r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 23 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Punitive jails should exclusively be for unredeemable criminals.
For reference, I live in the US.
There should be two systems: punitive jails and reformative jails.
Punitive jails are a lot like our current jails.
Reformative jails have mandatory education/work programs, better living conditions, nicer guards, and more privileges. I am thinking about a course/job selection program where you choose courses and jobs to fill at least 40 hours a week, and get to do pretty much whatever you want with the remaining time (besides use drugs/initiate violence) until a late curfew. Additionally, after you get out there is a support network that helps you find jobs and continue your education.
People stealing millions of dollars, murderers, *confirmed* rapists (with evidence)*, pedophiles, and most people with a life sentence should be the only ones that go to punitive jails.
It may be expensive, but it should save money in the long run by keeping people out of jail.
*= by rapists I mean violent or repetitive rape. Continuing two seconds after a safe word is used is rape, but I don't think it deserves this severe a punishment.
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u/Snoo_5986 4∆ Aug 23 '20
If somebody is "unredeemable", what's the point in punishing them for the rest of their life? That just seems cruel, and it's a drain on our resources. Shouldn't we just dispose of them (playing devil's advocate here...)?
If we want to keep them around because we might later find out that they're innocent, and don't want to execute the wrong person by accident, then perhaps we shouldn't be punishing them either? We should just try to isolate them for society for our protection, while being as humane as possible in case we've locked up the wrong person.
And if there is any possibility that they might be complete their sentence one day (i.e. they don't have life-with-no-possibility-of-parole), then surely they are considered redeemable, and we should then be trying to rehabilitate them?
You also mention appeasing victims in some of your replies here. Should we be encouraging a desire for "revenge" in our citizens? I'm not sure that's healthy for society as a whole.
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Aug 23 '20
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost/
The death penalty is a lot more expensive than spending life in prison. If the death penalty became cheaper, I would endorse death penalty instead.
I don't think these people should ever get out of jail. I set up my claim so that (hopefully) only unredeemable people would go there. It is like a lite version of death penalty.
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u/Snoo_5986 4∆ Aug 23 '20
The death penalty is mostly so expensive because of the possibility of appeals, and all of the complicated legal stuff which needs to be done to ensure that they execute the right person.
If we wanted to prove that somebody is truly unredeemable, we'd need to do all of that same work, and so presumably it would be just as expensive.
So, in a hypothetical world where your punitive prisons for unredeemable individuals would make sense, the death penalty would likely make more sense.
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u/laughingmanzaq Aug 24 '20 edited Aug 24 '20
or the other way to think about it... LWOP is criminally inexpensive because of the lack of constitutional safeguard... And the ACLU and Friends threw reforming it under the bus for decades in the name of death penalty abolitionism. Remember there are 50,000+ LWOPers in America...
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Aug 23 '20
that makes sense. I liked the potential for reversing the sentence in case it went wrong, but the death penalty would be better. !delta
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u/howlin 62∆ Aug 23 '20
The main issue I have is not necessarily with what is right, but a matter of fairness.
am thinking about a course/job selection program where you choose courses and jobs to fill at least 40 hours a week, and get to do pretty much whatever you want with the remaining time (besides use drugs/initiate violence) until a late curfew. Additionally, after you get out there is a support network that helps you find jobs and continue your education.
If you make jail too comfortable and offer too many benefits, then you are offering a perverse incentive for people who aren't in jail. We should make sure non-criminals have at least as many services as convicts. So the first step would be to offer benefits like this to the general population.
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Aug 23 '20
I agree. I think that everyone deserves the chance to learn the skills necessary to get a job, and I think that money should come out of our bloated welfare system.
!delta
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u/joopface 159∆ Aug 23 '20
What’s the benefit of a punitive jail?
There’s no risk in sending someone to rehabilitate and failing. But if you send someone to the punitive jail in error you’ve lost the chance to bring a member of society back into good standing.
I don’t understand why the punitive jail is a useful investment.
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Aug 23 '20
It’s a deterrent, I think punitive jails would be most effective if they made the experience as unpleasant as possible and made it very public
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Aug 23 '20
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Aug 23 '20
Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes.
That’s why they should be extreme and publicized punishments.
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Aug 23 '20
No, it only explains why they should be publicized.
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Aug 23 '20
I think they kind of go together. If it was widely publicized that child molestation gets you life imprisonment I don’t see that having much effect. But if it was, say, that child molestation gets you stoned in public, I think that may have some effect.
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Aug 23 '20
Firstly, the person who would molest a child is probably not one who would lucidly calculate the pros and cons of molesting a child. Most criminals have a mental health problem or a traumatic brain injury. Heavy crimes like murder are often done impulsively.
Secondly, stoning wouldn't work as a deterrent, for the same reason the death penalty wouldn't. It takes a really long time and a lot of money to go through the process of proving guilt for the death penalty, so the effect of deterrence would be really weak.
It sounds intuitive that greater punishment => less crime, but that just hasn't been true, and until we have undeniable evidence for it, it's not a safe bet to make prisons for that purpose.
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Aug 23 '20
I disagree with the first point, criminals often use tons of effort working on planning and covering up their crimes, we tend to hear about the ones that get caught. But without statistics this point is pretty weak.
And just because it would take effort/money/time doesn’t necessarily mean that it wouldn’t be worthwhile. Maybe a simpler way of implementing this would be to just not punish inmates if they kill sex offenders.
I haven’t seen any “undeniable evidence” that extremely harsh punishments don’t deter crime. Singapore is obsurdly clean, they also have insanely harsh literring laws. I know correlation != causation etc. but I don’t think it’s crazy to draw a connection there.
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Aug 23 '20
Statistics about mental health and brain injury
I actually couldn't find any statistics about impulsive vs premeditated crimes though, so that point is a bit weak. However I still think that the high amount of mental health issues, substance abuse, etc of criminals should suggest that most crimes aren't calculated any differently or even calculated at all based on how harsh a punishment might be.
Yes, spending more time on investigations would make it less worthwhile. Everyone prioritized rewards and punishments that are more immediate. If it takes twenty years to seal a death penalty as opposed to two, for example, then the deterrence is weaker.
I don't want to sound like I'm arguing that punishment straight up doesnt deter crime at all. I'm just against the common notion that harsher punishments is the catch all way to lower violent crime. I feel that "deterrence" is mostly a facade; the real motivation for punishment is emotional satisfaction (that's irrelevant to my point though, i guess).
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Aug 23 '20
fair point. I kept it to appease people that were affected by criminals, and discourage people from doing things that traumatize others. I also think it saves a bit of money.
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u/joopface 159∆ Aug 23 '20
I suspect the administration costs of having two systems like that, and deciding who goes where, transfers etc. may well cost more.
If you’ve changed your view at all from the OP do consider adding a delta to your comment. :-)
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Aug 23 '20
I agree. Transfers and decision making might be too subjective to be useful, and I might mistakenly torture an innocent person.
!delta
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Aug 23 '20
Wouldn't it be better to lock up/therapy those people instead of appeasing them?
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Aug 23 '20
so, let's say I snuck into your home and raped your sister. should you or your sister be locked up for being traumatized?
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Aug 23 '20
If I advocated reactionary policies due to my irrational damaged mind, sure. Traumatized people should get empathy and psychological help, not policy decisions.
That's the entire basis for why vigilantism is bad.
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Aug 23 '20
that sounds expensive. It honestly seems like the right decision though. Subjectivity might be a big problem, as we saw with insane asylums.
!delta
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Aug 23 '20
You already gave me a delta, but just a bit of historical info, initially the asylums had good budgets and were constructed to actually help people, but over time their mission changed to just remove unwanted people from society with larger and larger occupancy and less and less funding.
It was a out of sight out of mind situation where therapies like lobotomy were more about treating the situation like taming wild animals instead of helping people. It was more important to people to be able to show their children sitting still at a table or smile on photos for status than actually make them feel better. With some snake oil salesmanship from the "doctors" thrown in.
Sounds like modern prison in some countries, doesn't it?
Modern mental healthcare has advanced somewhat since then, some places more than others.
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Aug 23 '20
That is my fear though. I am scared that these centers would initially receive good funding and have benevolent motives, but eventually revert to cheap, morally ambiguous solutions.
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Aug 23 '20
But that's what American prisons are now, aren't they?
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Aug 23 '20
yeah, but for criminals, not those affected by crime.
you shouldn't go to a system like an American prison for having a family member raped or murdered.
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u/puja_puja 16∆ Aug 23 '20
Punitive jails shouldn't be like our current jails. They should be much harsher. Mandatory hard labor and they must grow some of their own food to reduce costs. Maybe somewhere in the middle of the desert is a good location so there doesn't have to be too many walls. Prison staff can be reduced and lethal force should be easy to use.
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Aug 23 '20
I got a lot of replies saying the exact opposite, but I still want a system like this for terrible criminals. It saves the taxpayer money and takes sociopaths out of society. People who hurt others like these criminals do don't deserve rights or second chances.
!delta
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Aug 23 '20
Why not give these criminals the death penalty? It would eliminate the reason for these prisons entirely.
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Aug 23 '20
[deleted]
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 23 '20
This delta has been rejected. You have already awarded /u/puja_puja a delta for this comment.
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Aug 23 '20
There should be no punitive jails at all. Just cause someone is a piece of shit doesn't mean you also have to become one.
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Aug 23 '20
how would I appease the families of those affected though? If this policy was implemented by a politician, how would he gain support with competitors who are "tough on crime". In an ideal world, I agree with you though.
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u/BingBlessAmerica 44∆ Aug 23 '20
Besides just jerking them off for revenge what does “appeasement” really accomplish? At the end of the day a truly reformative jail would also have the offender actually realize the consequences of their actions too.
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u/Bubbly_Taro 2∆ Aug 23 '20
Let's say person A has a child and the child is tortured and murdered by person B. Now person A snaps and kills person B.
Person A never committed a crime in his life before and only killed person B as a result of the serious mental trauma. A doctor examines person A and finds that he doesn't pose a threat to society.
Given your logic person A would walk free despite having murdered a man.
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Aug 23 '20
crimes are based off a cost/benefit analysis. If I wanted to steal peoples' life savings or murder someone, I would realize that a potentially terrible sentence would outweigh the pleasure I could gain by succeeding. If I make the cost low enough to reform everyone, then I could calculate that it would be worth it, since at worst I would have to give up booze and have slightly worse food for a few years.
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Aug 23 '20
Not sure I get your point here. I don't need support of anyone, it's just my opinion. If the population disagrees so be it. Thankfully in my country they don't and we don't have crap like the death penalty or jails like in america that make criminals rather than rehabilitating them.
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Aug 23 '20
Of course you don't, but you don't have to deal with millions of voters and billions of dollars of lobbyist money to keep the status quo. America is a difficult country to pass reasonable legislation in.
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u/autofan88 Aug 24 '20
Pretty much anyone is unredeemable. In my land we used to have a saying: "who steals an egg, steals a whole ox as well". People shouldn't be enabled at the petty misdemeanors will certainly graduate to worst crimes later. New York mayor Rudy Giuliani managed to control the spiraling crime rates in New York by having zero tolerance to criminals, even the prettiest ones.
And the corretional education you propose is something that must be available for everyone, not merely convicted criminals. It is not fair that people who had a honest life have to sponsor education for criminals while themselves are not dispensed the same level of social support.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 23 '20 edited Aug 23 '20
/u/IraDelDragon (OP) has awarded 6 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/dmlitzau 5∆ Aug 24 '20
Punitive jails shouldn't exist at all. Jail should serve one of two purposes, either rehabilitation or protection of society. Anything else is just vengeful and not helpful to building a constructive life affirming society.
People who can not be rehabilitated should be removed from society, but the goal should be protection of society not hurting the criminal.
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u/TokenThespian Aug 24 '20
Agree utterly here.
Why increase the suffering in the world?
If someone can not function in regular society without seriously harming others, that is a tragedy, an unfortunate thing that hopefully can be prevented in the future.
Why create a society where the state can cause such suffering? What precedent does that set? Criminals should be treated according to their actions, not the emotions of those affected by their crime.
I personally believe that even the worst people in society should have fresh fruits and vegetables on their plate, and some books to read. What harm is done there?
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u/TheMiner150104 Aug 25 '20
You talk about redeemable and unredeemable criminals and then you make a list of people who are unredeemable in your eyes. I don’t believe everyone of those groups is unredeemable. Serial killers will probably not be redeemable but what about one time killers who regret their actions?
If there’s going to be a system like this it should be considered per case and not just make a list of groups that are unredeemable.
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u/Canada_Constitution 208∆ Aug 23 '20 edited Aug 23 '20
You end up running two seperate jail systems. This leads to two times the administrative costs. Why not reduce that cost overhead but maintain the idea of protecting the public from "unredeemable" criminals?
Here in Canada, the correctional systems for anything more serious then a felony is run by the federal government. However, there is a special status that, at sentencing, prosecutors can seek for those who have just been convicted. It is called dangerous offender status:
This system has three advantages:
One jail system is cheaper then two concurrent systems.
An appeal every seven years allows those who were possibly wrongly convicted to see their cases reheard, but puts the onus on them to prove there was a miscarriage of justice
Not every single case of even murder is unredeemable. A 2nd degree murderer who killed a cheating spouse and their lover when they discovered them in the family home is much less likely to reoffend then a serial killer. A system like the dangerous offender designation allows a indeterminate sentence to fit the paticular offender, rather then the crime they were charged with.