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.