Crime and punishment (split from What are the benefits of understanding our free will?)

[swansont]

On 12/3/2023 at 11:02 PM, mistermack said:

The rehab industry will shout it to the rooftops, but they ignore the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight.

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Moderator Note

Fact? Where are the studies that support this fact?

 

[StringJunky]

@mistermack Prison only works in physically taking pathologically dangerous people out of society. It is pretty impotent in the long term sense for less serious crimes, like persistent theft or fraud etc. Once labelled a criminal, I imagine a fair few think: " I'm fucked, might as well carry on." What is happening with this kind of thinking is that, by labelling them a criminal from the beginning, one has attacked and destroyed the whole person. What have you got left to work with? They aren't going away.

The sense of being a criminal has lost it's gravitas, such that the behaviour-modifying potential of applying that label has been lost. It pervades at every level of society. The difference from the the past to now is that it's naked.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by StringJunky

[mistermack]

10 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

It is pretty impotent in the long term sense for less serious crimes, like persistent theft or fraud etc.

It's usually a last resort for less serious crimes, so you are in effect selecting the worst and most persistent for prison. People who have not been turned off crime by the other options. Those people might not be reformed by prison, but at least prison lightens the load on victims, for a while. And some do eventually swear that this is "the last time" and eventually manage to avoid going back. Not from being rehabbed, but they just get sick of going in and out of prison. 

 

19 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Once labelled a criminal, I imagine a fair few think: " I'm fucked, might as well carry on." What is happening with this kind of thinking is that, by labelling them a criminal from the beginning, one has attacked and destroyed the whole person. What have you got left to work with? They aren't going away.

I'm sure they know perfectly well that they are a criminal. When you break into someone's house, and steal their cherished property, it's fairly self-evident that you're a criminal. Try explaining to victims that you shouldn't label the person who trashed their home, and left them feeling unsafe and violated, as a criminal. The victims have rights, and one of those rights should be that the criminal pays a price for what they put the victims through. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Fact? Where are the studies that support this fact?

I can't believe this. You're demanding studies for the bleedin obvious now? I can't imagine any reputable organisation would risk the embarrassment of taking part. Or spending money on it. 

[iNow]

5 hours ago, Eise said:

Maybe @iNow has some interesting references?

I do, indeed. There’s literally decades of research supporting this topic and the conclusions are consistent. That said, they’re OT, mistermack wont read them, won’t change his stance as a result of them, nor will he offer counter examples showing them wrong (choosing instead to rely on his common sense folk wisdom outdated opinion)

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228187332_The_Effectiveness_of_Correctional_Rehabilitation_A_Review_of_Systematic_Reviews

Quote

Hundreds of studies have been conducted on those effects, some investigating punitive approaches and some investigating rehabilitation treatments. Systematic reviews (meta-analyses) of those studies, while varying greatly in coverage and technique, display remarkable consistency in their overall findings. Supervision and sanctions, at best, show modest mean reductions in recidivism and, in some instances, have the opposite effect and increase reoffense rates. The mean recidivism effects found in studies of rehabilitation treatment, by comparison, are consistently positive and relatively large.

 

[swansont]

12 hours ago, mistermack said:

I can't believe this. You're demanding studies for the bleedin obvious now? I can't imagine any reputable organisation would risk the embarrassment of taking part. Or spending money on it. 

And it was obvious that heavier things fell faster than lighter things, up until it was actually tested. You claimed it was a fact, not that it was obvious (to you)

Other things that seem obvious that prison time reduces the odds that someone would re-offend, or that the death penalty is a deterrent, and people claim these things are true. But those “obvious” things don’t hold up to scrutiny.

“A large body of research finds that spending time in prison or jail doesn’t lower the risk that someone will offend again. In some instances, it actually raises the likelihood that they will commit future crimes.”

https://daily.jstor.org/rethinking-prison-as-a-deterrent-to-future-crime/

The death penalty does not deter crime

“there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws”

https://www.aclu.org/documents/death-penalty-questions-and-answers#:~:text=A%3A No%2C there is no,than states without such laws.

So yes, I expect that issues of deterrence have been studied. And they have been.

“Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.”

“Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime”

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence

So apparently there are studies. If it’s a “great incentive” one might expect clear evidence of the deterrence.

The bottom line is that if you claim something to be true, you have to be prepared to back it up. Others do this regularly, and it’s required by the rules.

It’s exhausting having try and get you to do this when you’re posting an opinion that you’re asserting as fact. It takes time to debunk you and it’s not fair that you can just spout BS and move on. It’s a fundamentally dishonest debate tactic, and common enough that it has its own name - Brandolini’s law, aka the bullshit asymmetry principle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

And it was obvious that heavier things fell faster than lighter things, up until it was actually tested.

Tested in air with a brick and a feather? That usually IS an obvious fact, in air. You're a bit careless with facts. 

But it took you 14 hours to assemble that pile of strawmen? And nowhere in that pile of verbiage did you actually quote the phrase you took exception to. Which was : (and I quote, since you wouldn't) 

"the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight." 

And you don't think that's obvious? Why do burglars operate at night? Fear of punishment. (FOP) Why do armed robbers wear masks? FOP. Why do muggers run away? FOP. Why do shoplifters hide what they stole? FOP. Why do prostitutes sell their bodies for sex, instead of just stealing what they want? FOP. Why do men not grab the asses of every skimpily clad girl? FOP. Why do I not drink and drive? FOP (amongst other reasons)

The fundamental thing that you are getting wrong, is that because some people override their fear of punishment, and still commit crimes, that somehow means that FOP doesn't exist at all, in anyone. 

I'm saying it's obvious, bleedin obvious, that most people DO go straight, and FOP is the number one reason. Plenty of other reasons exist too, but that doesn't invalidate FOP as being number one. 

Edited December 6, 2023 by mistermack

[swansont]

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

Tested in air with a brick and a feather? That usually IS an obvious fact, in air. You're a bit careless with facts. 

I didn't say anything about a feather and a brick.

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

But it took you 14 hours to assemble that pile of strawmen?

Don't flatter yourself. I was doing other things for the bulk of that time. It took a few minutes to research this. Which makes your refusal to put in the effort all the worse.

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

And nowhere in that pile of verbiage did you actually quote the phrase you took exception to. Which was : (and I quote, since you wouldn't) 

"the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight." 

I'm glad you pointed that out. Punishment.

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

And you don't think that's obvious? Why do burglars operate at night? Fear of punishment. (FOP) Why do armed robbers wear masks? FOP. Why do muggers run away? FOP. Why do shoplifters hide what they stole? FOP. Why do prostitutes sell their bodies for sex, instead of just stealing what they want? FOP. Why do men not grab the asses of every skimpily clad girl? FOP. Why do I not drink and drive? FOP (amongst other reasons)

As the NIJ link repeatedly points out, it's the fear of getting caught, not the fear of punishment.

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

The fundamental thing that you are getting wrong, is that because some people override their fear of punishment, and still commit crimes, that somehow means that FOP doesn't exist at all, in anyone. 

I'm saying it's obvious, bleedin obvious, that most people DO go straight, and FOP is the number one reason. Plenty of other reasons exist too, but that doesn't invalidate FOP as being number one. 

You're saying it's obvious, and yet the experts disagree. And it's because lay opinion doesn't always reflect what's actually happening is precisely why we defer to the experts.

!

Moderator Note

The bottom line here is that you don't make the rules, and you don't get to decide, without consequence, that you're going not to follow them.

The ironic thing here is that fear of punishment has had absolutely no effect on your behavior, despite your insistence that it should.

 

[AIkonoklazt]

Nothing beats good ole fashioned enforcement. When there weren't enough cops in SF, large groups of hoodlums just smash and grab all over the city. They still do, just a whole lot less.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/shoplifting-retail-theft-store-18523023.php

Quote

The blitzes are effective because they include the deployment of a large number of undercover officers who are able to arrest multiple suspects, something a few officers on patrol can’t do, Sernoffsky said. 

 

[iNow]

[sethoflagos]