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> justice requires her death. All do respect, but WTF? There's no question that what she did was horrible, but how is it `just' to kill someone in response? P

by colah 17y ago

> justice requires her death. All do respect, but WTF? There's no question that what she did was horrible, but how is it `just' to kill someone in response? Perhaps revenge and barbaric `justice' in the tradition of lex talionis (eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth) would encourage such a response, but I can see no benefit; it won't bring the dead back to life. In fact, it is my opinion that the only valid motivations for punishment are: - deterrence. - protection of society and the perpetrator from each other. - rehabilitation. - moral denouncement. These ideas are not unique to me. In fact, they're quite popular in international politics, and are part of the legal codes of certain countries. For example, The Criminal Code of Canada includes: Purpose and Principles of Sentencing Purpose 718. The fundamental purpose of sentencing is to contribute, along with crime prevention initiatives, to respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society by imposing just sanctions that have one or more of the following objectives: (a) to denounce unlawful conduct; (b) to deter the offender and other persons from committing offences; (c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary; (d) to assist in rehabilitating offenders; (e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and (f) to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims and to the community. -- http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-46/page-16.html#anchorbo-ga:l_XXIII-gb:s_718 http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-46/page-16.html#anchorbo-ga:...

maxharris 17y ago
From John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged: "Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification — that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero — that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement — that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence." That's the moral case; note what I said in the parent comment about the practicality of capital punishment.
- colah 17y ago
  > <cut for brevity> >That's the moral case; note what I said in the parent comment about the practicality of capital punishment. All I can say is that I'm ideologically opposed to this. Most people who know me in person describe me as naive and it's probably true. But I'm not able to look at people that way, and quite frankly I don't want to.
randallsquared 17y ago
All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Of course, things are rarely equal, and I agree with maxharris that the impossibility of correcting errors means that capital punishment should be off limits for justice systems. More to your point, though, I think that a justice system which was ultimately based on retribution would have all the positive qualities you speak of as valid motivations. Fitting the punishment to the crime is very difficult unless you have a way to measure how bad the crime was. An eye for an eye, as a default outcome, would provide a quantitative starting point for negotiations between (living) victims and the original aggressor. Of course, this doesn't help much for the dead.
- colah 17y ago
  >All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Deterrence isn't preventing a person from repeating a crime, but ever doing it. The idea is that they won't do it to avoid the punishment -- a sort of sociopath's substitute for morality. I've yet to see any actual evidence that capital punishment is a more effective deterrent than long-term imprisonment and have heard claims (though no evidence) to the contrary (that the psychology of such large punishments leaves them effectively indistinguishable)... I've never researched it but I probably should. As for preventing repetition, so do many other things, such as imprisonment. >More to your point, though, I think that a justice system which was ultimately based on retribution would have all the positive qualities you speak of as valid motivations. I'm sorry but I have to disagree. You'll notice I said that I mentioned protecting the perpetrator from society... Killing them kind of defeats that. Also, they can't achieve rehabilitation if we kill them. Essentially, I want a justice system based off compassion for _all_ parties. Call it naive altruism if you wish. This isn't to say we shouldn't make protecting ourselves from criminals a priority, but after that we should be trying to help them. As we do, in providing counseling, etc.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    You'll notice I said that I mentioned protecting the perpetrator from society... Killing them kind of defeats that. Also, they can't achieve rehabilitation if we kill them. You focus on the single exception I mentioned to a retribution-based system as though I had not mentioned it as an exception at all. Why is that?

by colah 17y ago

maxharris 17y ago

From John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged: "Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification — that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero — that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement — that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence." That's the moral case; note what I said in the parent comment about the practicality of capital punishment.

colah 17y ago
> <cut for brevity> >That's the moral case; note what I said in the parent comment about the practicality of capital punishment. All I can say is that I'm ideologically opposed to this. Most people who know me in person describe me as naive and it's probably true. But I'm not able to look at people that way, and quite frankly I don't want to.

randallsquared 17y ago

All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Of course, things are rarely equal, and I agree with maxharris that the impossibility of correcting errors means that capital punishment should be off limits for justice systems. More to your point, though, I think that a justice system which was ultimately based on retribution would have all the positive qualities you speak of as valid motivations. Fitting the punishment to the crime is very difficult unless you have a way to measure how bad the crime was. An eye for an eye, as a default outcome, would provide a quantitative starting point for negotiations between (living) victims and the original aggressor. Of course, this doesn't help much for the dead.

colah 17y ago
>All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Deterrence isn't preventing a person from repeating a crime, but ever doing it. The idea is that they won't do it to avoid the punishment -- a sort of sociopath's substitute for morality. I've yet to see any actual evidence that capital punishment is a more effective deterrent than long-term imprisonment and have heard claims (though no evidence) to the contrary (that the psychology of such large punishments leaves them effectively indistinguishable)... I've never researched it but I probably should. As for preventing repetition, so do many other things, such as imprisonment. >More to your point, though, I think that a justice system which was ultimately based on retribution would have all the positive qualities you speak of as valid motivations. I'm sorry but I have to disagree. You'll notice I said that I mentioned protecting the perpetrator from society... Killing them kind of defeats that. Also, they can't achieve rehabilitation if we kill them. Essentially, I want a justice system based off compassion for _all_ parties. Call it naive altruism if you wish. This isn't to say we shouldn't make protecting ourselves from criminals a priority, but after that we should be trying to help them. As we do, in providing counseling, etc.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  You'll notice I said that I mentioned protecting the perpetrator from society... Killing them kind of defeats that. Also, they can't achieve rehabilitation if we kill them. You focus on the single exception I mentioned to a retribution-based system as though I had not mentioned it as an exception at all. Why is that?