PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT. Our own Aeronmelon is going through some shit at the moment and could use some help. Check it out here and consider an upvote or a comment to push it into activity. Sorry, not something I do often or will be spamming. But I care about my friend and if I can get a couple more eyes on his situation then I’m going to try to do what I can. (Last one I promise. Just twice. Not going to spam but dude is a big part of the Lemmy community, especially with Trek, and he deserves the help. And to the mods, if this doesn’t fit and you want to remove? Go for it. I completely understand it and I am sorry)
Edit: Oh wait I’m the mod here. Well, I say it is fine
One of the most important questions you can ask yourself when you start thinking like this is: will further punishment help? Added bonus for actually looking up if it will, because it turns out there’s research on it.
I don’t want pedophiles to suffer nearly as much as I want them to not hurt children. And if not hurting children levels are the same I’d rather the justice system be fully and wholly dedicated to rehabilitation and taking the most possible care of its wards.
There’s been an obsession in the past decade or two with crime and punishment and it’s become bipartisan and terrifying. It’s part of the fascistic milleu where there’s a growing cruelty and “us vs them” thinking in all levels of society.
There is a tragically high recidivism rate for sexual predators, which is probably the best argument for long sentences: there aren’t many opportunities to abuse children in prison.
Though the American rehabilitation system is pretty weak in general, other nations have had much better results. Norway has a sex crime recidivism rate below 10% (vs 67% in the US).
So the solution still isn’t punishment?
Yeah, the solution is to have a functioning rehabilitation system. But in the US, with the system we currently have, it doesn’t seem to make a difference how long you keep them there. We actually have a higher recidivism from our rehabilitation than from doing nothing at all.
So, in order of effectiveness:
The only benefit to a long sentence is that it reduces the number of years they can spend harming children, though there’s a fairly high chance they abuse fellow inmates instead, who could then become abusers themselves once they get out, so the whole thing is fucked and stupid.
I’ve seen that debunked as a myth, so we shouldn’t be so confident. A quick web search reveals a review of crime statistics finding lower than average recidivism rates & a comprehensive overview of the scientific literature finding the older studies that drew your conclusion to be fundamentally flawed & the concept of a base rate of sexual recidivism to be built on sand (unfounded assumptions driven by biased pseudoscience & government pressure rather than science). The latter includes gems like
It also points out that the definition of sexual offense is a moving target since research began, especially with conduct that was an offense before & is now legal.
Huh, well I took criminology in 2006 so I guess I’m out of date on that. I’m glad it’s not as bad as expected; I still think the US in particular has a long way to go in regards to rehabilitation.
It’s also strangely cultural, where it seems that some countries have substantially lower rates of offenders and others much higher. It just seems like the systems here perpetuate the crimes in a way; like the abuse of children is this curse inherent to capitalistic christian patriarchy.
The key word here is predator. Not everyone who commits a sex offence is a predator. You can be convicted of a sex crime for public urination.
A sexual predator is pretty much a serial offender by definition. So the claim that these people would have high recidivism rates should not be surprising.
Not much of one. Is there a reliable scientific definition for it & is there good quality scientific research supporting your claim that isn’t outdated?
If your definition of predator is tautological (eg, those highly likely to reoffend), then why limit your argument to only sexual predators?
As pointed out by the comprehensive overview linked before, a problem with your claim is that there is no static & fixed propensity to reoffend even when narrowed by type of offense. The idea of a static & fixed propensity first began to unravel when researchers noticed risk to reoffend vary with offender age
Then they noticed rates vary by their developmental periods
Examining dynamic aspects of human lives led researchers to reconsider
Newer research finds these dynamic risk factors affect the rate of sexual recidivism, which can reach quite low, so it isn’t simply a fixed, static rate.
Predicting who will be a sexual recidivist (if that concept is scientifically valid) isn’t straightforward, so a tautological definition of predator doesn’t get us far.
It wasn’t my argument. You originally replied to someone else. I think the statement is almost a tautology.
Punishment as deterrence has some validity too. But past a certain point, amping up the punishment isn’t going deter any more people, and could interfere with rehabilitation. Most US sentences are well beyond that point though. Restorative justice is also important, but shouldn’t put the perpetrator in anything like an indentured servitude situation where they’d be unable to support themselves.
I think the value of punishment is in empowering the victim or making an example.
The value to the victim in punishment is in reclaiming agency. If the state punishes someone, the victim gets nothing. It’s a waste. Maybe less than a waste; the opportunity for personal revenge for a personal wrong is lost.
Some things will not be deterred by consequences, imposed or otherwise, and the victim can’t/won’t take agency from revenge, so punishing them is absurd.
Sometimes you just need a fucker gone. Nazis and stuff. It’s not about punishment, unless you’re trying to deter. It’s about not having that in the world and being unable or unwilling to spend the resources to fix the problem in a more wholesome way.
Even then, is the value worth the cost? The mechanisms of organized punishment and deprivation existing? The culture of interpersonal violence? Generally no. But the discourse about ‘crime’ ignores literally fucking all of this.
Yep, that where I’m at. Not going to bother with justifications, I see someone evil, they deserve to die. For too long people have tried to maintain the moral high ground against monsters, but the revelation is that you really don’t have to argue against them. There is no reason to tolerate them. In todays society, if you havent seen the error of your ways already, why should it become my job to educate you? And if you need education to correct your mistakes, then thats an ongoing issue. If you have to be told now that its not ok to bomb hospitals because the people are brown, then youll have to be told 20 years from now that its not ok to bomb hospitals because the people are jewish.
If you are willing to be evil, no moral grandstanding or truthful argument will stop you. Don’t educate nazis, and racists, and fascists, remove them as a problem for the now and for future generations.
ahem legally
Uh, feel like you’re missing my point.
I think I might be too. I see two points, it seems you’re implying the victim should be allowed to seek revenge, which I personally dont care about so long as the revenge is done, but I understand that we differ.
More importantly, you were musing on the idea that the value in criminal systems lays in removing a chronic issue from the populace. In that I agree, although I would add that the act is self-justifying, and that you need not be personally wronged to be justified in removing a problem.
Edit: self-justifying in the sense that when people find out what you have done, there should be no legal or societal represcussions and you shouldn’t even have to explain your reasoning. No different from squishing a bug, no one is likely to stop you.
I think revenge only has value as revenge if it comes from the victim.
‘Evil’ is kinda stupid
And ‘removing’ is what you so when you can’t fix. Like, don’t replace if you can recycle. If youre just murdering everyone who you don’t like, I think that’s bad.
I’m not sure if it does even then…there are so many accounts of people taking revenge and it not giving them any sort of actual ‘relief’ or closure long-term after all.
Certainly not always, but it never does when the state does it.
Ah, nevermind then. It seems we have complete disagreement.
‘revenge’ is valued through the nature of the act. If you know that wronging someone is to have consequences, that acts as a deterrant. But more importantly, it artificially imposes a moral imperitive. You wrong someone, you must be for your misdeed. To allow the victim to participate in the act is as best meaningless, their satisfaction is not why justice is being dealt. At worst, it justifies their darker impulses and could corrupt otherwise good people.
Yeah, “evil” is anyone i disagree with. I have achieved my views through discussion with many people from many walks of life, and through witnessing societal interaction, and by self analyzing intensely. I am fully prepared to defend my views as just and correct, as well as give logical reasoning behind why my views are correct. If my views were deemed to be incorrect, i wouldnt have them. In other words, if you dont want to be deemed evil, stop making objectively bad decisions.
Yep, removing is what you do to things you cant fix. We probably could fix these people, open up their brains and physically reprogram them to remove things like racism, sexism, and othering. But people seem unwilling to actually fix the problem, so more dramatic steps must be taken in the short term until we have a more stable society that is able and willing to engage in progressivism.
And again, its not that I want to murder anyone, and im certainly not planning to do so unless someone attempts to infringe upon my rights as an American citizen or rights as a human being. But someone needs to remove these people because fixing them has proven to not be a viable strategy.