Why justice is bad.

Post Reply New Topic

Frances,

My brothers have criminal records, and I was often rounded up with them for questioning just because we happened to be related.

I was also tasked in the Navy with transporting criminal offenders from the municipal jails to the brig on base, and NONE of those pigs deserved any "kinder and gentler" treatment; not only did they disgrace the uniforms they were wearing, but they never seem to grasp the concept that (1) they had just broken the law, and (2) they had just ruined any chances for a promotion or an Honorable Discharge until I had signed them over to the MAAs. Not to mention the verbal abuse they heaped upon me for being a "Goody-goody suck-up sailor", simply because I stayed out of trouble and followed orders.

You should have seen them turn into whimpering cowards once the Chief Master-At-Arms got a-hold of them. Some even wet and/or soiled themselves the moment that they realized that this was Serious Business and that they were about to go through a regimen that makes boot camp look like a four-year-old's birthday party.

Crime is serious business, and criminals should not be coddled.

I've been making an argument for social justice, and it's really telling that certain people manage to completely completely fail to absorb the key points.
I guess that's bound to happen when people are reiterating talking points.

I really wish certain people wouldn't troll, or try to rid the place of ideological heresy's, or whatever it is they do here all day.

Do any of the people who are talking about giving criminals a kinder and gentler sentence or whatever actually know any criminals?

Yet McKean, by several measures, may well be the most successful medium-security prison in the country. Badly overcrowded, housing a growing number of violent criminals, it costs taxpayers approximately $15,370 a year for each inmate. That is below the average for prisons of its type, and far below the overall federal average of $21,350. It is about two thirds of what many state prisons cost. And the incident record since McKean opened, in 1989, reads like a blank slate: No escapes. No homicides. No sexual assaults. No suicides. In six years there have been three serious assaults on staff members and six recorded assaults on inmates. State prisons of comparable size often see that many assaults in a single week. The American Correctional Society has given McKean one of its highest possible ratings. No recidivism studies have been conducted on its former inmates, but senior staff members claim that McKean parolees return to prison far less often than those from other institutions, and a local parole officer agrees. According to the Princeton University criminologist John DiIulio, "McKean is probably the best-managed prison in the country. And that has everything to do with a warden named Dennis Luther."

Dennis Luther is a slim man of fifty with thinning brown hair and wide, curious eyes. He retired last July, after sixteen years as a warden. He dresses neatly in a jacket, a tie, and tasseled loafers, more like an English professor than a prison administrator. His movements are slow and deliberate, and his voice has an uncanny steadiness to it. He is not a large man, but it is easy to imagine him walking unarmed into the center of a prison riot and asking calmly to speak to the leaders. As a young man, Luther considered going into the ministry. He chose corrections instead, and soon came to believe that American prisons were unnecessarily brutal places, more likely to teach hatred and violence than remorse. But, he says, that insight did not lead him to a liberal philosophy of inmate rehabilitation. Instead he read up on business management. He saw no reason why ideas that had worked in the private sector could not be applied to prisons, to make them more cost-effective and more humane. What he came up with was a systematic approach to building something he calls "prison culture." All prisons, according to Luther, have a culture of some sort, but it is generally violent and abusive, based on gangs. Prison staffs are aware of this culture, but they are helpless to change it.

...

In some respects McKean is stricter than other prisons, because inmates are held to higher standards. Three years ago, after a few minor incidents, Luther imposed a condition known as "closed" movement, restricting inmates' activity during evening hours. The condition was meant to be permanent. A group of inmates asked him if he would restore "open" movement if the prison was incident-free for a period of ninety days. He agreed, and the prison has run on open movement ever since. Many McKean inmates will also say that they do not carry "shanks"--homemade knives or blades--because they don't need them. The McKean staff takes weapons very seriously, and inmates found with them will be prosecuted and put in isolation.

A sense of fairness has a deep biological basis and can be observed in other species. Justice is essential a systematized version of the idea of fairness. What constitutes injustice? What is an ethical societal response to individual and corporate injustice?

I'll try to clarify what i've been trying to say. The Justice system is cult like in various ways. The courthouse looks like an ancient Athenian temple, and often there is a statue of the personification of justice, Themis standing in front. The Judge and lawyers are like Oracles, Prophets, or the Pope. They are acting as the conduit between the god, and the public, telling us the will of Justice. They even wear ceremonial vestments. Furthermore, the Judge sits on a seat not unlike a throne, such as a priest might sit upon. The public see this and they subconsciously behave as if the pronouncements of the courthouse come from the god, and they therefore have faith in them.

Unfortunately, the justice system is often corrupt, and usually functions to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. It therefore requires some correction that is hindered by subconscious religious veneration of the institution.

Free from the mindset I've described, society might get over the compulsion generally of always needing to punish. This does not mean that I am suggesting that society would never need to punish people, just that it may have to do so less often.

Justice is bad

Revenge ain't a bad thing.

On another subject, Olive Oil, the "reefer" comment was intended to convey the point that when you make blanket statements about criminals being this and that, you are unwittingly including people whose crime was something like smoking a reefer in the wrong state, when I'm sure you're only talking about the kind of criminals who kill people and rob banks and so forth.

But is locking someone away for a decade a Fair and Just punishment? Sometimes, sure. There are unrepentant murderers like James Holmes of the Aurora Dark Knight shootings who will likely profit little from any other kind of punishment, but I'd say individuals like Holmes are outliers, statistical anomalies. Prison (and, by extension, the death penalty) are a simple removal of the "bad" element from society, placing it somewhere far away where most folks can forget about it. You don't improve the lot of criminals or society as a whole simply by tossing them aside, and criminals don't learn to be better in prison - if recidivism rates prove anything, it's that people in prison actually learn to be worse, because you're forcing them to hang around the worst elements of society, and no one cares enough to help.

Most people facing punishment at the hands of justice could do far better without our revenge-oriented mindset - it is Fair and Just to determine what caused these individuals to deviate from the law, and then to remedy that. Why did this person rob a liquor store? Are they poor? Do they need a job? Did they not hurt anyone? Slap an ankle bracelet on them, force them into a work-study / work-placement program, and keep them under house arrest for a year when they're not out doing court-approved activities. If you place them in a positive environment with a real legitimate (and expected) chance of self-improvement, most people will rise to the challenge and become productive citizens.

And if they don't? Hey, you've still got prison.

I'm telling you the home truth on this matter, and you can ask anybody whose been in the life about it, and if they know you and are being honest with you, they will tell you the same thing.

Prison works. Keep it. If you are going to commit a crime, watch your back and cover your bases. Or better yet, just don't do it.