Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

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The non-existence of supernatural free will is largely irrelevant; despite it not existing it is abundantly clear that we can modify expected behavior by offering rewards or punishments. Supernatural free will is not necessary in the slightest to explain this.

> "severe punishments to little to deter crime."

I have seen some evidence that this is the case specifically for the death penalty. I've seen little to suggest that it holds true throughout more general cases.

Nevertheless, even if we rule out deterrence as a possibility, we're still left with incapacitation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incapacitation_%28penology%29). That undeniably does work, and it works damn well. The thought of being locked up in a cell may not deter a free man, and it may not cure a captured man, but it will prevent that man from victimizing innocent members of the general public again.

You don't need silly concepts of supernatural souls or good and evil to benefit from incapacitation. No matter what we think of any of these issues, the fact of the matter is that Ted Kaczynski is unable to mail a bomb to people like you or I.

While incapacitation is a valid need, the current American justice system appears to completely disregard the possibility of rehabilitation, especially for non-violent/victimless crimes. Incapacitation isn't so important when rehabilitation is possible, and accepting the lack of supernatural free will should help with acceptance of rehabilitation.

Incapacitation is an essential part of rehabilitation, unless you believe that every criminal can be fixed with a simple out-patient procedure. While rehabilitation is in progress but not yet complete, incapacitation is essential.

As I see it, one of the biggest problems with the American justice system is pre-mature release. We are releasing criminals before they are known to be rehabilitated. If we're going to go with rehabilitation, then we need to scrap the idea of determining how long somebody will be incapacitated (imprisoned) during sentencing. The duration of incapacitation should be determined solely by how long rehabilitation takes.

A doctor continues treatment for as long as treatment is necessary. You don't hear them say things like "Okay Mr Johnson, looks like you've got cancer. We're going to do chemo for 6 months, then you'll be done!" Rather, you get "we're going to start chemo, and we'll continue to monitor your progress."

We also need to set sane expectations for our own abilities. What is the false-positive rate for rehabilitation? Does that false-positive rate, when considered with the severity of the crime, work out to a risk that we are willing to accept? What if 1% of captured and rehabilitated murderers go on to murder again? Is that an acceptable risk? What if it's 5%, or 10%? Are there crimes so awful that no false-positive rate is acceptable?

While I agree with your general point -- that rehabilitation isn't determinable at sentencing -- I'd still make the argument that focusing on rehabilitation with no other change in the system would lead to more positive outcomes than our current system. Yes, keeping people in some rehab situation for as long as necessary but no longer would be ideal, simply allowing for some possibility of rehabilitation for the time that they are sentenced would still be a better situation than the one we have now. Having indeterminate sentencing would also be rife with possibilities of misconduct. For an historical (and I believe this still happens in some cases?) example of how things can go wrong, take a look at the old state-run mental health system the US had.

Just tacking rehabilitation onto our existing system yields a hybridization of rehabilitation and punishment, where people are release either when they are rehabilitated, or when we have determined that they are punished enough. Whichever happened first would trigger the release. This leaves us with a system that deliberately releases non-reformed criminals back into the public.

Maybe that is better than our current system, but I think we should certainly aspire for better.

> "Having indeterminate sentencing would also be rife with possibilities of misconduct"

While that is true, I would argue that not incapacitating somebody for exactly as long as is necessary is itself injustice. It means that we will knowingly be imprisoning people longer than is necessary (obviously abusive) and it means that we will be knowingly releasing non-reformed criminals back into the public (I consider this to be abusive to the public.)

Incapacitation determined on individual basis is a precise tool, a very sharp knife. In the hands of an authoritarian regime, it could be very dangerous. But in the hands of a liberal lawful society, it allows the least harm possible for everybody involved.

We could deny ourselves these tools, for fear of what could be done with them (and in the process, cause certain unnecessary harm). Or we could strive to be the very best that we can be, and give ourselves the tools necessary to achieve that.

...one of the biggest problems with the American justice system is pre-mature release.

You write as if you genuinely don't know that USA imprisons a far larger percentage of the population than any other nation, now or at any time in the history of prisons. A humane person wouldn't even have to consider the grotesque and obvious faults of the system (racial disparities, entrenched prosecutorial misconduct, emphasis on victimless crime, etc.) to know that "pre-mature release" is the least of our problems.

I think that the author of that comment would say that 'post-mature release' is the second biggest problem.

I completely agree. And I think we should separate incapacitation from the idea of retribution.

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