[lldbg]

I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. Somewhere the scales must be balanced, and if not in prisons, where then? Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

That is not to say that prisons should be blind to the fact that inmates will eventually be released. There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?

[barrkel]

What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.

Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.

Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.

[slibhb]

> What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.

It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds.

> Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.

It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".

[WalterBright]

The idea of prisons should be to simply keep people away from society so they cannot harm others. There's no need to heap punishment on top of that. That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.

The concept of retribution as justice goes far back beyond medieval, to at least the Bronze Age (see Hammurabi).

In addition, it seems a common component across cultures. The utilitarian view is by no means nearly as universal.

Here is a modern example: every few years you hear about some former Nazi Concentration Camp guard that was arrested. From a utilitarian point of view it is completely useless. The old guard is never ever going to take part in anything like that again. However, from a justice as retribution for misdeeds, it make perfect sense.

[cm2187]

Or if someone kills his wife in a passion crime, along that logic, what is the point of jailing him then? He doesn’t have another wife to kill and so there is no further harm to society expected. So he should walk free if the only objective is no further harm to society.

Punishment achieves fairness and deterrence.

[slibhb]

It's part of modern civilization for the same reason people enjoy it when the bad guy gets punished at the end of a movie. This is the essence of justice, whether you have the stomach to face it or not.

[WalterBright]

I enjoy watching movies as much as anyone, but that doesn't transfer into enjoying people being hurt/punished in real life. I'm happy to leave my darker impulses behind when exiting the theater.

[smabie]

You can't leave them behind and I'm sure you've wanted someone punished for some misdeeds they've committed. This isn't a bad thing and is an overwhelmingly natural response.

[slibhb]

Those impulses are the reason we care to investigate crimes, capture criminals, put them on trial, and then punish them.

So I wouldn't call them dark.

[barrkel]

Sure, it's not a closed question. I'm mostly pointing out, as an example, the fact that society operates the mechanics of justice these days, it is the interests of society that are paramount. Making individuals whole is a part of that, but avoiding repetition is also vital, or else the punishment plays a part in causing crime later.

[slibhb]

In my opinion you vastly overestimate your ability to answer questions like "what are the interests of society?" and "what causes crime?"

[barrkel]

I don't think I have the ability. I can, however, say with a some certainty that retribution is not principal component of justice, because a moment's consideration shows more considerations at play.

Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.

[slibhb]

Things haven't moved on. All modern justice systems continue to be based on retribution. They seek to punish the guilty (proportionally to their crimes) and to exonerate the innocent. It's all well and good to argue "this punishment is too severe, it does not fit the crime". But to argue that "the world has moved on" from retributive justice is just naivete.

If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant:

> Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.

[ndiscussion]

> Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished

Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals.

In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc).

Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.

[InfiniteRand]

I think this actually varies a lot across cultures, although one common principle, historically at least, is that justice is less deadly for the rich than it is for the poor. For instance, the concept of blood money reduces the punishment of murder to a fine

[alpha_squared]

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life.

If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.

[lldbg]

I don't think I advocated that all sentences should be for life, and I don't get how you got to there from what I wrote.

[crispyambulance]

You were complaining that inmates would deign to find work after being incarcerated.

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".

[lldbg]

I was not complaining about anything. They aren't ex-felons, after they are released, they are felons.

I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...

[pwinnski]

You seem to have a very limited understanding of why people commit crimes, which makes for extremely uninformed opinions.

Punishing those who commit crime demonstrably does little to nothing to dissuade them from future crime. Given an understanding of the reasons why many people commit crimes makes this obvious: by taking angry people without hope, and giving them more reasons to be angry and even less hope, we end up with an incredibly high recidivism rate. Meanwhile, harshly punishing those who've committed crimes usually doesn't make the victims of those crimes feel better, either.

So if it's not benefitting victims, and making re-offense more likely, why do we do it? So third parties can feel a sense of self-righteousness that they call "justice?" That seems to be the primary reason!

Sometimes people in dire straits do bad things, and hurt others. Punishment is reasonable, but objectively, rehabilitation is also needed. Restitution to victims, and victim statements, also help. We can look around the world and see objectively that there are many ways to do this better than we're doing, by any measure. It's both more humane, and more effective.

[WalterBright]

If someone murdered a loved one of mine, I don't see how having the state execute them would make things any better for me. I'd be satisfied if they were simply imprisoned so they could not hurt others. Punishing them further wouldn't help me at all.

[lldbg]

Of course my opinions seem uninformed to you, when you intentionally misconstrue them as you have done.

[colinmorelli]

Depending on whether you look at state or local prisons, anywhere from 1/3 to almost 1/2 of inmates are detained for non-violent offenses. With a reasonable rehabilitation program that focuses on getting people out of the situation that led them to petty theft, drug dealing, etc in the first place, we could probably take 30-40% of the population out of prisons and reintegrate them to society with no discernible impact on public safety.

This would be without even touching any “wife-beater,” rapist or murderer.

There are a lot of people unnecessarily locked up for absurd sentences compared to the crime who absolutely deserve another chance at society. We should actively want that. It’s a net good for society and it happens to be a lot less expensive, too.

[threatofrain]

> Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater?

Criminal law is about wrongs against the state. In regards to payment for restitution, how is the state being restored by somebody rotting in jail?

What sort of payment is this that the state may end up even poorer than before? In fact, if serving in prison is payment, then I'd say it's the state that's paying for the prison and all the harms which follow.

If the state should find itself awfully harmed from its own criminal justice policy, from where shall the state seek remedy?

[sokoloff]

Criminals commit very few crimes against the public while incarcerated.

[rendall]

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

Heck yeah! If civil penalties have been assessed, how else are they going to get paid?

Crazy how most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape

[titzer]

I can't think of anything more cruel and worse for society as a whole than to permanently damage some people because it feels vaguely cathartic and might serve as a "warning" to others.

[zamalek]

I say this knowing full-well that I might seek retribution if something awful were to ever happen to me or my loved ones, but:

> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.

No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with.

However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation.

American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.

[bryanrasmussen]

>Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

It was not until now that I came to realize that everyone in American prisons are actually there for assault. The mind reels.

[Layke1123]

I upvoted you, but I want to make sure my reasons for doing so are accurate. This was sarcasm, yes? It might not be so obvious if others read through this so just want to clarify.

[bryanrasmussen]

I was drily sarcastic yes, as it is obvious that very few people are in prison for assault any argument that makes an appeal to the emotions with the phrasing used is somewhat deserving of being punctured. I thought my response good at indicating the absurdity.

[Layke1123]

Oh absolutely. I loved it. Just wanted to make sure anyone else who read it was unsure that my comment would remove all doubt.

[lldbg]

Nowhere did I make that claim.

[bryanrasmussen]

By stating your hypothetical "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" you made a condition only sometimes encountered - violent crime - a reason to treat all criminals worse.

I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing.

And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it.

The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.

[lldbg]

You are building the strawman of strawmen here. I never gave a reason that prisoners should be treated worse, as that implies I am arguing for an increase in punishment compared to the situation today. Which I nowhere did.

Perhaps to nuance the discussion a bit, the majority of people in state prisons in the US are there for violent offenses, and state prisons hold a majority of all prisoners. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

[bryanrasmussen]

There's a program helping people prepare for getting jobs after release - you said "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" it seems at least some part of you is arguing maybe this program should be done away with. I mean maybe this is not what you are arguing, but it is sort of reasonable that a lot of people seem to be taking that as what you are arguing based on what you wrote.

[lldbg]

But I never said that, you're building a strawman.

I said that punishment is a necessary part of prison, it is the main thing of justice. You may or may not agree with that position, but unless you are willing to reply to me on a good faith basis maybe you just shouldn't. The HN guidelines say >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

It is not sort of reasonable that you think "some part of me"(what do you mean by that?) argues for it, because I never wrote it. If you or other people did not understand some part of my original comment, ask for a clarification instead of what has happened in these comment chains.

[UncleMeat]

> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.

One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.

[echlebek]

> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice

That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.

[mmcgaha]

I can empathize with how you feel (even how a victim could feel) but a public good will come from teaching prisoners a skill so they don't have to victimize someone else when they get out.

[lldbg]

You never _have_ to victimize someone, no matter your circumstances.

[adamc]

I am interested in whether there is any actual evidence retribution works, in terms of recidivism. My first guess would be that the awful experiences in prison just fuck up people more.

[pwinnski]

Your first guess is borne out by the recidivism rate, which is in the high-80s nationwisde.

[sokoloff]

If a group with a prior criminal behavior rate of near 100% has that rate reduced to 87%, is that evidence that prison is fucking them up even more?

(I think prison probably is fucking people up more, but a mere citation of high recidivism rate isn’t evidence of that to me, given the prior.)

[pwinnski]

Given that some percentage of people in jail or prison are there for the crime of possessing drugs, something which college students seem to do regularly without consequences, I'm not really surprised that those people don't re-offend.

One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there.

Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.

[benlivengood]

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

Would the assaulted be happier having to work to support the attacker for the rest of their life?

[sokoloff]

Some people are quite obviously unfit to participate in free society. Society has to deal with them one way or another.

(I’m not claiming that it’s as many as we have incarcerated now, but it’s patently not “zero people”.)

[pwinnski]

> There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?

Yes, nobody should go hungry. Not in prison, not out of prison, nowhere.

[lldbg]

Okay, thats nice. Do you think anyone here on HN is in favour of people going hungry?

And by a free lunch, I meant the idiomatic expression.

[pwinnski]

It sure seems like some people on this page are very much in favor of people who've committed crimes going hungry, even after they serve their sentences.

Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them.

Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!

[ericd]

Some people think it's to get them to stop doing bad things to other people, not to get even.

[veryfancy]

> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?

Yes.