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knb comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I've been working on a series of videos about prison reform. During my reading, I came across an interesting passage from wikipedia:
What struck me was how preferable these punishments (except the hanging, but that was very rare) seem compared to the current system of massive scale long-term imprisonment. I would much rather pay damages and be whipped than serve months or years in jail. Oddly, most people seem to agree with Wikipedia that whipping is more "severe" than imprisonment of several months or years (and of course, many prisoners will be beaten or raped in prison). Yet I think if you gave people being convicted for theft a choice, most of them would choose the physical punishment instead of jail time.
I'm reminded of the perennial objections to Torture vs Dust Specks to the effect that torture is a sacred anti-value which simply cannot be evaluated on the same axis as non-torture punishments (such as jail time, presumably), regardless of the severities involved..
There's a post on Overcoming Bias about this here.
The key quote, "Incarceration destroys families and jobs, exactly what people need to have in order to stay away from crime." If we had wanted to create a permanent underclass, replacing corporal punishment with prison would have been an obvious step in the process.
Obviously that's not why people find imprisonment so preferable to torture, though; TheOtherDave's "sacred anti-value" explanation is correct there. It would be interesting to know exactly how a once-common punishment became seen as unambiguously evil, though, in the face of "tough on crime" posturing, lengthening prison sentences, etc.
Maybe it's a part of human hypocrisy: we want to punish people, but in a way that doesn't make our mirror neurons feel their pain. We want people to be punished, without thinking about ourselves as the kind of people who want to harm others. We want to make it as impersonal as possible.
So we invent punishments that don't feel like we are doing something horrible, and yet are bad enough that we would want to avoid them. Being locked behind bars for 20 years is horrible, but there is no speficic moment that would make an external observer scream.
It is, incidentally, not obvious to everyone that the desire to create a stable underclass didn't drive our play a significant role in our changing attitudes towards prisons... in fact, it's not even obvious to me, though I agree that they didn't play a significant role in our changing attitudes towards torturing criminals.
Because corporal punishment is an ancient display of power; the master holding the whip and the servant being punished for misbehavior. It's obviously effective, and undoubtedly more humane than incarceration, but it's also anathema to the morality of the "free society" where everyone is supposed to be equal and thus no-one can hold the whip.
(Heck, even disciplining a child is considered grounds to put the kid in foster care; if you want corporal punishment v incarceration, that's a hell of a dichotomy. And for every genuinely abused kid CPS saves, how many healthy families get broken up again?)
The idea is childish and unrealistic, but nonetheless popular because it plays on the fear and resentment people feel towards those above them. And in a democracy, popular sentiment is difficult to defeat.
Don't look at it from the perp point of view, look at it from an average-middle-class-dude or a suburban-soccer-mom point of view.
If there's a guy who, say, committed a robbery in your neighborhood, physical punishment may or may not deter him from future robberies. You don't know and in the meantime he's still around. But if that guy gets sent to prison, the state guarantees that he will not be around for a fairly long time.
That is the major advantage of prisons over fines and/or physical punishments.
On the other hand, making people spend long periods of time in a low-trust environment surrounded by criminals seems to be a rather effective way of elevating recidivism when they do get out, so the advantage as implemented in our system is on rather tenuous footing.
And of course, the prison system comes with the major disadvantage that imprisoning people is a highly expensive punishment to implement.
I am not arguing that prisons are the proper way to deal with crime. All I'm saying is that arguments in favor of imprisonment as the preferred method of punishing criminals exist.
This is totally obvious, I'm not sure why you felt you needed to point that out.
The point of my comment is that it is interesting that prison isn't viewed as cruel, even though it's obviously more harsh than alternatives. Obviously there are other reasons people prefer prison as a punishment for others.
That's only an advantage if the expected cost to society of keeping him in prison is less than the expected cost (broadly construed) to society of him keeping on robbing.
The relevant part: "look at it from an average-middle-class-dude or a suburban-soccer-mom point of view".
They do have political power and they don't do expected-cost-to-society calculations.
I guess I just hadn't interpreted "point of view" close enough to literally.
well, short of death.
Death is an existential punishment :-/
Dunno about that -- peak-end rule.
It's not about harshness but about the concept of the important for physical integrity for human dignity.
Isn't freedom important for human dignity? It seems that any kind of punishment infringes on human dignity to some extent. Also, remember that prisoners are often subject to beatings and rape by other prisoners or guards--something which is widely known.
According to the standard moral doctrine it's not as central as bodily integrity. The state is allowed to take away freedom of movement but not bodily integrity or force people to work as slaves.
That's a feature of the particular way a prison is run.
There is a "standard moral doctrine"??
Yes, I consider things like the UN charter of human rights the standard moral doctrine.