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I don't know that visible punishment as its own end is why we have punitive justice. Most proponents will cite things like deterence, or prevention (i.e. keeping dangerous people in jail), or in more leftist societies rehabilitation. The point being the result: reduction of crime, a safer society. Punitive justice seems like an archaic tool that still has contemporary benefits, similar to old rules about the sabbath that gave people community, or old rules about what to avoid eating to prevent disease.
The punitive aspect is, in part, that we have that as a means available (familiar, common sensible, and traditional). But contemporary societies realized to varying degrees that punishing conditions don't help in themself. Hence why torture isn't allowed, or prison conditions aren't totally uncomfortable (in other countries at least).
As someone who isn't American, it's sad to see that American society is unable to come to a point of real discussion about what is better for the function of their country, and instead resorts to arguments about what the other side has done. It seems to me that both sides are unhappy with the justice system and how it can be abused to treat people unfairly. That seems to be a problem beyond either side, but it is highlighted when either side can cherry pick examples.
From an outside perspective, I am deeply concerned that Trump will do nothing to help the structural issues. But to be fair, I don't think the Democrats had any better chance.
The issue is that both sides do already have at least low-resolution ideas of what we can do to improve said function, we just can't agree on which ones to implement.
That may have been a problem in the past. I haven't seen good faith discussion between tribal lines in a hot minute. It seems to me that it is often less about disagreeing about the solution, and disagreeing about framing altogether, e.g. the left framing abortion as a women's rights and bodily autonomy issue, the right framing abortion as a religious and ethical issue. Part of this is political posturing (saying that murdering babies is fine isn't a popular move), but part of it, to me, is missing the fundamental reason for government and politics (what makes for a more successful/stable/flourishing/insert adjective society?)
In the abortion example, the cold calculation is something like looking at the impact on the economy, birth rates, education, and many creative ways of gaugibg the effect. Usually the answer to whether something is a good idea in hat sense is contextual and not an absolutist stance (compare a country with a popukation that is too large to support, versus one that cannot replenish its population).
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As others have covered, I vigorously disagree. Others ends can be legitimate as well, but retribution is a good reason to do punitive justice. Retribution is a good and legitimate motivation and the inclination to suppress it is perverse. Mere restorative or preventative measures deny victims of crime their just outcome.
I guess we just disagree. In a hypothetical world where a caught criminal could instantly be turned into a productive, law abiding member of society without punishment, there is nothing but benefit in my view. (You can find ways to tweak that thought experiment in ways that make it closer to our messy reality, or make the result less clearcut; but as a over simplified thought experiment, it demonstrates how I feel very well).
To me, retribution seems like the heat that happens when you are trying to optimize for light.
Retribution is a way to discourage criminals from doing crime before they commit it, something that rehabilitation can't do (unless you have a way to do it to everyone preemptively).
There are mixed findings on punishment as a means of preventing crime, which matches my impression of most low level criminals (not a rational pro/con crowd) and understanding of why crime is committed (passion, opportunity). I don't think people commit crimes with the thought they will get caught and punished. Keeping criminals imprisoned seems to have a bigger effect on general crime (i.e. keeping them from doing it again because they are locked up).
I would guess the pre-emptive way to discourage crime is to make it so that crime doesn't pay. People are less likely to commit crimes when they have more to lose, can gauge the benefits and downsides and see the downsides are greater, or live comfortable and stable lives with loved ones in a safe community. Someone without a home, food, family or friends is way riskier than someone with any of those things.
My impression of criminals is that most of them, except those who are so mentally stunted they can't use a spoon, do have some idea of cause and effect. Ideally, the penal system makes the connection between cause and effect as short, simple and strong as possible, enough so that even those criminals who don't know what "tomorrow" is get it.
I'm not sure what solution you propose to making sure that crime doesn't pay that doesn't involve some sort of punishment, either.
Have you read this ACX article on crime?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-than-you
It goes into detail on the effectiveness of deterence via harsh punishment. Yes, people have a sense of cause and effect, but I don't think all people have an accurate sense of how dangerous something can be. Or, put another way, is someone who has trouble with rational decision making and risk analysis more, or less likely to commit a crime? If more likely, why try to prevent crime via a mechanism that they do not pay attention to? It seems counter productive.
My own thinking is that rational decision making is lost in passionate crimes like assault and murder (hence why there is no evidence of the death penalty working as a deterent, and why the ACX article finds little deterence to violent crime in general with harsher penalties). On top of that, I believe that rationality is offset by desperation (does the chance of getting caught and charged outweigh the cost of a necessity or livelihood? Are you able to think more or less clearly when agitated or stressed?), and offset by opportunity/pressure/confidence, such as being pressured by friends, normality in the community, or thinking there is a good chance of success.
What I meant was that crime as a cost/benefit calculation pays better when you aren't well off and resources are scarce. If you are well off, you stand to lose a lot more (plus you are usually in a better position to make a rational decision), and committing a crime is no longer a viable option. A stable life with supports (including material things as well as important people) is less likely to lead to crime. That's the hypothesis, anyway. There is a correlation between lack of wealth and crime. Of course, there are lots of complicating factors and poverty is a hard problem to solve.
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Preventing crime is incapacitation + deterrence. Retribution is something else. It only prevents crime in as much as it makes the victim less willing to commit a crime to obtain satisfaction.
I agree that I don't consider retribution the same as deterence, but the person I replied to seemed to.
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Accepting the terms of the thought experiment, I would still want retributive punishment to match the crime. Even if you could absolutely assure me that a man that robbed my home could be turned into just a perfectly decent man and that no punishment would impact others, I'd still want him caned. He deserves the suffering for inflicting it on others and to deny his victims that penance is an injustice. So, yeah, that's probably not a reconcilable value difference.
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There is one more benefit of punitive justice: satisfaction for the victim. If you suffer, or people you care about suffer, it is satisfying to see the perpetrator of suffering to suffer in return. It’s a restitution of sorts.
You don’t see this argument being made though, even though this is extremely obvious and natural to most people (you can find millions of examples on X of people, both on left and right, full of glee from people being punished by criminal system), because it is obviously invalid in the enlightened liberal framework under which the discussion is happening.
Retribution is even one of the textbook reasons for criminal punishment: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution. (Sometimes restitution is included, sometimes treated separately)
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I don't personally consider that a benefit. In fact, I think it is a flaw because it causes people to act in ways that are less utilitarian/net good. I think the feeling of retribution and satisfaction is the primary driver for justice in a small society/community and serves the purpose of banding people together. But i do not believe it is a good in itself, and it should be tempered by rationality to discern the best course of action.
Like other intense emotions, it acts as an indicator for a desired change (the crime should never occur again, for example). But it does not indicate the exact course of action that should happen for the greatest benefit, especially on a social level.
Yeah, that’s the enlightened liberal framework I was talking about. Most people (fortunately) do not subscribe to utilitarianism, but nonetheless this is the dominant framework for the discussion, along with some specific assumptions, like granting substantially similar value to utils received by the perpetrator and the victim.
Is it the dominant framework for the discussion? I don't think I have ever spoken to someone about utilitarianism outside of rationalist ajacent circles.
To me the important question for government is, how do we get all of society's moving parts to work well together? How do we build a stable society for the future? It is, for better or worse, not a very warm approach (that's just how I tend to approach problems in general though). I acknowledge the human need to feel better about wrongs, but I think it can do more harm than good in a society of many. I also think preventing future crime is more important than punishment; it is preventable and crimes that have already happened are not. There is little evidence to show that punishment acts as a deterent for crime in our current society.
The other issue with something like retributive justice is that everyone's sense of what constitutes proper retribution is different. Retribution is not just a concern of conservative justice, it is the foundation for a lot of social justice movements. I take the same stance there. If the solution creates a bigger problem, it is not a solution (obviously this is a bit of a tautology). Or a step further: if retribution is a solution but there is a solution with better outcomes that does not involve retribution, the latter is better.
I don't think the desire for retribution isn't an important factor, just that retribution in itself isn't something to maximize as a value for me. I think the greatest pitfall of retribution in a large society (versus a small one, where it makes a lot more sense) is that the moving parts are no longer in sync. You can see this with public shamings that target relatively innocent people with great impunity and consequence. Or when two groups take opposing sides, and the desire for retribution is an infinite push back and forth.
Harm to whom, exactly? Good to whom, exactly? Think about it: you're putting avoiding harm to the criminal above the well-being of his victim.
I see people say things like that, and, frankly, I find it mind-boggling.
First, this is so contrary to all human instincts and experience, that it would take some extraordinary evidence to compel me to take it seriously. Somehow, my children are deterred from committing "crime" against me by threat of punishment. I am deterred from committing crime by the threat of punishment -- for example, I feel extreme urge to smack the shit out of the street hobos that aggressively accost me, and the main reason I don't is because I know that the law will protect the menacing hobos and destroy me for it. I can come up with more examples like that.
Given that I, and many people I know are deterred by threat of punishment, the only way punishment could not act as a deterrent is if encouraged some people to commit crime. I don't believe this is plausible.
Second, this statement, even if it was true (which it is not), it is cleverly crafted to distract from the main argument for punishment as we practice it: it doesn't need to act as a deterrent in order to do the job you want it to do, which is to prevent future crime. Indeed, all it needs to do is to incapacitate the criminal, and it does so tremendously. Criminals who are in jail cannot victimize people outside of jail, and dead criminals are even less capable of victimizing anyone. This means that executing criminals is a good way to prevent crime, even if literally nobody is deterred from committing crime by the threat of capital punishment.
I think you forgot to mention what problem is created by retribution. The only one I can think of is suffering of the criminal, which I see as a benefit, not a negative.
This is just a tautology: a better solution is better.
Few cases involve any publicity. In most cases, nobody cares about people close to victim and to the perpetrator. These form a small society.
I linked an ACX article a couple times. It's a good overview. If you disagree with it I would love to know why.
I should be more clear: harsher punishment is not a deterent. Getting caught and punished generally is a deterent. Increasing a sentence is not. That makes sense for many reasons (criminals are worse at risk management, passionate crimes, crimes of opportunity where the criminal doesn't believe he will be caught, social pressures).
I agree that putting criminals in prison is the best way to prevent crime.
Cost and benefit is in terms of society as whole. It isn't free to punish people, just as it isn't free to repair a road. It costs money to detain people, or otherwise punish them. It costs money to have a police force and arrest people. Crime also costs money. The simple way of framing it: does it cost society more money to detain a criminal (easier to calculate), or deal with their crime (very difficult to calculate)? That's a cold calculus, but it's a starting point. I think you would agree that punishment clearly has diminishing returns after a certain point. Locking someone up for minor theft for 20 years costs more money than the theft is worth.
Yeah, I can believe that increasing a sentence from 5 to 20 years might not have a huge effect on people who commit the kinds of crimes that get you 5 years in prison, but I don't see it as relevant. First, it's good for the victims to inflict more retribution on criminals, and second, as the ACX article you mention clearly shows, it would prevent a lot of future crime too.
Yes, and the cost of crime in American society is tremendous. It's so high, in fact, that it would be extremely hard for government spending on crime prevention to come even close to it. We actually spend trivial amounts of money on law enforcement and justice system.
There are diminishing returns, but whether they exceed the cost in your 20 years for minor theft example is far from obvious. In fact, the way you phrase it, comparing the cost of imprisonment to just the direct cost of the theft, suggests that you either don't understand the arguments being made, or are trying to pull a fast one. You also need to include in the benefits column things like crime prevented by incapacitating for 20 years the kind of a person who'd engage in petty theft even when it risks 20 years in jail. That kind of a person is highly likely to cause enough violence, property damage, and cost to the system to make up for the 20 years of imprisonment.
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