Before joining general population, I was stripped naked, made to take a shower in scalding water, and washed with a harsh soap. I’m sure designed to limit (not eliminate, which would be impossible in a lock-down facility,) antibiotic-resistant staph infections, which were prevelant enough to warrant a pamphlet. Staph costs lives and limbs, which would seem an extreme punichment for any crime short of murder, but is acceptable as a necessary side effect of imprisonment.

Despite someone’s thought that prison rape is a fantasy of the writers on Oz, that, also, merited a seperate pamphlet, with suggestions for avoiding involuntary sodomy.

I don’t know of any judge who would advocate that violation, even in retribution for a rapists’ crimes. Even so, a judge would, presumably, pre determine the appropriate duration, location, and medical concerns involved.

Finally, this experience was BEFORE a trial, before I was “proven guilty in a court of law.” Before I faced a jury of my peers.

Torture seems a little less evil, when you look at both sides of the issue. A caning seems downright humanitarian in comparison.

Unless we can garuntee no rapes, infections, and beatings, imprisonment seems worse than torture, because it’s inflicted randomly and without concern for benefit or rehabilitation. No-one is stepping in to end this expiriment, and it’s high time we did.

(I don’t advocate torture, or corporal punishment, but I think the current option is worse, in many ways.)

Many convicted criminals, however, don’t pose a risk to society. Men convicted of securities fraud, for example, are frequently barred from the stock market and so their freedom won’t endanger society.

So you propose torture only for white-collar criminals? In what way are they not a risk to society upon being freed? It would seem they’d be just as likely to re-commit their chosen crime as a non-white-collar criminal would be. In what way is torture a better deterrent, especially, if, as your comments suggest, the criminal would prefer torture over imprisonment?

And given that the knock on white-collar sentences is that the criminals are shuffled into ‘Club Med’-style prisons, why do you think a sentence of torture would amount to more than a slap on the wrist?

Personally, I don’t look to the prison system to provide retribution or much of a deterrence. That’s for medieval types. Prison is about incapacitation, and, hopefully, rehabilitation. And, yes, I’m willing to pony up for that, just as you’re willing to pony up to send a huckster back out on the street to bilk us all out of money through the back door by pretending you’ve deterred him. Just because it doesn’t show up on the budget doesn’t mean you didn’t pay.

Say someone came up with a solid, mathematical proof that sending the poorest 15% of the population into forced labor camps was economically beneficial to society as a whole and perhaps even to (most of) the people at risk. Would this be a wise path to pursue, even if some of the laborers preferred this?

Incarcerating people for long periods of time is the least invasive measure we have in deterring and preventing crime. Prisoners’ bodies and minds are not breached, their personal integrity is not compromised. We have not dehumanized them, but only taken the minimally intrusive precautions to protect society from their doings.

Finally, European prison systems don’t normally dish out as long prison sentences as the US; many rehabilitation efforts are also more succesful. Furthermore, incarceration seems to be the least cost-effective means of preventing crime; improving high school completion rates the most. Why only consider the most provocative alternative to incarceration? It seems to me similar to assume the most provocative explanation of differing cognitive test outcomes. It seems to me a more rational approach is to encourage crime prevention, reduce incaceration rates and prevent prison rape.

Prison as of now does not allow people to work and pay back their debt and make the victim whole. Now, not all crimes can be compensated this way, but this approach reduces costs and makes sure rehabilitation is on a better track than today because of learning useful skills, and getting a chance to get back into society. Also, the victim receives a compensation.

You suggest torture will be performed in a “highly professional and scientifically optimized manner”. Maybe. I’m talking about how torture is practiced now, which is often in a professionalized and highly pseudoscientific manner that corrupts all people and institutions involved with it. You can read about how the field of psychology was co-opted and corrupted by the CIA’s Cold War torture experiments in this recent book. Somebody wanted empirical evidence, I suggest you start here.

I admit that this conversation did not much increase my understanding of how people and states reach decisions. They are so far from logic that holding up a logical argument for comparison may not be helpful.

You are right that my last sentence does not make sense. James Miller’s last paragraph is making an empirical claim. It is hard to draw lines between empirical claims and inference, but it seems to me that that paragraph requires very limited empirical claims about people’s beliefs.
What would it mean to be “transparently rooted in empiricism”? That he say how he reached these beliefs?