Comment by danparsonson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danparsonson | Hacker News Reader

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> Experiencing hardship doesn't excuse violence against others

I totally agree, but I don't agree that forgoing violence as a punishment is the same as excusing the bad behaviour. The best outcome for everyone is surely rehabilitation, no? There are other punishment options if you still insist on inflicting some hardship.

> Over 60% of violent crime is committed by under 5% of the population. Don't underestimate the value of simply removing repeat violent offenders from society.

That neatly avoids the question of why they reoffend, which is precisely my point. If prison is effective as a deterrent then why do they keep coming back? "Simply removing them" for a period of time simply perpetuates the problem, thus helping to ensure more violent crime in the future, not less.

> I don't agree that forgoing violence as a punishment is the same as excusing the bad behaviour. The best outcome for everyone is surely rehabilitation, no?

The dirty secret is that we have absolutely no idea how to rehabilitate anyone. Even our best therapies for people who desperately want to change their behaviour are only 40% effective at only slightly modifying behaviour, and most violent criminals unfortunately have no such desire.

This is partly psychology's fault for doing such poor science for decades (35% replication rate!), but partly also the false premise that there are no innate biological factors at play.

> That neatly avoids the question of why they reoffend, which is precisely my point. If prison is effective as a deterrent then why do they keep coming back?

This is already known but ignored in "polite" society: poor impulse control. Most repeat offenders only stop offending once they age out of impulsive behaviour, not because they had some kind of revelation or personal growth; stories like this conflate correlation and causation.

Age is the best behaviour modifier we know, because hormonal profiles change, which ends up changing strength and frequency of the impulses we have to overcome. Imprisoning repeat violent offenders until they age out of it poor impulse control is totally a policy that should be on the table.

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