reasons why, in the world you're thinking of building, that won't be the case.

Why ask for our opinions if you're just going to ignore them any way if they don't coincide with your own?

Any way, the logical further consequence of a world where blinding/deafening people is used as a form of punishment and the way that they're blinded/deafened makes them look like regular blind/deaf people, is that prejudice against blind/deaf people will automatically exist. Because people that are completely blind or completely deaf due to birth, disease or accident are a lot rarer than people who commit the kinds of crimes that might be punished with blinding/deafening. So any blind or deaf person you meet is more likely to be a heinous criminal than an innocent.

And if the people in your setting are realistic humans... Well... As human beings, vision and hearing are our primary senses, the ones we rely on the most. That's why most of our art is either visual, auditory or a combination thereof. It's why our communication relies so heavily on sound and visual information. Taking one or both of those senses away from someone permanently as a punishment is going to be barbaric and cruel no matter what the social norms or opinions on disability are in your society. Even if no one is prejudiced against the disabled and everyone is completely supportive of the blind and the deaf regardless of whether they're criminals it will still be an incredibly cruel punishment, because prejudice or the like aren't the reason blindness and deafness are such daunting disabilities.

Even taking all of a person's limbs is less cruel than taking someone's sight or hearing (and it's still plenty cruel). At least without limbs you can (and are going to have to) get other people to do the things for you that you can't do for yourself. But you can never really get someone else to see or hear for you.

edited 8th Aug '17 1:21:20 AM by Robrecht

Since you're accusing me of ignoring your opinions, I think it's natural to want to explain my point of view.

Why do you claim that there are more people who commit crimes that might be punished with blinding or deafening than normal blind or deaf people? I did some searching, and I found that there are approximately 250,000 to 500,000 sign language users in America, which does not account for people with normal hearing who use sign language. By comparison, since you were talking about death sentences, there are only 2,843 death row inmates in America. Where did you get statistics that there were more serious criminals than disabled people?

Speaking from my perspective, I'd rather be both blind and deaf than have no limbs. If I was blind and deaf, at least I could move around by feeling and sensing vibrations. But if I had no limbs, I'd be at the mercy of everyone. Having to get everyone to do everything for me, not being able to do anything for myself, would be horrible, I would think. If I was blind-deaf, at least I'd still be able to do some form of exercise.

If you say it's less cruel to take all of someone's limbs than take away one sense, I think that's subjective opinion, not objective fact.

It seems most of these people would rather be blind and deaf rather than have no limbs. https://www.rrrather.com/view/42308

Only a very narrow majority say they would rather have no limbs than be blind-deaf. https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=121938841

I don't think our current capital punishment rate is a good model for that of a quasi-medieval society.

Actually, speech-to-text software has reached a pretty useful point now. Plus, modern tech means that a lack of limbs doesn't automatically equate to helplessness anymore.

It's this lack of creativity on your part that I find most mystifying. You are going out of your way to back up your points without, apparently, stopping to consider that the alternative has already been worked out. Not to mention, your data is either weak (8v7 bodybuilders...) or too exact to be relevant to a broad topic.

Mind-blindness, I'm starting to think. Cut him some slack.