Are we causing most of our problems?

[greywaste]

1. Rape would not change, but prostitution should still be legal so it is safer.

 

2. It might have a decrease, but all drugs need to be legal to completely destory the criminal market.

 

3. Too many humans try to fit into groups. If we can't change that bigotry will always exist.

 

The answer to dealing with bad people who will never be able to be rehabilitated is to separate them from society, not punish them.

 

You don't think criminals should be punished for their crimes? Lets try this one on for size then...... I wouldn't mind seeing the "three strikes and yer out" laws taken a step further. Get that third strike, and WE take YOU out. You are done. No longer a problem. And NOT a tax burden either. Why should my taxes pay for three hots and a cot for some killer? Whack his ass dead. End of problem. And no 10, 15, 20, 25 years of appeals either. You get ONE appeal after conviction. If that is upheld, you are DEAD the next day.

 

Yeah, I am pretty cold blooded.

What is the logic in punishment?

 

Is there any real point in punishing criminals?

 

 

What's the logic in nopt punishing them. Have you ever known a victim of a crime. How do they feel about that?

So punish people for revenge? Revenge is not logical. That makes both the victim and the criminal bad people in my eyes. Just because your emotions say you want to hurt them back, does not instantly make it OK.

 

If we started locking people up based on what the opposing party felt, everyone every charged with something would be spending years in prison.

 

So quite honestly, I don't care what the victim FEELS. I care about what the crime, and the motivation of the crime. I do not care about the emotions the victim or the criminal feel.

 

@Stardusk

 

People commonly make the argument the rape is good for passing genes, but it is the opposite. People who commit rape are out of the social norm, and have mental issues. Passing on the genes of someone with mental issues is not a good way to help the human gene pool.

 

"female victims are young, not old, which further supports the thesis of rape usually being about sex (or rather the inability to obtain it through normal means)."

 

Not really true, that is simply because a man would prefer to have sex with someone who is attractive. If its rape, the power thing is still there. The man just prefer to do such a thing with someone who is attractive.

 

According to popular theory, it isn't about 'revenge', it is about 'justice'. Of course, given that plea bargains seem to be the rule of the day, I can't say folks are getting much justice either........ When a man that rapes teenaged girls for THREE YEARS gets off with five years in prison, that is a miscarriage of justice. If I had my way, he would have his testicles cut off, and be publicly flogged, dragged thru a pit of ground glass, and tossed into a tank of salt water. (yes, I have a dim view of this guy.....) Then, I might consider taking him out of his misery, with a bullet in the brain.

 

Crime MUST have some punishment, if it didn't, there would be zero motivation NOT to do it, and the crime rate would be absolutely phenomenal. A fair few folks would commit various crimes, if they thought they wouldn't be punished for it, since there IS that chance, they don't do it. Remove that particular deterrent, and they would happily run right out, and do whatever.

"Crime MUST have some punishment, if it didn't, there would be zero motivation NOT to do it, and the crime rate would be absolutely phenomenal. A fair few folks would commit various crimes, if they thought they wouldn't be punished for it, since there IS that chance, they don't do it. Remove that particular deterrent, and they would happily run right out, and do whatever."

 

No, that is not even close to true.

 

Studies have been done many times to prove the opposite. You wouldn't go on a murdering raping spree if laws did not exist would you?

 

People who commit crimes do not think they will get caught.

 

What is the difference between justice and revenge? Justice just sounds prettier.

 

Your posts are becoming farcical. Lets see some links to support your "facts" when you post these rather "bold conjectures" of yours please?

[Sepherose]

I second greywaste here. You have been saying that there is evidence to support your claim and I have never, in my life, read anything that supports your side of this marharth. Until then I have to stick with punishment for crimes as a deterrent to committing said crimes.

[LadyMilla]

Might be an interesting read:

 

Does Criminal Law Deter?

 

[Sepherose]

Thank you LadyMilla.

 

From the abstract:

 

Having a criminal justice system that imposes sanctions no doubt does deter criminal conduct. But available social science research suggests that manipulating criminal law rules within that system to achieve a heightened deterrence effects generally will be ineffective.

 

This to me means that altering existing law will not increase deterrence. I would have to agree with this and the explanation they give, which is due to the average person not actually knowing the law to the fullest. But it also means that actually enforcing already solidly determined laws is in fact a deterrent, this is also stated in more detail in the actual opening paragraph, rather than in the abstract description. To increase the deterrent effect, as far as I have determined myself, and seems, so far, to be reinforced by that paper, certain things must change. One of those being plea bargaining. This should be outlawed. All it does is make sure the less honorable criminals are released, even after such crimes as murder or rape. Sure they will have the record, but they are essentially being handed a chance to do the same crime again, possibly influencing others to do the same thing. This can cause a short lived ripple effect through the more foolhardy people in society, effectively INCREASING crime rates for a short time, due to those people feeling like they have an easy "out" of the worst potential punishment, so long as they have a scapegoat.

[marharth]

Did any three of you actually read that entire file...?

 

If anything that helps me more then you.

 

Of course the laws put in place will discourage people from committing crimes. I am not auguring to remove the laws.

 

I am saying the severity of punishment will make little to no difference.

 

 

Most human beings have a thing called morals. Simply because laws or punishments are removed does not mean everyone will go batshit crazy. I would hope no one on this forum would start committing crimes simply because laws or punishments were removed. I doubt normal people will become evil just due to changes in punishment. People who are currently thinking about committing crimes, or have already committed crimes may start committing crimes, but that will still be dealt with by the system. If there is a rise in crime, it will be short lived. I find it ridiculous that anyone here would think people would start randomly becoming criminals just because.

 

 

Let me ask you again, would you (or any one you know) start going on massive crime sprees simply because punishment was weaker?

 

Also once again, what is the difference between justice and revenge?

 

Revenge is trying to right the wrongs done on you, what separates that from justice?

[SpellAndShield]

1. Rape would not change, but prostitution should still be legal so it is safer.

 

2. It might have a decrease, but all drugs need to be legal to completely destory the criminal market.

 

3. Too many humans try to fit into groups. If we can't change that bigotry will always exist.

 

The answer to dealing with bad people who will never be able to be rehabilitated is to separate them from society, not punish them.

 

You don't think criminals should be punished for their crimes? Lets try this one on for size then...... I wouldn't mind seeing the "three strikes and yer out" laws taken a step further. Get that third strike, and WE take YOU out. You are done. No longer a problem. And NOT a tax burden either. Why should my taxes pay for three hots and a cot for some killer? Whack his ass dead. End of problem. And no 10, 15, 20, 25 years of appeals either. You get ONE appeal after conviction. If that is upheld, you are DEAD the next day.

 

Yeah, I am pretty cold blooded.

What is the logic in punishment?

 

Is there any real point in punishing criminals?

 

 

What's the logic in nopt punishing them. Have you ever known a victim of a crime. How do they feel about that?

So punish people for revenge? Revenge is not logical. That makes both the victim and the criminal bad people in my eyes. Just because your emotions say you want to hurt them back, does not instantly make it OK.

 

If we started locking people up based on what the opposing party felt, everyone every charged with something would be spending years in prison.

 

So quite honestly, I don't care what the victim FEELS. I care about what the crime, and the motivation of the crime. I do not care about the emotions the victim or the criminal feel.

 

@Stardusk

 

People commonly make the argument the rape is good for passing genes, but it is the opposite. People who commit rape are out of the social norm, and have mental issues. Passing on the genes of someone with mental issues is not a good way to help the human gene pool.

 

"female victims are young, not old, which further supports the thesis of rape usually being about sex (or rather the inability to obtain it through normal means)."

 

Not really true, that is simply because a man would prefer to have sex with someone who is attractive. If its rape, the power thing is still there. The man just prefer to do such a thing with someone who is attractive.

 

That is not how evolution works. You should read the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Genes don't care or think and people rarely think about how helpful their DNA is to the gene pool, the point is to get your genes out there, good or bad, and rape is aevolutionary tool to do so, with minimal cost to the man. Once again, this says nothing about its ethics.

 

The second point is totally incoherent. Men prefer to have sex with young, attractive women because they are perceived as being more fertile, the same holds true for sex obtained through rape. If it were solely a power issue appearance would be irrelevant.

[LadyMilla]

http://www.amazon.co..._pr_product_top

 

This book is highly informative on the subject.

 

Interesting book but it is definitely not the final word on the subject matter. After its release it was generally condemned because it was published without peer review, the authors dismissed almost entirely the social and psychological aspects of rape (a feminist conspiracy? - nice trick, by the way, after such accusations the readers would be suspicious of any criticism penned by female authors), they used insects instead of primates in their reasoning (if you want to produce a sound theory about human behavior why not choose a species for study that is near human?), conveniently ignored that around third of the rape victims are minors (unsuitable for reproduction - if rape is meant to ensure reproduction then it surely has a bad aim). Also, according to their theory, males who cannot have sex in a normal way with women (because they are unattractive, etc.) resort to rape as the final solution to ensure reproduction - of course, authors ignored again real life facts that there is no clear-cut profile for rapists as they emerge from all walks of life, all social environments - rape occurs even when men have access to normal sex (man has a wife who is perfectly capable of bearing a child and yet the men proceeds to rape their step-daughter). I still remember a crime report about criminals who broke into a senior couple's house, tied them up, took everything valuable and both raped the 82-year old wife of the owner - surely she was an attractive target for reproduction. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/whistling.gif Did those genes misfire? And if they do, is there really a foundation on which you can build a genetics/evolution based theory that you can call scientific? Because science needs data -- relevant data -- to back it up instead of rambling about insects that developed appendages to pin down uncooperative females.

 

 

[Sepherose]

Did any three of you actually read that entire file...?

 

If anything that helps me more then you.

 

Of course the laws put in place will discourage people from committing crimes. I am not auguring to remove the laws.

 

I am saying the severity of punishment will make little to no difference.

 

 

Most human beings have a thing called morals. Simply because laws or punishments are removed does not mean everyone will go batshit crazy. I would hope no one on this forum would start committing crimes simply because laws or punishments were removed. I doubt normal people will become evil just due to changes in punishment. People who are currently thinking about committing crimes, or have already committed crimes may start committing crimes, but that will still be dealt with by the system. If there is a rise in crime, it will be short lived. I find it ridiculous that anyone here would think people would start randomly becoming criminals just because.

 

 

Let me ask you again, would you (or any one you know) start going on massive crime sprees simply because punishment was weaker?

 

Also once again, what is the difference between justice and revenge?

 

Revenge is trying to right the wrongs done on you, what separates that from justice?

 

 

From Criminal Deterrence and Sentence Severity: An analysis of Recent Research, which was cited in the first paper:

 

(6) Knowledge of Punishment Threats. Deterrence concerns desistance from crime through fear

of the legal consequences. It is consequently subjective, so that changes in criminal justice policies

can have no deterrent effect unless they alter potential offenders' beliefs about sanction risks. Thus

even were crime rates statistically associated with changes in certainty or severity of punishment,

this would not establish a deterrent effect unless there also were evidence that considerable

numbers of potential offenders were aware of those changes.

 

Now correct me if I am wrong here, but I do believe this states that a severe punishment, if widely known about as being used in the event of certain crimes, does in fact increase deterrence to the criminal act. Now if you would argue that word of mouth through the criminal community would in fact spread the knowledge, this is not absolutely the case.

 

From the same section:

A recent Home Office study (Hough and Roberts 1998) shows that members of the

general public tend to be in error about sanction risks, in the direction of underestimating greatly

severity of the sanctions actually imposed. To the extent these misconceptions are shared by those

tempted to offend, changes in sentencing policy may fail to achieve deterrent objectives -- because

potential offenders cannot be deterred by sentencing changes of which they are unaware. It is true

that when sentencing changes are introduced, newly-sentenced offenders may experience their

effects; and that information may be communicated through their social networks. But it is not

known how widely, or how quickly, such information spreads.

 

Also:

The absence of such data on

knowledge of punishment risks makes it difficult to draw valid inferences concerning the marginal

deterrent effects of changes in sanction levels.

 

In short, at the time of that particular writing, they know that knowledge of the actual severity of punishment, does in fact carry a deterrent effect, but the actual solid data cannot absolutely be determined.

 

On the subject of those that will commit crimes regardless of the consequences, those individuals should be made example of.

 

To answer your question, no, myself and no one I know would do such a thing in the event of punishment being removed from the equation. But I ask you this, if punishment is removed, how precisely would the system deal with criminals? To remind you you said:

 

People who are currently thinking about committing crimes, or have already committed crimes may start committing crimes, but that will still be dealt with by the system. If there is a rise in crime, it will be short lived. I find it ridiculous that anyone here would think people would start randomly becoming criminals just because.

 

Also, you said this:

 

Most human beings have a thing called morals. Simply because laws or punishments are removed does not mean everyone will go batshit crazy.

 

Morality is subjective to culture and those around you. Many people would argue that is perfectly moral to kill homosexuals/blacks/hispanics/whites/etc., so if those are the morals one is taught, those are what would guide them. Sadly those with irrational fear or hatred for those that are different outweigh those that are completely at ease with difference. So what do you think would happen in the long run? My personal opinion is that since the irrational and intolerant outweigh the rational and tolerant, then in the end those, to my perception, irrational morals and mindsets would take over.

[Sync182]

Now correct me if I am wrong here, but I do believe this states that a severe punishment, if widely known about as being used in the event of certain crimes, does in fact increase deterrence to the criminal act. Now if you would argue that word of mouth through the criminal community would in fact spread the knowledge, this is not absolutely the case.

 

Not entirely true. The rate of crimes occurring is more likely to decrease if there is a corresponding increase in the chances of being caught.

 

If there's little-to-no chance of being caught the criminal will do the crime anyway, regardless of the severity of punishment - simply because you have to catch him before you can punish him. The general apathy of the human race helps the criminal in this case: "No, officer, I was there but I didnt see anything (*...because I don't want to get involved...*)..."

 

On the other hand, if there's a very large chance of being caught the criminal will likely pause simply to avoid being caught, even if the punishment isn't as severe...and thus the crime rate drops.

[Nadimos]

We are causing most of our problems, because we choose fear most of the time instead of stepping outside our comfort zone. That just gets us into all kind of diffrent loopholes.

 

Also no one is gonna step out of it, but yourself.

It is all self-manufactured. I repeat: All.

 

PS: Crimes happen out of guilt, do they not?

Edited July 15, 2011 by Nadimos