Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Similar argument made by criminologist Peter Moskos in 2011: In Defense of Flogging.

For what it’s worth, purpose of punishment is generally thought to be justice/retribution and/or incapacitation and/or rehabilitation—this is the debate among criminologists and philosophers of law. No one seriously thinks deterrence is the primary purpose of punishment other than economists! (To be fair, this was the argument off the OG criminologist Beccaria.)

Expand full comment
GlassserWer's avatar

I also don't get why life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is almost universally seen as more humane than the death penality. It would make an interesting twitter poll whether people would choose the death penality or a life sentence for themselves. IMO being against the death penality in most cases doesn't have anything to do with compassion for the criminals. Rather people feel more comfortable with passively letting people rot away in prison than with actively having to kill them. Also, more "civilized" execution methods like deadly injections are not really more humane than more "barbaric" ones like beheadings. The historic tendency to make punishment more and more invisible to the public and to use more seemingly "humane" methods comes with the downside of less compassion for the punished criminal by the public. Rather than protesting the death penality for the most notorious criminals, human right activists should protest the uniquely american practise of giving kids "life without parole" prison sentences.

Expand full comment
13 more comments...

No posts