[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Maybe.

In some instances it doesn't seem to be in societies interests (however this is judged) to do anything but forgive the person involved (if we're assuming we knew 100% they wouldn't reoffend).

Ignoring the fact that being 100% sure of something like this would be outrageously unlikely I can rather imagine a number of scenarios where I'm pretty sure we'd all find the idea of letting someone go purely because they are able to convince a court of law they're not going to reoffend both idiotic and repulsive.

But sure, if their crimes are too heinous to be forgiven then I'm all for punishment. But even then prison seems quite an expensive and troublesome way of achieving this. You need something like thirty income tax payers for every one prisoner you're going to have in the long term which seems a tremendous waste (especially if we're effectively only doing it out of spite). Can't we just offer the person a public flogging or something if we want it known that justice/vengeance/payback has been achieved? Sure it's barbaric but at least it's over in a few minutes and no-one is under any delusion that we're doing anyone any favours.

This could be legitimately be held to be cruel and unusual punishment. That said I wouldn't be adverse to the exploration of different approaches in this area.

In addition to this, a reasonable proportion of the worst (/most brutal) crimes we seem to hear about seem to be perpetrated by people who are, if not genuinely nuts then perhaps of questionable mental health. It's not necessarily clear in my mind whether a distinction should be made for insanity in this context, but if there is - is punishment still appropriate? Somewhat simplistically : If someone's mind has "broken" (for whatever reason) and they go kill a bunch of people then who or what do we punish exactly? And to what end? (Of course this raises the wider issue of free-will in non-insane persons - as I say, I'm not convinced there's a difference.)

If you can demonstrate to a court of law that you had no idea what you were doing, could not stop yourself at any time and played absolutely no role in getting yourself into this scenario then that'd probably count for a bit. Obviously whether this is true to a greater or lesser extent in different cases could realistically lead to different punishments for very similar crimes.

I never find the existing state of affairs very satisfactory with regards these questions. The varying philosophies and assumptions underpinning most of these arguments seem too divergant to be harmoised properly.

Perhaps there is an elegant way that we can rehabilitate somebody while maintaining their fundamental human-rights and simultaneously satisfying our collective blood lust, but it's hardly a trivial problem. At the moment we have some kind of middle ground where no goal is properly satisfied. Arguably then in some regards the result is worse than either a wholly-punitive or wholly-rehabilitative system would be.

Perhaps, there are certainly better ways than what we're doing right now. I'd like the first step to be a recognition of the differences between rehabilitation and punishment and a restructuring of the system to better reflect this. That said this isn't very entertaining so perhaps a few public beheadings along the way would be required.