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We haven’t had excessive cue-response punishment in America for a long time, because what is universally important for deterring animal behavior is that the punishment occur parallel or quickly following the behavior. The association must be intuitive and salient for deterrence to occur for animals, and it’s only different among Civilized Man because he has been trained to constantly self-administer judgment of behavior so that cue-response rewards and punishments are artificially associated with the behavior in the mind. Taking a long time to arrest someone, or placing them on bail, is not sufficient punishment for animals if our intention is to change behavior. You can even ask them why they are being punished and they might say something approximately like “the government” or “racism” or “snitches”, ie they are mentally inculcating a pattern that is only going to produce more criminality in the future.
But in any case, it’s the fault of judges if they don’t follow the rules, not the fault of a given schema. Your 1909 quote is clearly about a specific category of crime that wasn’t considered serious at the time (hitting your wife).
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my post. You do not need any reform or rehab because animal behavior will 100% change provided a behavior is associated with punishment. That is the reform, that is the rehab. It’s how you learn not to touch hot things, not to be mean to others, and even to keep your King defended in Chess. Dog’s do not actually need reward-training to learn not to jump on the counter because you can just pinch their butt and shout, or quickly place them in a cage (if you are one of those progressives who mistakenly believes that isolation and boredom are less painful than brief physical pain). This is all very simple animal psychology that should be common knowledge and taught in schools. An animal can become traumatically afraid of walking on ice simply by falling into a frozen lake, no reform required (I sadly learned this from personal experience: my genetically-evolved Labrador never swam in her life because she escaped the yard and found her way on a frozen lake.)
I say, many more physical slaps on the wrist for young criminality including poor school behavior, which progresses in adulthood to beatings (continued until morality improves).
We seem to have different notions of what a 'slap on the wrist' involves, but in my day we had corporal punishment in school and I agree that a good swipe of the báta wouldn't go amiss with some 😁
My 1909 example is not about the crime, it's about the expectation on the part of the citizen. "Look, a crime is being committed over here!" and expecting the cop to rush to the scene, while the cop knows the complaint won't be pursued (the wife won't bring a charge against her husband, Chesa Boudin when he was still there won't bring a prosecution) so he takes his time and strolls along leisurely, if he even bothers to go.
If the cops know that the wife-beater/crazy guy on the subway will be held and won't be out on bail within five minutes of being arrested, then they have an incentive to do the damn job. And that's on us, who vote in or support the guys who campaign on "I will stop the incarceration pipeline". Mind you, the "tough on crime" lot are not much better; it's no good being 'tough on crime' when the courts are backlogged and the jails are too full to hold the convicted, you need to put resources in there too.
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