[ericmcer]

Isn't part of the punishment the therapeutic aspect for victims? Our justice and prison system is broken in many ways, but it has always sat kind of wrong with me that someone could steal from, hurt, or kill me or someone I love and then go to a rehab camp to learn why what they did was wrong.

I definitely try to be progressive about it, and for victimless crimes 100% rehabilitation and learning, but If a loved one or me was a victim, it would be difficult to watch them taking humanities courses.

[cortic]

The system is flawed, it will always be flawed. some innocent people will be imprisoned, some guilty people will never be caught. Since its impossible to change this i think the system should be designed with this in mind;

what we would like to do with the 'guilty'? what would sit right? this is not the question we should be asking about a flawed system as we can never be sure who is guilty.

Instead take a look at someone innocent, your daughter, wife, your son; And ask what you would be willing to put them through if it was their turn to be the innocent people imprisoned? i'm sure the list would be short, the necessities, remove; freedom? ok. But access to education? entertainment? social interaction? protection? What would sit right with you knowing that your loved ones risked this existence every day?

This is the reason i hate the death penalty, forced labour, solitary, and all inhuman, cruel and dehumanizing things that our prisons employ.. These things don't protect us, they exist only due to vindictiveness; And they ignore the inevitability of mistakes.

[zanny]

The more we learn about human psychology the harder it is to take a criminal and say "this is a bad person who is wholly responsible for their behavior and deserves what they get".

For a vast, huge majority of victims of crime by far and way the most valuable thing to them is not retribution or vindication, it is their own attempt to regain safety. The knowledge their assailant is no longer able to hurt others is so much more substantial on average to victims than the knowledge their assailant is suffering or dead.

Retribution is a tart feeling. Its empty. It gives you a moment of animal hormone rush before you realize it isn't gaining anyone anything. Its just part of being angry.

Yes, of course if you were involved in a crime, or someone you loved, you would want retribution. We all would feel that way. Our brains are wired too strongly to react in that manner. Its a survival instinct, one of those deeply rooted behaviors you cannot undo like the gag or drowning reflexes. That is why it is so valuable that those of us not under its influence recognize it doesn't serve a practical purpose in civilized society. You retaliate to save your life from an immediate threat, and you use that instinctual bloodlust to insure the threat is neutralized. You don't channel it to use state institutions to harm people long term to appease your animal brain in the same way you don't guzzle cheese wiz all the time because your brain keeps telling you to eat so long as food is available. We have that instinct, both to eat endlessly and be sedentary and to seek retribution. Neither are rational, and both require discipline to restrain, not glorify.