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chaosmage  1yr ago (text post)   2514 thread views

Should lifetime prisoners be incentivized to kill themselves?

The death penalty has various serious problems and lifetime imprisonment is really really expensive.

I guess we should be happy every time someone so thoroughly bad we want them out of society forever (like a serial murderer) does us the favour of killing themselves. Nothing of value is lost, and the justice system saves money. Right?

It seems to me it logically follows that we should incentivize such suicides. Like: 5000 dollars to a person of your choice if you're dead within the first year of your lifetime sentence, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

It feels very wrong and is clearly outside the overton window. But is there any reason to expect this wouldn't be a net benefit?

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How far expanded?

While I think we should be able to sentence some people to death, expanding the list of crimes is a perverse incentive.

Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.

And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.

I’m saying the death penalty should be safe, legal, and rare.

When I see people arguing for expansion of the death penalty to (child) rapists, this is often my main concern- if the penalty is already death, it increases incentives to go ahead and kill the victim before they become a witness.

This proves too much and can be stretched until it precludes all punishment.

(Chemical) castration for child rapists is still on the table.

Please elaborate. It seems to be limited to only the expansion of using the most severe allowable punishment (so would also be the case if the punishment for both murder and child rape were life without parole, but would not apply if the punishment for child rape were death but the punishment for murder was torture then death) for things less than murder.

One of the reasons why ancient legal codes where execution was a common punishment allowed for various different methods of execution, allowed for punishments beyond execution (such as also killing one's family, seizing lands and titles) etc.

Edit: To carry on the Qin example, if the penalty for being late was death but the penalty for treason was death and seizure of all your family's assets, there would still be incentive to not commit treason.

The issue I take with your argument above is that it hinges on whether the escalation of the penalty from life in prison to death incentivizes the escalation of child rape to child murder. As far as I can see, a child rapist may as well escalate to child murder in order to eliminate a witness that may lead to his lifelong imprisonment. Or to his less long imprisonment. Or to his public flogging. Or to his being fined. Obviously the likelihood decreases the further down we go, but I find it somewhat arbitrary to pick out any one point and say "here we may not escalate the punishment no matter how severe the crime, lest the criminal commit further crimes in order to increase his odds of going unpunished altogether".

Maybe I'm being overly critical because it runs counter to my own views on justice. Not sure, to be honest.

I mean, the French found something like that when the penalty for rape was close to the one for murder. Rapists were silencing their victims. Permanently. So if you can commit one crime and then cover it up with a second, greater crime, it seems good to not have incentives to do that. You have two competing goals here…reducing the number of child rapists, and reducing the number of murders.

Thank you for elaborating, that makes more sense.

Maybe I'm being overly critical because it runs counter to my own views on justice. Not sure, to be honest.

Fair, even I have a point where I say "to hell with the utilitarian calculus, this must be punished harshly" (i.e even if somehow just making murder legal provided a drastic reduction in what we would currently call murders I still wouldn't be able to stomach such a state of affairs).

My only pushback would be that I do not consider this particular point arbitrary, because while for the rest

As far as I can see, a child rapist may as well escalate to child murder in order to eliminate a witness that may lead to his lifelong imprisonment. Or to his less long imprisonment. Or to his public flogging. Or to his being fined.

there is still possibility of a downside to committing another crime to reduce the chances of being caught for the first- yes, maybe they'll opt to take their chances with the death penalty to reduce their chances of life imprisonment or any imprisonment etc, but once the punishments are equal it is ALWAYS "correct" to commit any additional crimes that reduce the chance of being caught by any amount.

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