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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

I found this line from the article particularly interesting:

“The court concluded that the 20 years served are sufficient for meeting the goals of incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation.”

Deterrence and rehabilitation (yeah, right) I knew were “goals” of the US prison system, but I never realized that “incapacitation” and “retribution” were actual legally-stated goals.

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Technically speaking, retribution is a punishment dealt to someone for committing a crime, so any prison sentence is an act of retribution.

I'd argue that if the intention is entirely to rehabilitate (and incapacitate if necessary) then a prison sentence would only incidentally be a punishment.

If the intention was to rehabilitate, then they wouldn't have sentenced a non violent offender to 2 life sentences.

Giving someone a life sentence means you (or the justice system at large) are either unwilling or unable to rehabilitate that person.

Don't get me wrong - I don't believe that the US "justice system" is at all concerned with rehabilitation. Giving 2 life sentences to a non violent drug offender is ridiculous.

There are different theories of criminal punishment (i.e., different people subscribe to different philosophical justifications). Incapacitation is basically a special case of deterrence, in that you're deterring the individual who's in prison. Retribution is a little more controversial, but plenty of people see it as a valid goal.

You don't give someone a life sentence to rehabilitate them. At some point, you have to recognize that certain people are dangers to society and need to be "incapacitated" from causing further harm.

Like Australia, but more expensive and brutal.

Incapacitation makes sense, no? Would we not want to incapacitate a serial killer's ability to serially kill? If we really believe crime is bad then we should want to incapacitate people from committing crimes.

Maybe we’re the bad guys?

Only if you don't fight it. :~)

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