Sure, we have to “draw the line”, but isn’t that arbitrary?
Perhaps, insofar as it's arbitrary to be more concerned about the well-being of victims than perpetrators. Personally, I have arbitrarily decided to care more about potential murder victims than convicted murderers, potential rape victims than convicted rapists, property owners than convicted thieves, and so on.
I’d argue that our current system isn’t really interested in the well being of victims either. Or rather, it’s only interested with the victims when the victims express specific opinions. The actual relationship between crime, survivors, retribution, and forgiveness is an extremely complex matter.
Consider the case of Sirhan Sirhan, and how public figures treated Kennedy family members who were pro-parole vs. anti-parole. Sometimes the same people who were saying “you must listen to the family” were openly attacking other family members for wanting parole!
> Personally, I have arbitrarily decided to care more about potential murder victims than convicted murderers, potential rape victims than convicted rapists, property owners than convicted thieves, and so on.
If that’s what motivates you, you should actively hope for a more merciful and restorative criminal justice system. Our current system has very high recidivism rates, which is very bad for those potential future victims.
I think it’s not useful to form universal views of the world based on the status quo in the USA. The prison system is harsh in the USA, and recidivism is high. In some other countries however, the prisons are significantly more brutal, and yet recidivism is low. So it isn’t quite as simple as the the commenter was implying.
Or maybe that’s just Twitter, on HN it’s about saying things everyone agrees with and never bringing up something difficult to respond to, so you won’t get downvoted.
> Perhaps, insofar as it's arbitrary to be more concerned about the well-being of victims than perpetrators.
[1] Personally, I have arbitrarily decided to care more about potential murder victims than convicted murderers;
[2] potential rape victims than convicted rapists;
[3] property owners than convicted thieves;
[4] and so on.
No, it is simple prioritization — that sort of absolutism is a fallacy. We are worried about 'inmate mental health' AFTER we are worried about preventing said inmate from further damaging the health, wealth, or life of others. If someone is a threat to anyone in my family, friends, society, IDGAF about their mental health until that threat is neutralized.
If you have a better way to neutralize the threat from people who decide it is ok to damage, steal, harm, rape, kill, or otherwise violate other people, let us know. Otherwise, cut the fallacies.
But, unfortunately, a sufficiently dangerous person does need to be physically put away. Being held against your will may well do wonders for people you threaten.
If you cane someone who was brought up with violence, it can reinforce the idea that only the strongest wins. On the other hand, trying to be nice to them won't work if they want the $100K they make from drug dealing.
The sad fact is that nothing works perfectly, but at least we can strive to make it consistent, which is probably the biggest problem in most penal systems.
In fact plenty of historical evidence suggests it not only doesn't work, it makes reoffending more likely.
There's no space for "Well, obviously..." in prison management. Effects are often not obvious at all.
This is fine if you really want revenge porn, but not so much if you want a saner and less criminal culture.
A strong claim. A few minutes of searching found no strong evidence for or against its effectiveness, or that is superior or inferior to incarceration. Much more seems to have been written about the morality and public opinion of the practice (e.g. [1, 2]). It is known that corporal punishment of children causes developmental harms, but this does not extend naturally to adults.
1: https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC85246
2: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2722140
Do you think your countrymen are prepared to cane women then?
If not, you'll know why this isn't a good idea.
Once you depart from the minority of incarcerations that are reasonably unquestionable (e.g. demonstrably uncorrectable violent sociopaths), you will find abundant arbitrariness at every level: in the formulation of laws, their application by courts, their enforcement by police, and the conditions of their punishments.
"Arbitrary" is the rule. "Dialectical" (which I interpret as "civically intended, publicly acknowledged proportional consequences") is the exception.