Fair and Equal Justice

[Bayushi]

No, you can't. But morality is an artificial construct. You CAN, however, inspire obedience, which is the real point of the law, as our current system shows. Many of the laws in place now, and the penalties for breaking them, have nothing to do with the public good, and everything to do with enforcing compliance. I'm just willing to be a little more honest about my motives than your average politician.

Creating or using laws to inspire "obedience" in the populace is tyranny.

Sorry, but your system is irredeemably flawed.

[Missy]

How can you form a fair and just system if morality is not the objective?

[Oniya]

Not to mention, obedience to authority has nothing to do with morality.  If the leader happens to be an immoral git, then obedience to that leader out of fear results in institutionalized immorality.  Ancient Rome was rife with examples.

[Missy]

Indeed. I also started thinking about Modern China. I mean, they basically have a government all about telling people what they can and can't do and jailing them if they disobey and we know because we hear at least one story a year about it.

People can't be bullied into doing things, they just don't follow that way.

It would last until people got tired of the bloodshed.

[Vekseid]

I think reaction to this story is based on emotion alone and not logic. On the surface, complete with highlighted excerpts just in case you miss them, our eyes are drawn to what appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice and fairness.
...
I think it's far too easy to peruse over this graphic, become indignant at the apparent injustice, and run outside waving a pitch forck calling for people's heads.

No.

I can get in serious shit if I let Elliquiy's servers get compromised. It's my responsibility to keep this site secure. In first-world countries, it is not the rest of the Internet's responsibility to put up with people who don't have the knowhow to maintain and secure a webserver.

As I mentioned, three billion dollars is the life product of several hundred American's lives. You can put a year number on that. But you aren't convincing anyone with any sense that his negligence was less disruptive than the guy who turned himself in.

[LustfulLord2011]

How can you form a fair and just system if morality is not the objective?

Yes. It IS tyranny. Absolutely. My point is that tyranny, like it or not, is the modality, to one extent or another, of all extant governments world wide. The difference between my system and the current one... the ONLY difference... is that we aren't spending billions of dollars a year supporting a penal system that doesn't work. And I'm actually honest about my intent: Make restitution where it can be made, and remove the threat of repeat offenses permanently where it can't be made."

Is my system oppressive? Absolutely. Does it deny morality? Absolutely. But morality, like law itself, is something that we invented. We are the only species in the world that would, or could, even begin to accept the existence of such a concept, because it flies in the face of Nature's first law: Those who are fittest will survive, while the weak will be oppressed, or die. We have no intrinsic rights; we, like all other organisms, have the right to what we can take and hold against whoever or whatever else might want to take it from us. Nor is morality, or law for that matter, a natural occurrence. But even our own legal system does nothing to inspire morality. It just punishes offenders, and dictates many criminal acts that don't even belong on the books. The difference is, our current system punishes not only the offenders, but the rest of society at large, because we pay for the infrastructure that houses and feeds our criminal populace.

My system is indeed tyrannical. I merely postulate that, among all the systems in practice today, it is no less tyrannical, and a good deal more efficient and less costly, and also more democratic... I don't care if you are the President, or a homeless teenager, the penalty for any and all crimes will be the same: restitution where possible, prevention where possible, death when one of the other two cannot be achieved.

[TheGlyphstone]

Let them hate, so long as they fear?

[LustfulLord2011]

It's the same way with the system we have now... except that it costs a lot more and is a lot less efficient. If I saw a way to craft a system that promoted genuine justice, I would, but all of the greatest minds history has ever produced have, as yet, failed to come up with a truly fair system, and while I hold myself to be very intelligent and well educated, I do not hold myself to be exceptional. Since fairness and justice seem, for the time being, to be completely beyond the human capacity to achieve, why not make the injustice and unfairness run a little more smoothly and save a couple billion dollars a year into the bargain?

[Oniya]

My system is indeed tyrannical. I merely postulate that, among all the systems in practice today, it is no less tyrannical, and a good deal more efficient and less costly, and also more democratic... I don't care if you are the President, or a homeless teenager, the penalty for any and all crimes will be the same: restitution where possible, prevention where possible, death when one of the other two cannot be achieved.

Tyranny = more democratic?  I do not think that means what you think it means.

[LustfulLord2011]

Democratic, in the sense that neither class, nor race, nor gender, nor any other status that currently protects the guilty will shield anyone from the law for so much as a moment. If that word in this context bothers you as improper usage (as it is, to a small degree, to one way of thinking), then feel free to substitute it for "equal", "on the level", or some other such phrase implying that everyone gets the same treatment.

[Oniya]

So... kill 'em all and let $Deity sort them out?

[TheGlyphstone]

Considering this 'system' would, unless it undermined its own core principle of 'treat everyone the same', sentence the two guys who got in a barfight and the guy who shot up a preschool to the same death penalty (both violent crimes), sounds like it.

[LustfulLord2011]

Pretty much. Why should these criminals be our problem?

[meikle]

All violent offenses shall be punished by death.

The legal system is a lot more effective when it's a system that aims to dissuade people from committing crimes rather than a system that aims to punish people for crimes.

Let's say all violent offenses are punished by death.  I get drunk and punch someone.

Now I will resort to any means, violent or otherwise, to avoid being caught, because it will mean my death.  You are no longer dissuading me from doing crime, but encouraging me, by promising that you will murder me if I stop.

[LustfulLord2011]

Okay... That is a valid point. I will concede that you are right, in that instance. As stated, I never said my system was perfect... merely that it was more efficient, that it would result in equality before the law, and that it would save the money that America and other civilized nations spend on prison systems every year. I am still trying to figure out some proposed amendments that work preventatively, but the problem there is that violent people are going to commit acts of violence no matter whether it's legal or not. Same with sex offenders. I notice that there hasn't been much disagreement from people on the first clause in my abbreviated legal code... Do people generally feel that would be a fair penalty for property related crimes? Or have they just been so offended by my other proposals that they chose to focus there? Just curious.

[Oniya]

I think Brandon summed up the reaction to the property based crimes well enough.

Sounds like another form of Tyranny to me. I dont think Ive ever heard of medeval justice being proposed as solutions to the problems of our current system. Usually they're used as "what not to do" guides

Think about it, you're proposing government sanctioned slavery, mutilation, and systematic murder despite any circumstances of the crimes in question. Im sorry but theres no way I would allow that.

[Brandon]

Which by the way is expressly against the emancipation proclimation

[LustfulLord2011]

Fair enough. But I will point out once again that I never claimed my system was perfect... I merely claimed it would solve certain problems with our current system. That does NOT mean it would not create others... As I said, there has yet to be a truly positive legal code developed anywhere in the known world, throughout history, to my knowledge. If someone can point me to an example of a fair, efficient legal code that balances the needs of society against the rights of the accused, please do.

However, regarding that last comment, prisoners in the American penal system engage in forced labor all the time, the proceeds of which primarily go to the state. My proposal of indentured servitude as a means of repayment (when ALL other potential avenues are not viable) is not a new or radical idea, just couched in a new way. In fact, it is LESS destructive of people's rights, because it doesn't take away their freedom while they work to repay their debt; it merely forces them to work to repay it for a certain number of hours each day.

[Oniya]

Another reason that the property crime 'solution' may not be getting as much attention is that it's hardly as permanent as sterilization and death.  If someone is later found to have been innocent, they can be compensated in some way (at the very least, released from their indenture).  If you find out that the accused rapist didn't do it, what are you going to do?  Say 'Sorry for ripping your balls off with a hacksaw, no hard feelings, eh?'

[LustfulLord2011]

This part is true. I agree with my detractors on the point that my solutions are permanent, and irreversible, and that the consequences of a miscarriage of justice under my proposals would be truly horrible. Having agreed with that sentiment, however, I also put forward the premise that our current penal system, in it's own way, also does more harm than good, because it too is ineffective at prevention, and is also slow, and costly. Part of why I put forward my ideas was to see if others could, perhaps, come up with happy medium kinds of solutions. At one end we have the current system; grossly inefficient, costly to the public, and ineffective. On the other, we have mine: cheap, efficient, and equal, but flawed for the reasons people have given me. I was hoping to spark a debate that would produce some ideas that fell into neither camp, that might help bridge them a bit.

[Oniya]

Things that I think could be implemented in the current system: 

1)  institute occupational training and job placement, especially for those who commit property crimes.  Not all inmates will benefit from this, but the ones that steal for legitimate reasons of desperation would.  Job placement is important, lest they fall into the 'Jean Valjean' trap of wanting to redeem themselves but being unable to because no one will hire them.  For those that are not redeemable, the occupational training would allow them to pay for their incarceration.

2)  Don't make prison pleasant.  Minimal comforts should be allowed - about as comfortable as the cheapest, non-condemned hotel room on the market.  No cable (local channels are fine, maybe a radio).  No video games, but plenty of gym access.  Internet is a privilege and should be carefully monitored. 

3)  Unlimited access to educational material (year-old textbooks could be donated by universities, maybe in return for funding from the state - gods know that they make students buy new ones each year!)  This goes back a bit to number 1.  Books and movies that don't fall into that category would be privileges.

4)  Mandatory psychological and addiction counseling.  In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "war on drugs." Violent crime and property crime have actually declined since the early 1990s.

[LustfulLord2011]

That's true, and a lot of the violent and property related crimes committed now tie back to drugs somehow. The problem with the "war on drugs" is that the kinds of people who want to use drugs are going to whether it's legal or not, and the kinds of people who DON'T aren't suddenly going to hop on the bandwagon just because it's legal. The only honest difference that legalizing and controlling street drugs would make is that, rather than pissing away billions of dollars on a war that we can't win, and housing the criminals that result from the anti-drug legislation, the government would be MAKING a lot of money on taxing and regulating their production and sale. Oh, plus, if they were legal, there might actually be some quality control standards, which might help prevent some of the drug-related deaths in this country.

Regarding your other points, I could get behind those ideas. But what do you do with the genuine irremediable criminals? You can't let them run free, and jail is still an option that costs the taxpayers here, and around the world, way too much money every year.

[TheGlyphstone]

Under your proposal, though, there is no such thing as a 'redeemable' criminal, because everyone who commits those crimes is killed for them.

With the other reforms, jail wouldn't cost 'way too much money' anymore - especially drug legislation reform would vastly decrease the prison population. Repeat violent offenders - not even the people you want sentenced to death for their first violent crime, but the truly 'irredeemably' violent ones, are a tiny fraction of our prison population (though the most publicized and attention-getting). The government can well afford to shove them away in tiny concrete boxes for the duration of their natural lives.

[LustfulLord2011]

Yeah, that part is true. The changes in drug legislation alone would drastically reduce the cost to the public of our current penal system. Food for thought.

[Oniya]

Under your proposal, though, there is no such thing as a 'redeemable' criminal, because everyone who commits those crimes is killed for them.

With the other reforms, jail wouldn't cost 'way too much money' anymore - especially drug legislation reform would vastly decrease the prison population. Repeat violent offenders - not even the people you want sentenced to death for their first violent crime, but the truly 'irredeemably' violent ones, are a tiny fraction of our prison population (though the most publicized and attention-getting). The government can well afford to shove them away in tiny concrete boxes for the duration of their natural lives.

And under the first part of my proposal, they'd be shut in those little rooms with some kind of occupational training to offset their costs.  The ones that would be a burden would be the ones who were completely nonredeemable, and were also intent on not bettering themselves in any way.