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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

> The article’s focus on moral culpability also overlooks the key purpose of the justice system: protecting society from criminals.

I do NOT concede that as the KEY purpose. And when you call "protecting society from criminals" the key purpose of the justice system you wind up with the horribly broken mess that is the US justice system.

Yes, A purpose of the justice system is to remove from society those who cannot be trusted.

But another purpose of the justice system should be to rehabilitate those who can be. And the US justice system is HORRIFIC at that. If anything, the US justice system is a net negative on rehabilitation. The way the US system throws everybody together does more to let old criminals teach new ones their tricks than any improvement from any rehabilitation program can counteract.

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Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill) is the only function of incarceration that is guaranteed to work. I agree with you that the US justice system is horrific at rehabilitating those who can be rehabilitated - but we don't really have a good understanding of what specific people can and cannot be rehabilitated, or how to go about actually effectively doing the rehabilitation.

Whereas someone who has committed 30 petty thefts and then gets arrested, locked in a cage, and guarded by armed agents of the state, is extremely unlikely to commit another theft as long as he remains locked in the cage.

And he's also extremely unlikely to get shot to death by e.g. a store owner trying to protect his property from theft - another important function of the criminal justice system is protecting criminals from ordinary people using violence against criminals in order to protect their own lives or property.

> Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill)

And this is another problem--your "justice system" should NOT be where you place your mentally-ill--they belong in a (possibly secure) medical facility and not with rank-and-file criminals. This is yet one more issue with the US system.

A secure medical facility is basically the same thing as a prison, as far as the people compelled by the state to remain there are concerned.

It is not nearly the same.

> Whereas someone who has committed 30 petty thefts and then gets arrested, locked in a cage, and guarded by armed agents of the state, is extremely unlikely to commit another theft as long as he remains locked in the cage.

How does that help, if after incarceration that person become a much hardened criminal both because of the lack meaning pathway to integration, and you know spending years locked up with the worst of society.

> but we don't really have a good understanding of what specific people can and cannot be rehabilitated, or how to go about actually effectively doing the rehabilitation.

Then let's work on that.

The theory is that people commit most of their crimes in their prime age of ~15-30. If you lock someone until out of that age, their crime rate will go down on their own. Whether or not this is cruel is another discussion.

This is actually a problem for rehabilitation studies, since now they have to sanitize this effect out of their data on how much rehabilitation treatment actuality works. This and other flaws have tainted some claims that a rehabilitation process is successful.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...

> Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill) is the only function of incarceration that is guaranteed to work.

However in most cases the incarceration is used as punishment, with the length is related to the seriousness of the crime rather than the likelihood for repeating offenses.

Here in Norway we explicitly separate this, where most sentences are punishment, but some are explicitly for protecting society. In the latter case there is technically no end, just a minimum time and after that periodic reviews to determine if the person still poses a sufficient threat.

It's technically classified as a punishment due to legal reasons, like ensuring human rights and due process are respected.

> Yes, A purpose of the justice system is to remove from society those who cannot be trusted

Agreed.

> But another purpose of the justice system should be to rehabilitate those who can be

Why? Especially if it comes at the expense of the first purpose?

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