Subject:
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Re: Criminal Justice
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 18 Aug 2002 23:57:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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237 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> Why is this retributional justice a good thing?
Well, speaking only for myself, I am more interested in restitutional
justice -- which has little to do with our current conception of justice.
When things can be made right through some monetary or labour means, I think
we should force the criminal to make such amends. In other instances where
the crime is of a more personal nature -- like rape, child molestation, and
murder -- I think there should be both a restitutional price tag and then
some kind of containment punishment. The rate of recidivism of certain kinds
of offenders and the seriousness of some kinds of offenses makes me
unsympathetic to the idea of ever releasing those kinds of criminals from
prison.
> There is sometimes the matter of rehabilitation and sometimes containment,
In some instances rehabilitation doesn't seem to be terribly effective, and
to that extent there is no point to it. Temporary containment for certain
crimes doesn't seem to make much difference either. Wouldn't you bilk
others out of hundreds of millions if the only possible punishment was maybe
a few years in a minimum security jail (what some call "club fed")? The
point should be restitution -- and no money retained by the criminal
excepting that restitution has been made (with offshore accounts this may
become a tricky matter).
> This link describes a tragic crime that illustrates such a conflicted justice
> in my mind. http://www.freedebra.org/
> What gives? Do you all feel this too? Is it good or bad?
I won't judge you; and "good or bad" seems like an unimportant, and
generally tedious, dichotomy to me -- so I'll skip that too.
I don't know that much about this woman's story. To recapitulate what seems
to be the story, I get this: this woman killed her children rather
painlessly with sleeping pills; and then tried to take her own life the same
way, and through a variety of other techniques when that failed. Finally,
unable to kill herself, she turned herself in to the local authorities.
If you can accept that no mentally "well" person would do any of those
things, then you are immediately in the realm of having to deal with the
woman's apparent level of insanity, temporary or otherwise. Frankly, I
don't have a huge amount of anger about it, just sadness. It's very sad
when people don't recognize their problems and go to these wild extremes to
gain some kind of relief. It's sad that mental illness is so stigmatized
that the woman probably avoided seeking help for that very reason. It's sad
that this woman's close ones did not perceive her very real need for help --
one assumes certain clues and signs were available to a perceptive husband
or whomever.
It's a very sad story. The punishment is probably the memory of what she
did in her moment of madness. I expect she needs more help than punishment,
rather like the average drug addict or manic depressive (why law enforce
when you can medicate and/or heal instead?). I don't see this woman as a
danger to others in society. I don't have a huge need to pointlessly punish
her at all. Future generations will probably see this as punishing the
mentally ill the same way previous generations used to put the mentally ill
through all kinds of bizarre and meaningless tortures.
-- Hop-Frog
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Criminal Justice
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| (...) When a child does something antisocial (aka "wrong") many parents/authorities have the first impulse to punish the kid. Current thinking in child development and parenting philosophy says (and I'm pretty sure I agree) that when a punishment is (...) (22 years ago, 19-Aug-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Criminal Justice
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| Hi all, There is a recurring notion, in some debates here and in conversations in real life, about justice that concerns me. It seems that there are many people who think that it is "just" for someone who does something bad to have something bad (...) (22 years ago, 18-Aug-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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