[devoply]

Bullies themselves need counselling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment. We focus so much on the victims, we also need to focus on the perpetrators and see them as victims as well if not of anything else than their own psychology.

[traderjane]

Western bullying literature suggests that bullying is more like a position that people step in and out of, whereas victimhood is sticky to the individual. It’s easier to predict victims than bullies, and it’s difficult to predict how long someone will remain in the bully position.

Bullying predicts general protective effects on the individual and social well-being. It also predicts that peers will rate the bully well, even when the victim rates the bully. This is to say that bullying has a big bystander component (the public reviews the act), and that bullies may do better than the normal population.

People who are both bullies and victims experience characteristics from both populations.

[Nasrudith]

Yeah in any school the anti-bullying campaigns are pathetic charades 9 out of 10 times as the amazing selective perception of teachers and faculty strikes again and again to "whatever is an annoyance to them".

That is the true reason for lasting trauma and damage to victims - why they cheer at the deaths and destitution of their tormentors decades later. Because finally the assholes get what they deserve. Those who express horror get flipped the bird because they were the same sort of complicit assholes.

[bigred100]

Frankly I think the answer is to just put children who bully in special education programs where they’re taught basic social skills. If they lack the interpersonal skills to not bully, they need remedial instruction in them.

[afandian]

Your comment has obviously split opinion here, but I think it mirrors the way that society is split in the justice debate.

Approach 1: "People who hurt other people should be hurt back"

Approach 2: "We should try to understand why people hurt other people"

I used to think these were correlated with political spectrum (approach 1 on the right, appraoch 2 on the left). But these patterns happen across the spectrum.

These two aren't easily reconcilable. Approach-2-type-people, such as myself, think that this is the only real way to reduce harm and that approach 1 only makes everything worse, and continues the cycle of abuse.

I think it's emcumbent on approach 2 to try and understand why people act like approach 1.

[chimprich]

> Approach 1: "People who hurt other people should be hurt back"

This seems to be the approach used by many (most?) people in online forums when discussing controversial topics. "Your opinion hurts me, so I'm going to be as offensive as possible in return". It doesn't seem to work very well. HN is maybe a bit more approach #2.

[afandian]

I certainly find the centre of gravity on HN interesting. As a European I wonder how much is US centric, tech or silicon valley.

Everyone has unknown biases though. I'm sure that most people are a mix, with the result of cognitive dissonance.

[Nasrudith]

Basic game theory element - reciprocity. If there are no consequences there is nothing to lose from being an asshole. Hence the behaviors seen when people they have or believe they have impunity.

[NotATroll]

> I think it's emcumbent on approach 2 to try and understand why people act like approach 1.

Recidivism.

As members of the public, it's highly likely that we've both seen others be burned by trying to take approach 2. And have ourselves been burned by trying to take approach 2. After all, many crimes have very high rates of recidivism.

These experiences tend to model how we approach other people in the future.

And to be honest, it's not really a 'wrong" approach that "only makes everything worse". At some point, the question of approach 3 "removing a person from society" is a valid question when it comes to reducing harm.

[ukj]

I never quite understood the pragmatic purpose of Approach 1.

If punishment has no measurable, positive effect - why do it?

Combine with Hanlon’s razor and indeed - victims become bullies when they default to Approach 1 when harm (rather than misunderstanding) is perceived.

[boomlinde]

> If punishment has no measurable, positive effect - why do it?

Maybe you never understood it because you implicitly assume that punishment can't have measurable, positive effect. What's the basis of that assumption?

[luckylion]

Punishment is a deterrent though, at least for somewhat rational and premeditated acts, so it has an effect (though it's hard to quantify exactly). It's not a linear effect (as in threat of twice punishment = twice as effective as a deterrent), but it's certainly not zero.

Additionally, punishment often goes hand in hand with making it harder/impossible to re-offend. If you're in prison, you're not breaking into anybody's house.

[elliekelly]

I've posted this before but I think it bears repeating: Study after study[1] has shown that an individual's perception of the likely punishment (e.g., prison time) doesn't deter crime. Rather, an individual's perception of the likelihood they'll get caught seems to be the main deterrent.

This is a really interesting & related read.[2]

[1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398

[2]https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc...

[luckylion]

That was my point regarding it not being a linear relationship and only working on somewhat rational actors (not on somebody that is on drugs and completely out of their mind for example). Getting caught is irrelevant if it has no consequence at all. If there is zero punishment (meaning no negative consequences and you get to keep the loot), but you are 100% sure to get caught, you have incentive to commit e.g. robbery, but zero incentive not to. If the punishment isn't negative (i.e. "you get $1000 for getting caught"), getting caught is also irrelevant. Getting caught only becomes relevant when it has consequences you'd prefer to avoid: punishment.

The point isn't that punishment isn't a deterrent, it's the only external deterrent (and you could argue that a bad conscience is self-punishment). It's that the likelihood of getting caught is a very important factor, not so much the severity of the punishment.

In RTS games, there's the idea of overkill: a unit (or set of units) does so much damage that it would kill the attacked unit multiple times. That's a problem, because you waste a lot of the damage, it's generally more efficient to do less damage more often for the same DPS (damage per second). I believe that you can think about punishment in a similar way. With the likelihood of punishment staying the same (for example: 10%), a hike of "somebody stares angrily at you" to "you spend 10 years in prison" very much acts as a deterrent. You get barely any more value out of that being 20 years though, because of "over-deterrence". Here as well, the same punishment with more frequency (=likelihood of punishment) would be more efficient.

[zepto]

The likelyhood is being caught may be the metric that determines the effectiveness of a deterrent over the severity of the punishment, but being caught implies that there is at least some negative consequence.

So in order to be a deterrent there must be punishment. Increasing the severity will do little to increase the effectiveness, but increasing the likelyhood of getting caught will.

[s_kilk]

> If punishment has no measurable, positive effect - why do it?

But it does, the positive effect is in the mind state of the punisher, or the Type-1 people being discussed here.

Now you're right of course, the punishment does not improve the situation, but it sure gives these folks that little squirt of feel-good chemicals and that's what really matters to them.

[thatcat]

If the original problem was a lifetime of low self-esteem of the victim after being bullied, then it seems they have improved their outlook over the long term - rather than the ephemeral boost you imply.

[lr4444lr]

Because the wronged demand justice, and to see your bully now cut down to size, is to be given back a sense that there is justice.

[afandian]

That's what I mean about it being incumbent to try to understand. It may not be "logical" but it still happens, so we should try to work out why.

Perhaps there is some evolutionary reason. Perhaps it is, itself, part of the cycle of abuse. Perhaps it's just easier to be nasty than nice.

[luckylion]

I'm not sure those are actually opposing positions. I believe that a stronger split is how important it is to stop the behavior. Imprisoning somebody will immediately stop their behavior and will provide safety for their victims, but we don't want to use an extreme tool like prison to solve a minor infraction (like, say, shoplifting). It seems to me that the debate is often about what is appropriate, where what you describe as "Approach 1" people prefer to err in too strong a measure that makes sure the behavior is stopped, while others prefer to err on the other side, i.e. is it more important to allow a bully to go to school (or live in freedom within society for larger issues), or is it more important to protect other students from them, and how much bad behavior do we accept, how many chances do they get to alter their behavior etc?

[boomlinde]

Approach 1 seems quite natural. If I do something—in general—and find that it results in my suffering, I will normally take that into account when I consider doing the same thing again, and possibly avoid it because of it. In this sense I don't think that getting slapped or putting your hand on the stove for the first time are significantly different. You learn the consequences and adapt.

In the case of a bully, though, there may be so much at stake for the bully that it outweighs the suffering associated with getting beaten up or otherwise punished for it. Wishing to e.g. maintain his social status, he may double down instead of reacting in a way that seems appropriate given the obvious consequences. This is where I think approach 2 becomes useful. What is it that the bully thinks is at stake? etc.

Before that, who cares? Kids will be kids and will fight and bicker. That's how they learn what their boundaries and what the consequences of their actions are so that they can grow up to be healthy adults. I think that inflicting pain and suffering as a direct response to injustice may be an excellent way to keep misbehaving adults in check as well, but it seems more likely in adult age that there is an underlying psychological problem that needs to be addressed, perhaps one that could have been addressed during adolescence.

[danarmak]

> I think it's emcumbent on approach 2 to try and understand why people act like approach 1.

For many (most?) people, it's just a matter of values. Punishment of evildoers, justice, revenge, enforcement of the law, are not judged on the merits of preventing future offences, they're desirable in their own right.

These values are widespread and are part of the 'natural' or 'default' repertoire of human social behavior. Different cultures encourage them to different extents, and channel them differently, and of course differ a lot on what is offensive and deserving of punishment and how much. But I don't think it's difficult to understand why people desire these things.

Even if everyone agrees that rehabilitative justice is better for reducing crime, it's a separate moral decision to value reducing crime over other things like justice (fairness) or punishment (negative consequences for infringing on rights).

[ryannevius]

> Bullies themselves need counselling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment

I'd replace "rather than" with "in addition to".

[devoply]

You really want to make a must to punish children? If you get in there early there shouldn't be an in addition to.

Prison is a final measure when all other measures have failed. Even with prison, first time offenders of non-serious crimes usually do not do time or are diverted to other programs to help them avoid this fate. I just love how all the nerds here are going crazy over letting bullies off the hook initially to try to reform them -- it's as if they all want to bully the bullies.

[lr4444lr]

What are you teaching a victim when both he and his bully receive only the same general kind of feel-good therapy?

[audiometry]

Yeah. The downvotes are unwarranted. Both the bullies and victims of bullying are suffering. It’s just that generally the bully is unaware he’s suffering. And yeah to be clear punitive revenge is ugly in all cases and leaves no one better off.

[luckylion]

Let's focus on the actual victims first though, and stop the bullies. There is a meta-argument with regards to free will and whether and how much choice we have in the things we do, but that's a very different discussion (albeit an interesting one) and shouldn't be confused with the one about the bully's acts and immediate (and long term) results.

[Juliate]

Taking care of the victims today does not exclude taking care of the bullies as well.

Stopping them does not mean only punishment, but counselling (and sometimes, because they were themselves victims of abuses).

[luckylion]

Given that resources are limited, choices have to be made regarding priority.

[saagarjha]

From that perspective, stopping a bully is more effective than helping a victim, because bullies often have more than one target.

[luckylion]

That would be the purely financial angle (provided that it's accurate), it doesn't take into account who deserves the help more (which is a moral judgement and is hard to agree on) and how much more. If somebody attacks somebody else and hurts themselves in the process and they both end up needing a new kidney and only one transplant is available, who gets it?

Instead of punishing robbers, why don't we just give them enough money to live luxurious lives so they aren't tempted to rob any more people?

[bullytw2019]

> If somebody attacks somebody else and hurts themselves in the process and they both end up needing a new kidney and only one transplant is available, who gets it?

bad analogy, because in this case it's more like one person's kidney got destroyed and the other lost a lung.

You want different types of specialists to deal with victims vs bullies. Assigning the wrong type will probably just make things worse.

> Instead of punishing robbers, why don't we just give them enough money to live luxurious lives so they aren't tempted to rob any more people?

One could argue that's part of the idea behind Universal Basic Income. That if your needs are being met by UBI, you really "shouldn't" have a reason to need to rob, so at that point they don't have any excuses. (I have skepticism about that in practice, but I get the concept at least.)

[codegladiator]

> Bullies themselves need counselling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment

So, criminals also, by that logic, themselves need counseling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment ?

[tiew9Vii]

Yes, exactly that, everything I read says rehabilitating prisoners greatly reduces re-offending.

That’s not to say they shouldn’t go to prison for a crime. While in prison it shouldn’t be just a punishment, the isolation is the punishment, the idea should be providing the help needed inside so when they come out they do not re-offend.

[imtringued]

I hate these types of questions. It's never clear what position the person who asks the question is taking.

In favor of punishment: Victims and relatives want compensation and since it is impossible to restore every situation, especially if the perpetrator has no money, destroyed something irreplaceable or killed someone, we want them to pay with their time instead. The primary goal is making the victims happy and preventing crime can take a back seat to that.

In favor of counseling: Law enforcement lags behind the actual rule violation. Someone is a criminal only after they have committed a crime. Therefore if your policy only targets criminals then it is already too late. It can't undo any damage and it cannot prevent any future damage after the criminal has been released. When they are released the reason they committed a crime didn't disappear. The perpetrator himself obviously didn't benefit from the punishment (in other words: he doesn't need punishment). Therefore the deterrence effect completely disappears and increasingly tough punishments do not influence the recidivism rate. Now imagine instead of targeting criminals after they have committed a crime we instead try the opposite. Suddenly we gain the ability to prevent a crime which is something the punishment only route doesn't allow us to do. So yes people definitively need help so they don't have to resort to committing crimes.

[swebs]

>So, criminals also, by that logic, themselves need counseling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment?

Are we reading the same Hacker News? I see that statement expressed in like every fifth thread.

[Juliate]

Actually, yes, they do.

You want this, especially when you know they will one day get out of jail.

[devoply]

Not only that, they will have wives, girlfriends, and children; they may eventually have employees. You can not stop them period. They are a part of the human population. They can not be weeded out.

[codegladiator]

Bullies bully when they know they can get away with it (so does criminals). I just fail to follow your narrative.

I would alternatively suggest to make the punishment severe and make sure bullies can't get away with it.

[dangerface]

> Bullies bully when they know they can get away with it (so does criminals).

If they are facing reparations like rehabilitation they got caught.

> I would alternatively suggest to make the punishment severe and make sure bullies can't get away with it.

Harsher punishments do not deter people from committing crimes [0]

I get the sentiment but if you want results you got to face the reality.

[0] https://www.amnestyusa.org/a-clear-scientific-consensus-that...

[pdpi]

The question you're not asking is "why are people engaging in these behaviours?"

You don't have to deter people from engaging in bad behaviour if those people don't feel motivated to engage in those behaviours in the first place.

[jacobush]

They get motivated when their peers condone it. You and I are the bully. We just need the “right” environment.

[rzwitserloot]

Yes, they do.

What would you like the point of your country's justice system to be? To be a venue for state controlled vengeance, where the victims (or the friends and family of a victim if somebody died) get to enjoy the fact that at least the criminal got their life ruined as well?

Or would you like it to be to attempt to deal with criminals in a fashion that reduced recidivism as much as is possible, allowing for compensation of victims where reasonable and possible, but providing explicitly no vengeance-based 'compensation'?

Because a justice system is going to look radically different depending on which option you want (especially if you're trying to optimize it so it does what you want it to do well, fairly, and cheaper than alternatives) – and the anti-recidivism style leads to vastly lower levels of crime. It's also vastly cheaper for society.

When you feel outrage at a child molester getting 5 years in a comfy jail cell, getting a state-paid education to boot – that's your sense of vengeance being offended. Be aware that satisfying it is incredibly expensive.

When you feel outrage at a child molester that gets out after 15 years and strikes again soon after – that's presumably you being upset that the justice system is, based on a rather lacking 'anecdotal evidence of 1', not doing its proper job.

Even if punishment isnt the point at all, incarceration and other restrictions of personal freedoms are likely required. How do you prevent recurrence of the crime?

There are some drastic options available. You could, purely out of economic expediency, just execute all criminals. But even if you're morally okay with that drastic measure, in practice that has a lot of externalities. so, _IF_ you free criminals at some point, it makes very little sense NOT to focus on reducing recidivism rates.

One could consider the punishment itself as an anti-crime measure: Use the fact that if you are convicted of a crime, you will be punished, as a deterrence. For some types of crime it works well, but for many, it has barely any effect. Crimes of passion and sexual deviancy just aren't reduced by measurable rates by increasing the punishment if caught and convicted, for example.

Add it all up? Yes, please. Provide counsel to criminals before you consider the punishment (but, as they ARE criminals, if the most effective counsel the state can provide requires significant reductions in personal freedoms, by all means).

[dangerface]

> So, criminals also, by that logic, themselves need counseling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment ?

The point of prison to rehabilitate so yes. If we are just putting people in prison to get rid of them then why not actually get rid of them? If you don't believe in rehabilitation then life in prison is an expensive and cruel torture in comparison to just ending them.

[devoply]

Maybe if you counselled them and taught them how to manage their own needs and emotions many of them would not become criminals saving society many ills.

You can not eliminate the personality that needs bullying to validate themselves from the population. You can however hep them channel those needs into other things like entrepreneurship and leadership. To productively shape their needs for power over people rather than harassing and harming them.

[codegladiator]

This suggests that the bully/criminal didn't already knew that. Most bullies i have seen didn't become bully because of some trauma.... its just fun to dominate (not even validation IMO).

[yetihehe]

Anegdotically, I know one bully from high school, who was trying to bully even me in college first year, but he changed, was a good friend and managed to get award for best results from education minister. So not all bullies are bulies for fun. All it took was a change of surroundings (he and two his friends were from "bad" primary school, all of them changed).

[Juliate]

Most of the destructive/negative emotions and behaviours someone exhibits, comes from a lack of self-awareness.

[Dude2029]

No, they deserve to be punished. Is there counselling for rapists?

[bloak]

Oh yes. Those clever psychologists even invented a counselling system that increased the rate of reoffending from 8% to 10%:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49973318

Edit: Obviously I would be in favour of counselling that decreased the rate of reoffending.

[CapitalistCartr]

There should be. Society would be the better for it.

[squarefoot]

Bullies often reflect the environment they're grown into: bad, absent, abusive or too demanding parents etc. They should be helped before resorting to punishment, but any attempt is deemed to fail if their family refuses to cooperate, which is the most likely case since it implies admitting they suck at parenting.

[LorenPechtel]

Every bully I knew anything about their home situation the fundamental problem was parents that supported the bullying. They would punish their children for wrongdoing they observed but they categorically would not believe any wrongdoing reported by others.

A prime example, the kids next door when I was growing up. They were younger than I was and never would try anything alone but two-on-one they would sometimes. (Usually when a third troublemaker was on the scene.) One time I was defending myself against an attack with a belt, I disarmed him and threw the belt into the vines growing on our house--high enough up that it would require a ladder to reach. When the belt was recovered the buckle was missing--they called the cops saying I must have stolen it. Just from talking to them the cop figured out I was acting in self defense, I had no possible way of having stolen the buckle (the instant I had control of the belt I threw it), the buckle must have come off when I threw it, bad luck for them. If the cop could figure that out so could their parents--yet they still felt I had stolen it since it couldn't be found. (Turns out there must have been a crack-the-whip effect, the buckle came off and flew completely over our house. We found it in a flower pot on the other side of the house two years later.)

[maceurt]

I agree with you. If you are a child then you are almost entirely dependent on your home and school environment for cues on social development. If a child is bullying another kid then you can almost guarantee it is a problem with their home or with the school.

[zozbot234]

Well, guess what's the biggest "problem with (the) school" - the inability to get away from a bad environment. And you can't fix that with counseling alone - you actually have to figure out who the worst offenders are, and punish them consistently. The more you can deprive those folks of the social influence among their peers that's what they crave most, the better for everyone else.

[maceurt]

"The more you can punish people who are broken socially the more they learn"

Punishing a kid is not going to help them get over the fact that their mom abuses them or they don't have a dad or that they are not safe in their neighborhood, etc.

Punishment is good, but it can further traumatize or ingrain a kid into their bad behavior. Speaking from personal experience, I remember in elementary school I got very harshly punished and shamed for bullying a kid in my class. After that year I lost almost all my friends, and I was honestly traumatized. I still don't have many or any friends if I am being honest, and I think the situation would have been a lot different if they sat me down and talked to me instead of making me feel like a criminal.

Punishment does not really work to curb bullying, and often does more harm than good. Like your not going to have violent bullying for the most part, but you can't stop other types of bullying with punishment.

[zozbot234]

It doesn't have to be "very harsh" punishment. What's more important is that it be consistent.

[grimjack00]

In my experience as the target of bullying, talking to the bully doesn't really work, either.

[maceurt]

As a target of bullying and a bully myself, teacher intervention or punishment rarely worked either. I was talking more therapy or something like that, or investigation into school environment/ classroom.

[philpem]

The bigger problem is what it does to the victims.

If you have no possible escape from the situation, you end up falling into learned helplessness -- nothing I do can affect it, so why fight it. Maybe if I pretend to be dead, the predator will get bored with me and find some other prey...

[zozbot234]

Most of the worst/most visible bullies probably have narcissistic or sociopathic tendencies. Counseling is totally useless on those folks because they don't really have normal emotions in the first place. "Their own psychology" is all about thinking of the world in zero-sum terms, where they win if others lose.

The only approach that can partially make up for such an attitude is cognitive-behavioral training, and then only for those who are smart enough that the lessons can sink in, overcoming their distrust of others, authority figures etc.

[saagarjha]

> Counseling is totally useless on those folks because they don't really have normal emotions in the first place.

I think most bullies are not psychopaths, considering that many don’t stay bullies their entire life.

[zozbot234]

But the worst bullies probably are. Thwart the psychopaths first, and you'll probably find that others will lack any reason to bully in the first place - they will no longer be thinking of it as "normal".

[LorenPechtel]

Not all psychopaths are bullies. They can learn to behave even if they lack the emotions to care about others.

[andoofthewoods]

that's a huge assumption you're making.

Narcissists and Sociopaths make up 1% of the population each. To characterise most young bullies as narcissists/sociopaths when A - Their brains are still developing, and B - They're at an impressionable age where their sociability is highly moulded by their environment (e.g. parents) is disingenuous.

[Nasrudith]

I suspect we have even worse matters than the 1% - they are often contagious as you see their actions and rationalizations adopted by not technically sociopaths and narcissists because they are rewarded for it. And just like other conditioned for behavior done independently of when it would actually help them.

[andoofthewoods]

Everyone has sociopaths and narcissistic tendencies to varying degrees. But to say that "most" bullies are sociopaths or narcissists that can't be helped like OP said (before editing their comment) misunderstands people period.

Adolescents don't have the developed perception of consequence as adults, and yet OP is already pinning them with mental disorders that can't be resolved. Pure speculation that is outright wrong.

In the case that you mention with learned anti-social behaviours, counselling can most definitely help with unmapping/correcting those behaviours.

[zozbot234]

> "most" bullies are sociopaths or narcissists

Um, I never said that. I talked about tendencies, just like you did. It's not very meaningful to say what bullies "are", but bullying does generally involve at least some degree of instrumental aggression and callous/unempathetic attitudes. Such attitudes might arise out of simple imitation like you said, but only if someone else is actively demonstrating them - and this will generally be someone in the peer group who holds significant social influence on others.

[zozbot234]

> you see their actions and rationalizations adopted by not technically sociopaths and narcissists

Yup, that's the real issue. The sociopaths and narcissists may only be 2% to 4% of the population but those are the actual bullies, so to speak - those who are most clever at manipulating others into adopting similar behaviors and attitudes. Thus some youths who seem to be bullies may actually be victims of manipulation by somebody they look up to, but they will stop their behavior once the attitude around them changes for the better.

[LorenPechtel]

We don't have meaningful treatment.