[minitrollster]

I don't think the point people are making when they say he should be handed to the authorities is that they'll fix him. The point is that he should answer for his actions. Fixing the darkness or not, the kid DID make death threats and make someone's life miserable by unacceptable and criminal means. Criminals need rehabilitation, but they also need to be taught that their behaviour is unacceptable.

[yelsgib]

It's unfortunate that you have such strong authoritarian beliefs. Can I convince you that your ideas that criminals (this child is 17 - he has not, by our own state's very definition - attained an age where he can be defined as a criminal or where he can knowingly enter into the social moral contract that binds adults) "need to be taught that their behavior is unacceptable" is a very modern one and - what's more - one that is supported by state propaganda?

Do you actually believe that anyone who enters the prison system is "taught that their behavior is unacceptable?" Many sources indicate that the more common response to incarceration is "criminalization" - that this child has a high probability of connecting with negative forces which will push him further down the path of his darkness.

I recommend you read "Discipline and Punish" by Foucault - I think it would open your ideas to the genealogy of some of the ideals underpinning your beliefs and apparent faith in the modern justice system.

[akldfgj]

You credibly describe the flaws of the prison system, but you don't offer any alternatives.

Frankly, given the choice of a rock and a hard place, it is better to have a criminal in jail half his life and terrorizing society half his life, then terrorizing society for his entire life.

We aren't looking at Jean Valjeans here.

[yelsgib]

In my opinion, to situate this conversation in a framework where "alternatives" are to be considered is to already assume an authoritarian stance. I believe that the model you are assuming is one in which there is some sort of established "government" which selects among alternative systems sharing the property that they are maintained by varying degrees of implicit/explicit use of force.

I would never claim to know how to set up a working mental health system or a functional system of criminal rehabilitation. What I claim is that the properties that these institutions have in the U.S. are MAINLY determined by historical accumulation (trauma -> reaction) rather than by organic growth from well-defined principles. I advocate the decompilation of these institutions and the organic outgrowth of new, community-based (preferably non-governmental) institutions.

I agree that there may be cases in which a "criminal" (your word, not mine) must be separated out from society [1], but that these cases are far, far rarer than most people believe. Most "criminals" in the U.S. are ethnic minorities suffering under an incoherent and evil system of drug criminalization.

From an unsystematic/non-governmental standpoint, I also believe that society needs to do more work in increasing its acceptance of different psychological and mental needs from a younger age. I'm very lucky that I was put in a "gifted" program because, had such a program not existed, my rage would have been intense, long-lasting, and I honestly may have killed someone. If my talents had been treated as a "difference" in the way that most peoples' are (exclusion from social events, bullying, emotional and mental abuse, punishment, etc.) I would have turned out very differently indeed.

Perhaps the reason that I feel so strongly about this topic is that there is a great deal of darkness in me (I don't believe everyone is like this). I throw a tremendous amount of personal effort at overcoming it/transforming it/thinking about whether it's really "darkness." During certain periods of history (including this one) homosexuality was seen as "darkness" in many places - now we think back on these periods as being backwards/bigoted/wrong. I must accept that some of my personal darkness is NOT bad/evil (e.g. some of my perverse sexual tastes) but that it only APPEARS bad to many people in society. I have come, through discussion and queer community support, to accept parts of myself that I have been ridiculed for and told were evil from a very young age - which ridicule and torment drove me deep into despair and hatred.

I suppose that I am ultimately advocating acceptance of darkness because I don't really believe in darkness. I believe that if we accept what we currently think about as dark (ultimately, for instance, it would be great if we could accept death) then we will see that it is not so dark after all.

THEN WE CAN LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER, THE END.

-----

[1] Let me be clear, here. I can't even really name any. Maybe certain serial killers/mass murderers - but who else? Who, really, needs to be put in permanent time-out, anymore? Can you even name anyone?

[minitrollster]

After reading this, I can only say one thing: you're living in fantasyland. This is the real world, not some libertarian utopia. And regarding your last point, what about pedophiles? Rapists? Should we just surround them with love and forgiveness?

[yelsgib]

Yes, I believe we should surround them with love and forgiveness.

We also should -have- provided them with love and forgiveness so that they would feel comfortable talking about their problems before they could result in severe issues.

What do -you- suggest we do? Beat them up? "Teach them a lesson?" What will that accomplish, exactly?

---

Let me just say that I sense a great deal of pain in you. This is not an attack. Your points seem to be based in fear and anger - you are being very reactive rather than clearly laying out a well-reasoned argument. E.g. contrast your response to my own - yours relies on ad hominem and caricature and then finally a straw man argument. You seem sad. I hope you're OK. Hope!

[fusiongyro]

Sometimes what's best for society isn't what's best for the individual. Society benefits from having sadists removed from the equation. It doesn't matter much, from a societal standpoint, whether they're rehabilitated or incarcerated, as long as the sadistic entity is removed from the equation.

If there were no examples of sadists who could not be rehabilitated, your point would be obviously true. Unfortunately, there are many examples of sadists who resist rehabilitation. These people exist now, whether or not they could have been rehabilitated earlier by love and forgiveness. Even if you were strictly correct, you'd still have a bootstrapping problem, in the form of what to do with these people today.

I contend that there will always be people who become sadistic outside the reach of whatever institutions you attempt to create to shower love and forgiveness on them, and I further contend that many people who, once they become sadistic, cannot return to a state of empathy. For the first point, I only have to point to hunger. Food and shelter are obviously tractable problems, yet we continue to have a problem with hunger and homelessness. To think we can eradicate more complex social problems than those is really quite naive.

As to the second point I am open to scientific evidence to the contrary, but please bear in mind that from society's standpoint, a recidivism rate greater than zero may still be less preferable than lifelong incarceration for sadistic criminals. Most people would agree that once you've taken a few lives for the fun of it, it's not worth the risk to another member of society to "find out" whether you've been successfully rehabilitated.

[nitrogen]

It seems it's much easier for someone who has experienced marginalization to advocate against it.

[lmm]

>Frankly, given the choice of a rock and a hard place, it is better to have a criminal in jail half his life and terrorizing society half his life, then terrorizing society for his entire life.

If what you care about is the damage done to society, someone who spends half their life in prison and then gets out will (on average) do far more damage in that half-life than they would have done in a whole life spent outside prison. Prison is quite literally worse than nothing when it comes to preventing reoffending

(though community service is better than either prison or nothing, IIRC)

[bluedanieru]

What if, due to his incarceration, the terrorizing he does for the half of his life where he is not in prison, is twice that of the terrorizing he would have done over the course of his whole life, where he never imprisoned?

[minitrollster]

Here's the thing: actions have consequences. Bad actions result in bad consequences. Such is the learning process of lots of species. Do you think training pets by reinforcing good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour is modern and supported by "state propaganda", whatever that means?

I do believe that prison systems can be good at rehabilitation. Maybe not in the US, where you seem to be from, but it's working in many other countries in the world, look at the Nordic countries' prison system if you want proof. And even if the prison system doesn't manage to rehabilitate the person, it serves as a punishment. I don't see what's wrong with punishing behaviour that has been deemed unacceptable by society. At least it's better than doing nothing, and in my opinion has more of an impact than doing nothing and surrounding him "with a loving community".

[yelsgib]

Who do you trust to administer punishment?

What did they do to earn that trust?

The concept that one class of humans is the "punishers" who are teaching the other class(es) underlies most (if not all) fascist/authoritarian/racist ideologies of the last 3 centuries.

Of course you don't see what's wrong with punishing behavior that has been deemed unacceptable by society. Unfortunately, behavior that society is largely OK with (e.g. drug use) is punished nontheless - unfortunately, society can (and has often been) quite wrong about what should be punished (homosexuality, female sexuality, prostitution, sexual "perversion," drug & alcohol use, to name a few).

The fact is that the kid involved in this story didn't do anything "wrong" that could be easily trained out of him. Probably he has a whole set of complicated complexes of problems. For instance, one thing that many people in the US and UK (and other places) seem to suffer from is sexual/touch deprivation. Maybe if the kid were getting laid instead of playing on his laptop he wouldn't have engaged in such weirdo behaviors. I'm just sayin' - legalize drugs and prostitution and 99% of these problems go away.

[xentronium]

> I'm just sayin' - legalize drugs and prostitution and 99% of these problems go away.

While I mostly agree with you, this statement is quite a long shot.

[minitrollster]

>The concept that one class of humans is the "punishers" who are teaching the other class(es) underlies most (if not all) fascist/authoritarian/racist ideologies of the last 3 centuries.

So I'm Hitler now.

>legalize drugs and prostitution and 99% of these problems go away.

Seriously?

[yelsgib]

I don't feed trolls.

[Tichy]

Do you think kids should be trained like pets? It seems a lot of people do, they also think they own their kids somehow. Sad...

As I said in another comment: personally I hope my kid will end up doing what is right because he believes it the right thing to do, not because of fear of punishment.

Not saying that punishment is never necessary (I am not sure). Obviously it works, because people (and animals) can learn from pain. You learn if you touch the stove that it is hot and will burn you, so you will not touch it again.

Smart people might realize that their parents or society punishing them is not quite the same as a stove burning them, though. The one is a law of nature (heat burns), the other is just man made laws that can be resented and broken. Once you have installed that resentment against society and obedience in a person, you might have a real problem on your hands.

[minitrollster]

I do not think that kids should be trained like pets. They are more intelligent and react to a more nuanced approach. My point about punishment just means that bad actions should be sanctioned and good actions rewarded.

My parents never physically punished me, but as soon as I was old enough to understand what was going on, just knowing that I'd disappointed them would make me feel extremely bad. There's no resentment there. They taught me how to behave in a way that is acceptable in society and if I misbehaved I was aware that I was wrong. Hopefully that's how everything would go.

But as always, there will be bad apples (and good ones, too). What do you do when someone's such a sociopath that they don't care when they hurt other people? That's when I believe that punishment should be carried on by the society and not the parents, in the form of jail, probation, juvenile court, etc.

[Tichy]

Sure - I think if people endanger other people, they should be locked away. In some (most?) cases we don't know how to "cure" criminals yet.

[philwelch]

> Do you think kids should be trained like pets?

Is there any empirical evidence that operant conditioning doesn't work on humans?

[Tichy]

I am pretty sure it works, my question is do you want it for your kids?

[philwelch]

Operant conditioning isn't actually harmful, as long as you're not operant conditioning your kids into doing harmful things or into not doing important things.

[wpietri]

Do you really think that after that long sit-down with his victim he doesn't understand his behavior is unacceptable?