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by CobrastanJorji 477 days ago
But if criminals are not perfectly rational economic thinkers, harsher prison sentences may not be morally justified!
2 comments

A behaviorist perspective on justice, punishment, and rehabilitation does not require morality.

1. Pragmatism - Justice can be effectively framed around practical outcomes and societal safety, it requires no moral framework.

2. Remorse and Emotional Response - Feelings of remorse can be understood as conditioned responses shaped by environmental influences rather than as reflections of moral responsibility; remorse does not necessitate moral weight as they can arise from societal conditioning and past experiences.

3. CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Approaches demonstrate that behavioral and emotional changes can occur without delving into moral implications, and requires no moral reflection.

4. Behavioral Accountability - Individuals can be held accountable for their actions based solely on their observable behavior and its consequences, without the need for moral judgments. The focus is on modifying harmful behaviors through interventions and reinforcements rather than assigning moral blame.

So, this framework provides a rational and effective approach to understanding and managing human behavior, focusing on the pragmatic aspects of justice, rehabilitation, and accountability, it does not require an already shaky and subjective moral judgment or moral accountability, and as thus, need not be morally justified.

If you want me to elaborate (with examples, too), I am willing to as my time allows.

I know a woman who was raped by her father. The state is going to release him in a few years, so now her family lives in terror of that day. Where is the justice in that, and what does the rapist bastard being or or not being a ""rational economic actor"" have to do with any of it?
Indeed, a big part of a society's system of justice is "letting most people sleep at night."

Whether there's justice or not in a rapist serving their sentence and going free (given that, one assumes, the sentencing guidelines were decided by dispassionate thinkers trying to reason about society as a whole)... It goes out the window if a family lives in so much fear they decide to "fix" the issue by taking the law into their own hands.

Then the society has to decide whether to jail the family, and so on.

Hammurabi's code seems harsh by modern standards, but at the time it was positively progressive. It was attempting to replace a retaliatory tradition so bloody it could wipe out entire bloodlines. He was trying to impose an upper limit on consequence to allow a society of semi-strangers to reach some meta-stability.

Where is the justice in keeping him locked up to assuage a families fears?