Judicial Corporal Punishment

[solicitr]

Or get to sleep at night? The principal reason I got out of criminal law, my friend. It tends to sour one on human nature.

But do please give me credit for having known a lot more criminals than most folks here.

[Dave_LF]

These discussions leave me torn between my near-complete intolerance for the criminal personality and the deep mistrust I have for those responsible for doling punishment out in my country. If the American Executives torture people when corporal punishment is illegal, what would they do if it weren't?

I think I agree with Jn that enforced restitution is the best idea, inasmuch as it is possible. I'd want to see repeat and particularly egregious offenders removed from society permanently in one manner or another, though.

[solicitr]

Oh, no! Not the Nazi analogy again!

And yet what can you say when confronted with this New York Times headline of December 21, 1924:

"Hitler Tamed By Prison; Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria."

The correspondent explains that Hitler, once a demigod for the extreme right, was released on parole from the Landsberg fortress where he had been sent for trying to overthrow the democratic German government in what has come to be known as the Beerhouse Putsch.

Prison, the article continues, seems to have moderated him. The authorities were convinced that he presented no further danger to the existing society. In fact, it was expected that he would abandon public life and return to his native land, Austria.

Well, that problem was certainly solved easily.

[Ethel]

Oh, no! Not the Nazi analogy again!

And yet what can you say when confronted with this New York Times headline of December 21, 1924:

"Hitler Tamed By Prison; Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria."

The correspondent explains that Hitler, once a demigod for the extreme right, was released on parole from the Landsberg fortress where he had been sent for trying to overthrow the democratic German government in what has come to be known as the Beerhouse Putsch.

Prison, the article continues, seems to have moderated him. The authorities were convinced that he presented no further danger to the existing society. In fact, it was expected that he would abandon public life and return to his native land, Austria.

Well, that problem was certainly solved easily.

What do you think the German government should have done instead?

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

My objection to corporal and capital punishment is based on what it does to us, the society that administers the punishment, not what it does to the perpetrator. I believe we are a better society overall for foreswearing such punishments.
As to how to deal with crime and what to do with criminals when we have identified them; I think that pragmatic and eclectic borrowings from low-crime societies across the world, both large and small is the answer. One has to identify correctly what precisely are the factors that lead to low crime and that is easier said than done. The temptations of ideology are obvious.
I see no reason why a criminal should not have a life-time obligation to make restitution within the community rather than in prison for the crimes they may have committed.

[vison]

The trick is finding a way to stop making new sociopaths

Somthing humanity has been notably unsuccessful at for the last, oh, ten thousand years. Preaching the Golden Rule for two of those millenia hasn't helped much either.

I'm afraid that sociopaths or even petty criminals, like earthquakes and tsunamis, are an ineluctable fact. The temptations and rewards of crime are too great. I happen to favor long prison terms, not because they either deter or rehabilitate, but because they serve as a quarantine. (I also bitterly oppose restoring voting rights to felons- why should those who hold society's laws in contempt be permitted to make them? But I'm afraid that the temptation to create tens of thousands of new Democratic voters is far to great.)

You're right as far as you're right, but you're wrong in the long run, solictr. Most people are NOT sociopaths and most people behave decently because they are decent people, by and large. It is not and never has been "fear of the law" that has kept me on the straight and narrow. I have broken the law countless times, as no doubt you have, too. It all depends on which laws and where. I'm white and well-off and can speak and read English well and have generations of decent people behind me.

I don't know about the US, but in Canada a disproportionate percentage of the prison population is First Nations men, and many of them - a majority of them, are victims of FAS.

America has more people in prison than any other nation. Is that something you can be proud of?

[solicitr]

America has more people in prison than any other nation. Is that something you can be proud of?

No, of course not: but neither is it a club with which to beat the USA, as if it represents some sort of tyranny (btw, are you sure China doesn't have more?)

It reflects the simple fact that, at least not long ago, we had more criminals per capita than most other nations. If a nation has suffered an epidemic, it's a cause for neither pride nor shame that the hospitals are full.

One of the reasons, indeed a principal reason, was the adoption from the 1960's onward of 'progressive' (read softly-softle) theories of penalogy. By the time those policies were reversed, in the late 80s, we had an immense number of criminals to be caged.

Since then, however, the number has been in steep decline (while I don't deny other factors have been involved). In fact the US crime rate is now lower than the increasingly violent UK's (assuming you don't believe the official NuLab statistics, which nobody does).

In other words, the prison population is a symtom, not a cause. It may even be part of the (partial) cure: not because it really deters (it doesn't), but because it serves as a quarantine of an infectious social virus.

[Túrin Turambar]

As to how to deal with crime and what to do with criminals when we have identified them; I think that pragmatic and eclectic borrowings from low-crime societies across the world, both large and small is the answer.

And I'm advocating some pragmatic borrowing from Malaysia and Singapore, which have very low crime rates .

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

But can you isolate the corporal punishment aspect of these societies from all the other factors? This is why I said the temptations of ideology are obvious.
I don't know about Malaysia, though my son's girlfriend is Malaysian. I can ask her when she gets back from holiday. I saw an explanation of Singapore's draconian social regulation once. The city was expanding with countless apartment blocks and an influx of rural people with less than ideal social standards and it was their way of enforcing rules of behaviour that would not degrade the new neighbourhoods.
I would not wish to live under such a regime by the way.

[Impenitent]

It seems counter-intuitive to me to isolate one particular form of punishment as the most significant element to explain a low-crime society. There are so many other cultural factors to consider in any society that may be far more important than their punitive approaches to law-breaking - including such factors as family relationships, education, cultural norms, religious influences etc.

I've had no exposure to any statistics or causal analyses, so I'm not willing to judge, even from a purely practical view, whether it would lower crime rates, but I don't like the principal of using violence from a position of power in order to control.

[Túrin Turambar]

Obviously you can't isolate one factor (I was being facetious). That said, I hope to be able to come and tell you all about how effective corporal punishment, forced labour and restitution schemes are in a few months.

[Impenitent]

I look forward to reading about your findings as the idea is intriguing even though it repels me as being a barbarian solution.

[solicitr]

Who knows? Why is Sweden's murder rate three times that of Norway?

[sauronsfinger]

Because the USA permits a very wide exercise of personal freedom, I do not find it alarming or hypocritical that the USA has a large prison population. It seems to me that allowing freedom has its risks and that is one of them.

On the subject of corporal punishment - I find it repulsive and somewhat barbaric that we would decide that physically beating or even torturing someone will make for a better society. However, I do not object to capital punishment - quickly applied - as a punishment for those who violate societies most serious laws.

I think of it this way. Let us say you purchased an older home and are ready to move in to it today. You go from the closing and signing of papers to the house and when you enter the most horrid stench hits you right in the nostrils. You find out that the toilets in the home are filled with waste and have not been flushed in weeks.

What is the first thing you would do?

Flush.

In fact, flushing is one of the things in that little book about Everything I learned I Learned in Kindergarten.

Why, when we find six feet of stacked human waste stinking up our communities do we no flush?

[Primula Baggins]

Because human beings are not equivalent to human waste?

[sauronsfinger]

But what happens when one proves themselves to be no better?

I would maintain that someone with a record of brutal murders or a long record of sexual assaults on young children is indeed six feet of stacked waste.

[vison]

But what happens when one proves themselves to be no better?

I would maintain that someone with a record of brutal murders or a long record of sexual assaults on young children is indeed six feet of stacked waste.

How very true. But such criminals are not the majority.

solictr, sometimes I'm surprised that I find something to agree with in what you say. Mostly, though, your notions are so utterly predictable and so opposed to my opinions that it's laughable.

And your notions of how the US is making up for some past softenesses by present toughness is - um - exactly predictable. Of course that's the way you think. Who would have thought otherwise?

But it has absolutely nothing to do with the facts.

[sauronsfinger]

Yes Vison- I agree that such criminals are not the majority. Very very true.

But there are the occassional Charles Mansons. Or Richard Speck. or that fellow in Europe who imprisoned and raped his own daughter for twenty years. When we find someone like that - why should society pay for that person for the next thirty, forty or fifty years?

[solicitr]

But it has absolutely nothing to do with the facts.

Aside, of course, from the fact that crime steadily rose and has since steadily fallen.

Tell me, vision, how many criminals have you conducted interviews with?

[Ellienor]

Aside, of course, from the fact that crime steadily rose and has since steadily fallen.

Read the book Freakonomics, Soli? Economist makes a pretty well researched argument for the lowering in crime rate being directly related to legalized abortion--basically, women having abortions tend to be single and/or poor; children of single moms and/or poor families tend to disproportionately grow up to be criminals; most crime is committed by late teens and early twenties age people; and the lowering of the crime rate correlates precisely with the children not being born starting in about '72 and that age group.