Crime and Punishment
There is no set of issues in which who we are, but in terms of intelligence and morality, as a people, is more evident than in issues of crime and punishment. This is because it raises two questions, "How capable is our system in both creating laws that will be followed and making sure that its laws are followed?" which raises all sorts of questions and our use of intelligence in government, and "How do we treat people who've wronged us?" which is one of the two primary moral questions, the other being "How do we treat people who need our help?" (and there is a great deal of overlap between these questions).
And it is appalling what I see in our system, both in what is done, and what is suggested that we do. And this goes for both sides of the political spectrum (as always).
Laws have to be enforcable and enforced. It shouldn't be a great leap of faith to agree that the quality of our legal system is weighed both by the quality of the laws, and of the quality of enforcement. And it is because one of these requirements requires us to use nuance, and acknowledge the complexity of society, a large segment of the population is lost there, and since the other requirement requires us to do things that may not on the surface apprear right, most of what's left is lost there.
We have to accept that some people may not be curable, some because they're genuinely incapable, and some because they have no desire to be cured. And it is tragic that this is the case, but this is the case. If we are not strong enough as a people to accept that some people should not be let around the rest of people, then we cannot have a government.
That being said, every situation is different, and legality does not equate with morality. This means that, to the question "Is this the right thing to do?" "No, because it's illegal" is not an appropriate answer. This also is what makes things like mandatory minimums ridiculous, since all they do is remove the system's ability to respond to any given situation correctly. Essentially the argument for mandatory minimums is "I, someone who knows nothing about this case, am in a better position to decide what an appropriate punishment is than you, a judge who has actually heard this case." Now I'll admit readily that judges overstep their bounds more than once in a while, but a system of judges is better than a machine trying to deal with human problems.
A root problem is we try to legislate too much. Once law reached a point when it started legislating against business interactions between a willing buyer and seller with no immidiate threat to anyone not participating in the transaction, it crossed the line. Alcahol prohibition, drug prohibition, prostitution prohibition, "sin taxes", and so on and so forth, are huge steps towards undermining our legal system. These laws are terribly hard to enforce (which equates to hardly ever actually enforced), since there is no victim. No one's gonna go to the police about this crime, and it's possible for the crime, and all of its after effects, to happen without anyone other than the buyer and seller knowing. When there is a law that is well known, and is one of the police forces primary objectives, and it still goes unstopped, this undermines the police force as a whole. To avoid this this leads to numerous violations of rights on which our society was founded, but which are neccisary to do a little more in trying to enfore unenforcable laws.
Also, it undermines law in general. For a society to be a society of laws, it is essential that the society, as a whole, respects these laws. To explore why this is wrong, we have to look at law as a concept. Law is people sacrificing freedom to protect safety and order. From this we can take that if a person is rational, the benefit from having this law has to outweigh the cost of the freedom sacrificed to have this law for the law to be viewed as acceptable. Since freedom is more of an intangible concept, its real effects can be extremely varied, from actually being a pothead, thus having a defining aspect of your life in opposition to the law, to not liking the effects of spending billions of dollars in attempts to stop this, to not liking having to take drug tests, and being treated like a criminal, in order to get a job, and so on and so forth. In the case of these laws, the costs clearly outweigh the benefits (which are especially minimal due to the inability to enforce them), and having unacceptable laws chips away at the credibility of the legal system.
The legal system has problems of its own too. There are clear patterns in certain groups getting far more punished, be it based on race or socioeconomic status. Now although this could happen just by strict adherence to enforcing the law, it undermines the legal system's stance as a moral delegate of justice if it appears that one group of people is being unjustly focused for punishment. Now clearly the fault for these patterns lie with many others beyond the actual legal system, such as with the individuals, the education system, the cultural systems, both within the criminal class and within the non-criminal classes, and so on and so forth, there is responsibility lying with the legal system. If the legal system is to the purpose of protecting us as well as it can, then the rates of people being readmitted after release are appalling. This is because it shows that clearly the legal system is not doing its job, especially when it's complemented by us having the highest rate of incarcerations, despite other societies seemingly functioning relatively crime free without such incarceration rates. This shows that people are being released when they're still threats to society, and that people are incarcerated when they are not threats to society.
I believe very strongly in rehabilitation programs in prisons. We lose nothing from reinvesting our money into rehabilitation, and we gain so much from having people who otherwise are criminals becoming morally stable, hard working, tax paying members of society. Thus, from a rational perspective, it's ridiculous to not focus justice on rehabilitation.
Although my arguments may seem to have a pattern going to them, arguing that we need fewer laws, more judicial freedom, rehabilitation based justice, this is not a soft on crime liberal stance I am arguing. I believe very strongly in enforcement of laws. I believe that if a person is still gonna be a criminal upon being released, the criminal should not be released. In a better system I might support use of the death penalty. We need more police, and if need be more prisons. We need a good system of laws that is vigorously enforced. Harsher penalties are obviously deterents from crime, and should be used when neccisary.
But what I have argued is essential in allowing a legal system to be both just and effective. There is no use in trying to make it appear as if we are tougher in crime if in effect it makes us weaker in our stance to prevent crime.
And it is appalling what I see in our system, both in what is done, and what is suggested that we do. And this goes for both sides of the political spectrum (as always).
Laws have to be enforcable and enforced. It shouldn't be a great leap of faith to agree that the quality of our legal system is weighed both by the quality of the laws, and of the quality of enforcement. And it is because one of these requirements requires us to use nuance, and acknowledge the complexity of society, a large segment of the population is lost there, and since the other requirement requires us to do things that may not on the surface apprear right, most of what's left is lost there.
We have to accept that some people may not be curable, some because they're genuinely incapable, and some because they have no desire to be cured. And it is tragic that this is the case, but this is the case. If we are not strong enough as a people to accept that some people should not be let around the rest of people, then we cannot have a government.
That being said, every situation is different, and legality does not equate with morality. This means that, to the question "Is this the right thing to do?" "No, because it's illegal" is not an appropriate answer. This also is what makes things like mandatory minimums ridiculous, since all they do is remove the system's ability to respond to any given situation correctly. Essentially the argument for mandatory minimums is "I, someone who knows nothing about this case, am in a better position to decide what an appropriate punishment is than you, a judge who has actually heard this case." Now I'll admit readily that judges overstep their bounds more than once in a while, but a system of judges is better than a machine trying to deal with human problems.
A root problem is we try to legislate too much. Once law reached a point when it started legislating against business interactions between a willing buyer and seller with no immidiate threat to anyone not participating in the transaction, it crossed the line. Alcahol prohibition, drug prohibition, prostitution prohibition, "sin taxes", and so on and so forth, are huge steps towards undermining our legal system. These laws are terribly hard to enforce (which equates to hardly ever actually enforced), since there is no victim. No one's gonna go to the police about this crime, and it's possible for the crime, and all of its after effects, to happen without anyone other than the buyer and seller knowing. When there is a law that is well known, and is one of the police forces primary objectives, and it still goes unstopped, this undermines the police force as a whole. To avoid this this leads to numerous violations of rights on which our society was founded, but which are neccisary to do a little more in trying to enfore unenforcable laws.
Also, it undermines law in general. For a society to be a society of laws, it is essential that the society, as a whole, respects these laws. To explore why this is wrong, we have to look at law as a concept. Law is people sacrificing freedom to protect safety and order. From this we can take that if a person is rational, the benefit from having this law has to outweigh the cost of the freedom sacrificed to have this law for the law to be viewed as acceptable. Since freedom is more of an intangible concept, its real effects can be extremely varied, from actually being a pothead, thus having a defining aspect of your life in opposition to the law, to not liking the effects of spending billions of dollars in attempts to stop this, to not liking having to take drug tests, and being treated like a criminal, in order to get a job, and so on and so forth. In the case of these laws, the costs clearly outweigh the benefits (which are especially minimal due to the inability to enforce them), and having unacceptable laws chips away at the credibility of the legal system.
The legal system has problems of its own too. There are clear patterns in certain groups getting far more punished, be it based on race or socioeconomic status. Now although this could happen just by strict adherence to enforcing the law, it undermines the legal system's stance as a moral delegate of justice if it appears that one group of people is being unjustly focused for punishment. Now clearly the fault for these patterns lie with many others beyond the actual legal system, such as with the individuals, the education system, the cultural systems, both within the criminal class and within the non-criminal classes, and so on and so forth, there is responsibility lying with the legal system. If the legal system is to the purpose of protecting us as well as it can, then the rates of people being readmitted after release are appalling. This is because it shows that clearly the legal system is not doing its job, especially when it's complemented by us having the highest rate of incarcerations, despite other societies seemingly functioning relatively crime free without such incarceration rates. This shows that people are being released when they're still threats to society, and that people are incarcerated when they are not threats to society.
I believe very strongly in rehabilitation programs in prisons. We lose nothing from reinvesting our money into rehabilitation, and we gain so much from having people who otherwise are criminals becoming morally stable, hard working, tax paying members of society. Thus, from a rational perspective, it's ridiculous to not focus justice on rehabilitation.
Although my arguments may seem to have a pattern going to them, arguing that we need fewer laws, more judicial freedom, rehabilitation based justice, this is not a soft on crime liberal stance I am arguing. I believe very strongly in enforcement of laws. I believe that if a person is still gonna be a criminal upon being released, the criminal should not be released. In a better system I might support use of the death penalty. We need more police, and if need be more prisons. We need a good system of laws that is vigorously enforced. Harsher penalties are obviously deterents from crime, and should be used when neccisary.
But what I have argued is essential in allowing a legal system to be both just and effective. There is no use in trying to make it appear as if we are tougher in crime if in effect it makes us weaker in our stance to prevent crime.
posted by Galen at 2:09 PM
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