Bullying predicts general protective effects on the individual and social well-being. It also predicts that peers will rate the bully well, even when the victim rates the bully. This is to say that bullying has a big bystander component (the public reviews the act), and that bullies may do better than the normal population.
People who are both bullies and victims experience characteristics from both populations.
That is the true reason for lasting trauma and damage to victims - why they cheer at the deaths and destitution of their tormentors decades later. Because finally the assholes get what they deserve. Those who express horror get flipped the bird because they were the same sort of complicit assholes.
Approach 1: "People who hurt other people should be hurt back"
Approach 2: "We should try to understand why people hurt other people"
I used to think these were correlated with political spectrum (approach 1 on the right, appraoch 2 on the left). But these patterns happen across the spectrum.
These two aren't easily reconcilable. Approach-2-type-people, such as myself, think that this is the only real way to reduce harm and that approach 1 only makes everything worse, and continues the cycle of abuse.
I think it's emcumbent on approach 2 to try and understand why people act like approach 1.
This seems to be the approach used by many (most?) people in online forums when discussing controversial topics. "Your opinion hurts me, so I'm going to be as offensive as possible in return". It doesn't seem to work very well. HN is maybe a bit more approach #2.
Everyone has unknown biases though. I'm sure that most people are a mix, with the result of cognitive dissonance.
If punishment has no measurable, positive effect - why do it?
Combine with Hanlon’s razor and indeed - victims become bullies when they default to Approach 1 when harm (rather than misunderstanding) is perceived.
But it does, the positive effect is in the mind state of the punisher, or the Type-1 people being discussed here.
Now you're right of course, the punishment does not improve the situation, but it sure gives these folks that little squirt of feel-good chemicals and that's what really matters to them.
Perhaps there is some evolutionary reason. Perhaps it is, itself, part of the cycle of abuse. Perhaps it's just easier to be nasty than nice.
Additionally, punishment often goes hand in hand with making it harder/impossible to re-offend. If you're in prison, you're not breaking into anybody's house.
This is a really interesting & related read.[2]
[1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398
[2]https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc...
The point isn't that punishment isn't a deterrent, it's the only external deterrent (and you could argue that a bad conscience is self-punishment). It's that the likelihood of getting caught is a very important factor, not so much the severity of the punishment.
In RTS games, there's the idea of overkill: a unit (or set of units) does so much damage that it would kill the attacked unit multiple times. That's a problem, because you waste a lot of the damage, it's generally more efficient to do less damage more often for the same DPS (damage per second). I believe that you can think about punishment in a similar way. With the likelihood of punishment staying the same (for example: 10%), a hike of "somebody stares angrily at you" to "you spend 10 years in prison" very much acts as a deterrent. You get barely any more value out of that being 20 years though, because of "over-deterrence". Here as well, the same punishment with more frequency (=likelihood of punishment) would be more efficient.
So in order to be a deterrent there must be punishment. Increasing the severity will do little to increase the effectiveness, but increasing the likelyhood of getting caught will.
Maybe you never understood it because you implicitly assume that punishment can't have measurable, positive effect. What's the basis of that assumption?
For many (most?) people, it's just a matter of values. Punishment of evildoers, justice, revenge, enforcement of the law, are not judged on the merits of preventing future offences, they're desirable in their own right.
These values are widespread and are part of the 'natural' or 'default' repertoire of human social behavior. Different cultures encourage them to different extents, and channel them differently, and of course differ a lot on what is offensive and deserving of punishment and how much. But I don't think it's difficult to understand why people desire these things.
Even if everyone agrees that rehabilitative justice is better for reducing crime, it's a separate moral decision to value reducing crime over other things like justice (fairness) or punishment (negative consequences for infringing on rights).
Recidivism.
As members of the public, it's highly likely that we've both seen others be burned by trying to take approach 2. And have ourselves been burned by trying to take approach 2. After all, many crimes have very high rates of recidivism.
These experiences tend to model how we approach other people in the future.
And to be honest, it's not really a 'wrong" approach that "only makes everything worse". At some point, the question of approach 3 "removing a person from society" is a valid question when it comes to reducing harm.
In the case of a bully, though, there may be so much at stake for the bully that it outweighs the suffering associated with getting beaten up or otherwise punished for it. Wishing to e.g. maintain his social status, he may double down instead of reacting in a way that seems appropriate given the obvious consequences. This is where I think approach 2 becomes useful. What is it that the bully thinks is at stake? etc.
Before that, who cares? Kids will be kids and will fight and bicker. That's how they learn what their boundaries and what the consequences of their actions are so that they can grow up to be healthy adults. I think that inflicting pain and suffering as a direct response to injustice may be an excellent way to keep misbehaving adults in check as well, but it seems more likely in adult age that there is an underlying psychological problem that needs to be addressed, perhaps one that could have been addressed during adolescence.
I'd replace "rather than" with "in addition to".
Prison is a final measure when all other measures have failed. Even with prison, first time offenders of non-serious crimes usually do not do time or are diverted to other programs to help them avoid this fate. I just love how all the nerds here are going crazy over letting bullies off the hook initially to try to reform them -- it's as if they all want to bully the bullies.
Stopping them does not mean only punishment, but counselling (and sometimes, because they were themselves victims of abuses).
Instead of punishing robbers, why don't we just give them enough money to live luxurious lives so they aren't tempted to rob any more people?
bad analogy, because in this case it's more like one person's kidney got destroyed and the other lost a lung.
You want different types of specialists to deal with victims vs bullies. Assigning the wrong type will probably just make things worse.
> Instead of punishing robbers, why don't we just give them enough money to live luxurious lives so they aren't tempted to rob any more people?
One could argue that's part of the idea behind Universal Basic Income. That if your needs are being met by UBI, you really "shouldn't" have a reason to need to rob, so at that point they don't have any excuses. (I have skepticism about that in practice, but I get the concept at least.)
Both cost money (=resources). Money is limited. Who do we focus on?
As for that theory on "no excuses": UBI is more or less reality in large parts of Europe, yet crime still exists.
UBI has other parts which aren't covered in that regard, but those aren't relevant to the question of crime motivated by poverty.
So, criminals also, by that logic, themselves need counseling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment ?
You can not eliminate the personality that needs bullying to validate themselves from the population. You can however hep them channel those needs into other things like entrepreneurship and leadership. To productively shape their needs for power over people rather than harassing and harming them.
You want this, especially when you know they will one day get out of jail.
I would alternatively suggest to make the punishment severe and make sure bullies can't get away with it.
You don't have to deter people from engaging in bad behaviour if those people don't feel motivated to engage in those behaviours in the first place.
Narcissists just make the problem much, much worse.
If they are facing reparations like rehabilitation they got caught.
> I would alternatively suggest to make the punishment severe and make sure bullies can't get away with it.
Harsher punishments do not deter people from committing crimes [0]
I get the sentiment but if you want results you got to face the reality.
[0] https://www.amnestyusa.org/a-clear-scientific-consensus-that...
That’s not to say they shouldn’t go to prison for a crime. While in prison it shouldn’t be just a punishment, the isolation is the punishment, the idea should be providing the help needed inside so when they come out they do not re-offend.
Are we reading the same Hacker News? I see that statement expressed in like every fifth thread.
In favor of punishment: Victims and relatives want compensation and since it is impossible to restore every situation, especially if the perpetrator has no money, destroyed something irreplaceable or killed someone, we want them to pay with their time instead. The primary goal is making the victims happy and preventing crime can take a back seat to that.
In favor of counseling: Law enforcement lags behind the actual rule violation. Someone is a criminal only after they have committed a crime. Therefore if your policy only targets criminals then it is already too late. It can't undo any damage and it cannot prevent any future damage after the criminal has been released. When they are released the reason they committed a crime didn't disappear. The perpetrator himself obviously didn't benefit from the punishment (in other words: he doesn't need punishment). Therefore the deterrence effect completely disappears and increasingly tough punishments do not influence the recidivism rate. Now imagine instead of targeting criminals after they have committed a crime we instead try the opposite. Suddenly we gain the ability to prevent a crime which is something the punishment only route doesn't allow us to do. So yes people definitively need help so they don't have to resort to committing crimes.
What would you like the point of your country's justice system to be? To be a venue for state controlled vengeance, where the victims (or the friends and family of a victim if somebody died) get to enjoy the fact that at least the criminal got their life ruined as well?
Or would you like it to be to attempt to deal with criminals in a fashion that reduced recidivism as much as is possible, allowing for compensation of victims where reasonable and possible, but providing explicitly no vengeance-based 'compensation'?
Because a justice system is going to look radically different depending on which option you want (especially if you're trying to optimize it so it does what you want it to do well, fairly, and cheaper than alternatives) – and the anti-recidivism style leads to vastly lower levels of crime. It's also vastly cheaper for society.
When you feel outrage at a child molester getting 5 years in a comfy jail cell, getting a state-paid education to boot – that's your sense of vengeance being offended. Be aware that satisfying it is incredibly expensive.
When you feel outrage at a child molester that gets out after 15 years and strikes again soon after – that's presumably you being upset that the justice system is, based on a rather lacking 'anecdotal evidence of 1', not doing its proper job.
Even if punishment isnt the point at all, incarceration and other restrictions of personal freedoms are likely required. How do you prevent recurrence of the crime?
There are some drastic options available. You could, purely out of economic expediency, just execute all criminals. But even if you're morally okay with that drastic measure, in practice that has a lot of externalities. so, _IF_ you free criminals at some point, it makes very little sense NOT to focus on reducing recidivism rates.
One could consider the punishment itself as an anti-crime measure: Use the fact that if you are convicted of a crime, you will be punished, as a deterrence. For some types of crime it works well, but for many, it has barely any effect. Crimes of passion and sexual deviancy just aren't reduced by measurable rates by increasing the punishment if caught and convicted, for example.
Add it all up? Yes, please. Provide counsel to criminals before you consider the punishment (but, as they ARE criminals, if the most effective counsel the state can provide requires significant reductions in personal freedoms, by all means).
The point of prison to rehabilitate so yes. If we are just putting people in prison to get rid of them then why not actually get rid of them? If you don't believe in rehabilitation then life in prison is an expensive and cruel torture in comparison to just ending them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49973318
Edit: Obviously I would be in favour of counselling that decreased the rate of reoffending.
A prime example, the kids next door when I was growing up. They were younger than I was and never would try anything alone but two-on-one they would sometimes. (Usually when a third troublemaker was on the scene.) One time I was defending myself against an attack with a belt, I disarmed him and threw the belt into the vines growing on our house--high enough up that it would require a ladder to reach. When the belt was recovered the buckle was missing--they called the cops saying I must have stolen it. Just from talking to them the cop figured out I was acting in self defense, I had no possible way of having stolen the buckle (the instant I had control of the belt I threw it), the buckle must have come off when I threw it, bad luck for them. If the cop could figure that out so could their parents--yet they still felt I had stolen it since it couldn't be found. (Turns out there must have been a crack-the-whip effect, the buckle came off and flew completely over our house. We found it in a flower pot on the other side of the house two years later.)
If you have no possible escape from the situation, you end up falling into learned helplessness -- nothing I do can affect it, so why fight it. Maybe if I pretend to be dead, the predator will get bored with me and find some other prey...
Punishing a kid is not going to help them get over the fact that their mom abuses them or they don't have a dad or that they are not safe in their neighborhood, etc.
Punishment is good, but it can further traumatize or ingrain a kid into their bad behavior. Speaking from personal experience, I remember in elementary school I got very harshly punished and shamed for bullying a kid in my class. After that year I lost almost all my friends, and I was honestly traumatized. I still don't have many or any friends if I am being honest, and I think the situation would have been a lot different if they sat me down and talked to me instead of making me feel like a criminal.
Punishment does not really work to curb bullying, and often does more harm than good. Like your not going to have violent bullying for the most part, but you can't stop other types of bullying with punishment.
The only approach that can partially make up for such an attitude is cognitive-behavioral training, and then only for those who are smart enough that the lessons can sink in, overcoming their distrust of others, authority figures etc.
I think most bullies are not psychopaths, considering that many don’t stay bullies their entire life.
Narcissists and Sociopaths make up 1% of the population each. To characterise most young bullies as narcissists/sociopaths when A - Their brains are still developing, and B - They're at an impressionable age where their sociability is highly moulded by their environment (e.g. parents) is disingenuous.
Yup, that's the real issue. The sociopaths and narcissists may only be 2% to 4% of the population but those are the actual bullies, so to speak - those who are most clever at manipulating others into adopting similar behaviors and attitudes. Thus some youths who seem to be bullies may actually be victims of manipulation by somebody they look up to, but they will stop their behavior once the attitude around them changes for the better.
Adolescents don't have the developed perception of consequence as adults, and yet OP is already pinning them with mental disorders that can't be resolved. Pure speculation that is outright wrong.
In the case that you mention with learned anti-social behaviours, counselling can most definitely help with unmapping/correcting those behaviours.
Um, I never said that. I talked about tendencies, just like you did. It's not very meaningful to say what bullies "are", but bullying does generally involve at least some degree of instrumental aggression and callous/unempathetic attitudes. Such attitudes might arise out of simple imitation like you said, but only if someone else is actively demonstrating them - and this will generally be someone in the peer group who holds significant social influence on others.