Hacker News Reader

Comment by analyst74 | Hacker News Reader

Punishing felons is not going to directly make people feel safe. At best it serves as indirect deterrence for future crimes.

But much more effective ways of deterring crime are 1) pre-crime deterrence, like cctv, police patrol, etc; and 2) not letting crimes get away, and recidivism.

View on HN

Yep. There's usually 3 goals of any criminal justice system:

- Punishment (criminals should be made to suffer)

- Deterrence (we want to discourage crime in society)

- Rehabilitation (Criminals are also citizens. Ideally they can become a contributing member of society, instead of wasting away in prison as a burden on everyone)

Any intervention should be assessed based on these criteria. For example, increasing prison sentences might be beneficial for punishment, have no impact on deterrence (most criminals assume they won't get caught) and in the US system, make rehabilitation harder.

And this is a theme. In general, the US on the whole seems to be strangely obsessed with punishment as the primary goal of its criminal justice system, compared to the systems in other countries. (Eg Norway - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNpehw-Yjvs ). The result is prison system which has one of the world's highest recidivism rates and more inmates per capita than any other country in the world. (With a corresponding financial cost to the taxpayer). Interventions which decrease the capacity for criminals to be rehabilitated make this obviously worse - For example, having news articles about the perpetrator online, forever.

Here in Australia the media isn't allowed to identify criminal defendants in most cases, which is as it should be. This also decreases crime - eg, the NZ shooter a few years ago was never named so he couldn't be painted as a hero, and to avoid copy-cat incidents.

Flogging sounds barbaric, but I bet lots of criminals would rather be flogged than suffer the dehumanizing system y'all have right now. (And if they wouldn't, you could flog them harder without also getting in the way of rehabilitation). Having a perminant cloud over your head when you look for housing or when you meet a new partner sounds simply inhumane.

There has to be some punishment for most crimes for a which is enough, after which the perpetrator deserves a truly fresh start. If you don't believe that, maybe the monster is you.

The order in which you name those three items is weird.

The main goal is rehabilitation, and, to a certain extent, deterrence.

Punishment was a goal a medieval ages, and, though it still it in some countries in modern times, it's still a medieval practice. You want to _educate_ those who do wrong so that they do better (e.g.: rehabilitation).

Punishment would only result in resentment.

Plenty of people want criminals to suffer. Eg, from earlier in this thread:

> In cases where the victim never gets to move on with his or her life how much should we work towards making sure the victimizer can?

Ie, “the perpetrator should suffer at least as much as the victim”. I’m sympathetic to the argument that this is medieval and not aligned with humanist ethics. But plenty of people, at least in the US obviously think this way.

I know I shouldn't read reddit comments, but I always find it alarming how many people want to throw people in jail immediately for any minor infraction.

The goal of punishment is to prevent extrajudicial retaliation. It's been as actual since before the medieval ages as it is now.

While NZ’s leadership choose not to name the shooter in their public statements, the name of the NZ shooter is well known. It is right there at the top of the Wikipedia article on the incident, and many non-NZ newspapers choose to name him.

Firstly: I don’t see punishment as separate from deterrence. If a different deterrence strategy works better, it should be used preferentially.

Secondly: This doesn’t capture the need to remove people incapable of integrating with society. Rehabilitation does not capture the reality of the situation. US jails contain many people that do not have the mental faculties to resist overt victimization of vulnerable people. There may also be thoughtful people mixed in, but these groups are nothing alike.

It should not be different, but it is. Strictness of punishment does not directly correlate to deterrence. However, laypeople don't know or care; they want their pound of flesh. The GP's list is very much laid out in priority order according to practical American policy, although it misses 0) profit for private prison operators.

> Strictness of punishment does not directly correlate to deterrence.

I used to believe in this, but SF proved it wrong. Simplify writing up or catch-and-release has caused the city's crime rate to go through the roof.

I think the point is that the deterrence effect has diminishing marginal gains. Works well for petty crimes with clear intention.

Yep. My understanding is that the strictness of penalties has almost no bearing on the murder rate. Most murders are either crimes of passion, or committed with the assumption the perp will never being caught. Murderers aren't thinking - "Hm, 20 years of prison I could handle but 25 years is too much. I suppose I won't murder my wife when I find her in bed with another man."

Increasing the penalties for murder is an extremely ineffective way to reduce the murder rate.

>Firstly: I don’t see punishment as separate from deterrence.

I think the simplest way to see the difference between punishment and deterrence is in nature.

We learn not to touch a hot stove by getting our hand burnt. It's usually not very painful, but because it happens immediately and every single time we quickly figure out that touching a hot anything is a bad idea. This creates deterrence without a heavy punishment.

Sometimes a heavy punishment can also cause deference by itself though. Eg messing around with mains electricity. You probably won't get shocked if you're careful, but if you do then the damage can be very severe.

Let's see what Norway does when Brevik gets out after his 21 year sentence, which... is only 10 years away, YAY! (sarcasm)

For those that don't remember he killed 77 people (mostly kids) and was sentenced to 21 years in jail.

Not quite. At that point a panel will review if he's a danger to society. If they decide he is he stays in prison for five years, then comes before them again. There is no limit on the number of five year extensions, so he will remain in prison for the rest of his life if the board thinks he remains a risk to society.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/08/24/159978667...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com