Cruel – willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it. Cruelty is pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another’s suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. …affirmative violence is not necessary for an act to be cruel. … are four distinct conceptions of cruelty. … first … above in degree and beyond in type the [suffering] allowed by applicable norms. … second … fault of character consisting in deriving personal delight from causing and witnessing suffering … punishment or other violence is a means to restore the offset in the cosmic order of the universe caused by a wrongdoing. Anything that goes beyond what is necessary for this restoration, then, is cruel. … third … the pain or the sense of degradation and humiliation experienced … fourth … accumulation of all the prior conceptions. (
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.)
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.
Some get on the moral high horse with regards to people who hurt others, others get on the high horse in regards to those who want to lock the criminals up. I know which group I want running my society.
OT: "But prison is now more expensive than college;"
So am I reading this below wrong?
In 2015–16, total expenses per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student were higher at private nonprofit 4-year postsecondary institutions ($56,401) than at public 4-year institutions ($44,009) and private for-profit 4-year institutions ($16,208).
It would be interesting to learn why such suggestions never seem to get anywhere.
Given that, at least in the US, we seem to be willing to inflict very long prison sentences on a very large proportion of the population for a very large number of crimes (many victimless), perhaps punishment being inefficient and expensive for the state is a good thing, as it is one of the few limiting factors on the length, cruelty, and frequency of punishments.
I don't know how people in other countries think about these things, but in the US many people "get on the moral high horse" and seem eager to hurt "criminals" as much as possible, on the theory that they're inherently bad people and "deserve" it.
If that's a common attitude, maybe expensive and inefficient punishment isn't such a bad thing.
Sounds good in theory, as long as we can avoid the failure mode of "same sentence lenghts, except in mean jails". Frankly, I'd put much more emphasis on reducing current overpunishment, removal of victimless crimes and alternative isolation options. Then again, I do want my enemies to suffer, so maybe if we have more functionless laws and more enforcement and overpunishment of those laws, more of my personal enemies will suffer more.
Sure, that's a reasonable approach to another issue. Its just not the issue of this post. Works better if you make the jail a voucher, responsible if the convict escapes and causes harm.
Distinguish between jail & prison. Jail as place where we hold people for trial existed, but it wasn't a punishment. Prison is where people are sentenced and that WAS uncommon at the founding. Corporal/capital punishment was far more common.
Here is a free-market idea that I could get behind: Private prisons that can accept selected (probably low-overhead) inmates currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, and house them at much lower costs. So far it seems like the makings of a system sure to produce abuse, neglect and profiteering - but here's the key ingredient:
The incarcerated people can always ask to be moved back to state or federal prisons, and their requests cannot be refused.
The way I picture it, private prisons would be competing to attract inmates AND lower incarceration costs. Let them get creative. I'm sure many could provide an environment for inmates that is more appealing than federal prison and cheaper than a university. Let them do some remote work and get relevant job experience. If they start feeling like it's slavery, they can always transfer back to normal jail! That seems like one good way to reduce the needless cruelty of incarceration while still keeping dangerous people separated from others in their most dangerous years.
The U.S constitution contains a prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishments, which seems like a vague way of banning overly "mean" punishments. It makes more sense as a legal term of art against novel punishments. And in that linked paper, the author argues that long prison sentences would indeed have been novel punishments during the founding.
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.)
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.
Some get on the moral high horse with regards to people who hurt others, others get on the high horse in regards to those who want to lock the criminals up. I know which group I want running my society.
I added some links near that text.
OT: "But prison is now more expensive than college;"
So am I reading this below wrong?
In 2015–16, total expenses per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student were higher at private nonprofit 4-year postsecondary institutions ($56,401) than at public 4-year institutions ($44,009) and private for-profit 4-year institutions ($16,208).
You are far from the first to suggest this.
It would be interesting to learn why such suggestions never seem to get anywhere.
Given that, at least in the US, we seem to be willing to inflict very long prison sentences on a very large proportion of the population for a very large number of crimes (many victimless), perhaps punishment being inefficient and expensive for the state is a good thing, as it is one of the few limiting factors on the length, cruelty, and frequency of punishments.
I don't know how people in other countries think about these things, but in the US many people "get on the moral high horse" and seem eager to hurt "criminals" as much as possible, on the theory that they're inherently bad people and "deserve" it.
If that's a common attitude, maybe expensive and inefficient punishment isn't such a bad thing.
Sounds good in theory, as long as we can avoid the failure mode of "same sentence lenghts, except in mean jails". Frankly, I'd put much more emphasis on reducing current overpunishment, removal of victimless crimes and alternative isolation options. Then again, I do want my enemies to suffer, so maybe if we have more functionless laws and more enforcement and overpunishment of those laws, more of my personal enemies will suffer more.
Sure, that's a reasonable approach to another issue. Its just not the issue of this post. Works better if you make the jail a voucher, responsible if the convict escapes and causes harm.
I already noted that in the post.
Distinguish between jail & prison. Jail as place where we hold people for trial existed, but it wasn't a punishment. Prison is where people are sentenced and that WAS uncommon at the founding. Corporal/capital punishment was far more common.
A note on exile: for some people, exile is not much of a punishment. Consider the case of Roman Polanski...
Here is a free-market idea that I could get behind: Private prisons that can accept selected (probably low-overhead) inmates currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, and house them at much lower costs. So far it seems like the makings of a system sure to produce abuse, neglect and profiteering - but here's the key ingredient:
The incarcerated people can always ask to be moved back to state or federal prisons, and their requests cannot be refused.
The way I picture it, private prisons would be competing to attract inmates AND lower incarceration costs. Let them get creative. I'm sure many could provide an environment for inmates that is more appealing than federal prison and cheaper than a university. Let them do some remote work and get relevant job experience. If they start feeling like it's slavery, they can always transfer back to normal jail! That seems like one good way to reduce the needless cruelty of incarceration while still keeping dangerous people separated from others in their most dangerous years.
Corporal punishment and mean jails were quite common back then, and so couldn't at all be seen as "unusual" by this account.
The U.S constitution contains a prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishments, which seems like a vague way of banning overly "mean" punishments. It makes more sense as a legal term of art against novel punishments. And in that linked paper, the author argues that long prison sentences would indeed have been novel punishments during the founding.
Agree.