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Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment.

For example, sending a drug addict to prison for 10 years doesn't do anything to alleviate the harm of the crime, and in fact is harmful in and of itself, just in a different way.

The law needs to maintain a much closer balance between hurting people and helping people. While hurting criminals does have a deterrent factor, we do have to make sure that after we hurt them we build them back up so they don't reoffend. In the long run, skipping the "build them back up" step is more dangerous than skipping the punishment step. Our laws currently falsely assume that skipping the punishment step is the most dangerous thing to do.

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> The solution is restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing the harm rather than punishment.

What's the repair/punishment for me smoking a joint on my front porch?

Repair is only applicable when there is victim. The other point is that certain acts can not be meaningfully repaired/repaid within our current societal context. I.e. How do you measure the repayment or actions-required to repair a life that is taken by someone?

I would argue indentured servitude is a valid way to go, but it makes people uncomfortable because they see it as slavery. Yet, keeping someone locked up in an unproductive cage, to watch them wither away is somehow "rehabilitating" them. It's not, it's punishing them, it's revenge.

> Yet, keeping someone locked up in an unproductive cage, to watch them wither away is somehow "rehabilitating" them.

I don't think most people claim its rehabilitation. I think the "rehabilitation" angle is political word play and would bet that most people who support harsh prison sentences see it (and support it) as punishment.

There's an element of doublethink, yes. But the entire system pretends to be about rehabilitation. The language is everywhere. Even prisons are "correctional facilities". It's troublesome because it makes it difficult to have a conversation about actual rehabilitation.

Interesting question - why is the "political wordplay" even necessary?

Many Prisoners are used as a source of virtually free labor already. Unfortunately this is being done as exploitation, without regard to how it may help or harm the prisoners used.

> I would argue indentured servitude is a valid way to go, but it makes people uncomfortable because they see it as slavery.

It's just slavery with extra steps.

Extra steps? I'm not sure I follow.

It's a Rick and Morty (TV show) reference.

EDIT: 02x06 - The Ricks Must Be Crazy, it's a very good ep.

Not just you would argue indentured servitude should be at least an option:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

> I would argue indentured servitude is a valid way to go, but it makes people uncomfortable because they see it as slavery

I don't see any discomfort presently, even though the constitution exempts prisoners from protection against slavery.The Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."[1]

1. Stolen from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037139

growing a new plant to replace the one you burned.

> growing a new plant to replace the one you burned.

I may just become a repeat offender.

What if someone maims me, or murders a close relative, and I feel the only way to repair the harm I've suffered is to punish the offender?

"Hurting criminals" isn't just done to deter future crimes, it's done to satisfy the needs of the victims.

It strikes me as inherently unproductive, on a societal level, to make vengeance a policy, as it so often results in a positive feedback loop of grievances. The grievances of the punished are not recognized as legitimate, so they're frequently displaced onto others, creating more desire for punishment and eventually more victims.

Admittedly, you're expressing a common sentiment. I've never been the victim of a violent crime, so I can't speak to the experience of feeling a need for satisfactory vengeance. But it seems to me to be one of the worse aspects of human nature, which we should seek to overcome through enacting laws seeking restorative justice, or at least non-vengeance based punishment systems. Unfortunately, the letter of the law has little to say about the underlying human desire for vengeance when wronged, and instead seems to often start from the axiom that satisfaction must be given. I wish this were more frequently and publicly questioned.

FYI, this is an excellent book on the subject: "Inferno: An Anatomy of American Justice" by Robert Ferguson (http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674728684)

Punishing such an offender does not repair the harm, the dead will not undead again and limbs will not grow back either. It's vengeance, plain and simple. Will the law and state exacting revenge make the victims feel better as a consolation prize? Probably not[1].

[1] http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/06/revenge.aspx

I've never understood this as an adult. It's fine to make someone else suffer because they did it to you? What reasonable person feels better because they see someone else suffer? What kind of logic is that?

Have you ever been seriously injured by a criminal or have had a loved one seriously injured by a criminal?

Vengeance is a perfectly natural and reasonable expectation of someone in such a situation and an essential element of justice. If the state doesn't provide it, people will take it into their own hands.

> Have you ever been seriously injured by a criminal or have had a loved one seriously injured by a criminal?

Yes, both.

> Vengeance is a perfectly natural and reasonable expectation of someone in such a situation

Natural, obviously (everything that occurs is "natural"; there is nothing but nature.)

Reasonable, no.

> and an essential element of justice.

This is a moral axiom that is far from universally accepted, rather than any kind of statement of verifiable fact.

> If the state doesn't provide it, people will take it into their own hands.

If the state doesn't provide it, some subset of victims will take it into their own hands (and even if the state does provide any particular version of "vengeance", some subset of victims will still take additional or differently-targeted vengeance into their own hands.)

There are lots of things some percentage of people will do on their own if the state doesn't do it for them, but that fact is not, in and of itself, support for the claim that the state doing those things is essential.

> What if someone maims me, or murders a close relative, and I feel the only way to repair the harm I've suffered is to punish the offender?

Repairing private harms isn't the purpose of the criminal justice system, its the purpose of the civil justice system, where imprisonment and capital punishment aren't even options.

The criminal justice system exist to address (whether in a punitive, restorative, or preventive sense), harms to society as a whole.

> "Hurting criminals" isn't just done to deter future crimes, it's done to satisfy the needs of the victims.

Hurting wrongdoers to "satisfy the needs of the victims" doesn't do much to satisfy actual needs of the victims, but does create a society with a lot more victims and wrongdoers.

Whether those needs ought to be satisfied is a question in its own right. How do we decide which needs should be satisfied and which shouldn't be? Not only that, but these needs arise out of attachment and clinging and a mind that has not been kept steady. Based on hate and delusion, in many cases.

I personally do not think that so much importance should be given to the mental state of people affected by trauma. I mean no offense to them, but due to inadequate training in dealing with emotions (which pretty much everyone lacks) their minds are often affected and not kept steady.

I suspect that this is one of the reasons why we don't let victims decide penalties. But judges and especially juries can be affected by outrage, hatred and delusion too. They also cling.

Relevant West Wing: https://youtu.be/Zrap9ljIVWk?t=2m3s.

Redemption and rehabilitation must be the aim of universal law, not vengeance.

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