1. In the early hours of August the 10th, 2018, Jett McKee broke into the home of Hannah Quinn and Blake Davis. McKee pulled a gun (only later revealed to be fake) on Quinn & Davis and demanded money, he then knocked out Davis with a knuckleduster blow to the forehead.
Prison might not be the solution. If he can't re-commit the crime, no amount of correction will be effective, since there's nothing to correct..! But! But.. you cannot leave a criminal untouched.
Well you see, we need strong deterrence in these cases, or everyone would reach for their katana after being bludgeoned by a home invader!
People are obviously capable of inflicting violence on criminals if it becomes normalised, that's basically what we did for most of human history. The main advantages of prison seem to be that it's a more abstract harm and so less likely to offend our modern sensibilities, but there are definitely people who think prison is a good punishment precisely because of how horrible it is to be imprisoned. I don't think that's the majority, but "hard on crime" does attract voters, and not all of them are just blissfully unaware of how unpleasant incarceration is. You might think we'd have a hard time finding people to beat people with an iron bar, but you could say the same about prison guards, in this economy it wouldn't be too difficult to find people with few other employment options.
I think my main objection to prison (and beating people with an iron bar for that matter) is that it doesn't really seem to work at reforming people, there are exceptions but there's a reasonable argument to be made that being imprisoned makes people more likely to re-offend. Unfortunately, the kind of things to do make people less likely to reoffend, like counselling and skills training, don't really appeal to the "hanging's too good for them" crowd.
Less eloquent, slightly more technocratic argument I made a few weeks ago: https://aaronbergman.substack.com/p/prison-sentences-are-too-long
Great thought experiment
Could you call the legal veil a kind of – to coin a term – "veil of ignorance"?
Prison might not be the solution. If he can't re-commit the crime, no amount of correction will be effective, since there's nothing to correct..! But! But.. you cannot leave a criminal untouched.
Well you see, we need strong deterrence in these cases, or everyone would reach for their katana after being bludgeoned by a home invader!
People are obviously capable of inflicting violence on criminals if it becomes normalised, that's basically what we did for most of human history. The main advantages of prison seem to be that it's a more abstract harm and so less likely to offend our modern sensibilities, but there are definitely people who think prison is a good punishment precisely because of how horrible it is to be imprisoned. I don't think that's the majority, but "hard on crime" does attract voters, and not all of them are just blissfully unaware of how unpleasant incarceration is. You might think we'd have a hard time finding people to beat people with an iron bar, but you could say the same about prison guards, in this economy it wouldn't be too difficult to find people with few other employment options.
I think my main objection to prison (and beating people with an iron bar for that matter) is that it doesn't really seem to work at reforming people, there are exceptions but there's a reasonable argument to be made that being imprisoned makes people more likely to re-offend. Unfortunately, the kind of things to do make people less likely to reoffend, like counselling and skills training, don't really appeal to the "hanging's too good for them" crowd.