“Don’t conceive of punishment as an attempt to ‘undo’ crime or cancel it out symbolically, because there can be no satisfaction here.”
And
“Remember, everyone involved is human, and thus an object of value.”
Are so important. I would just amend to say… “an object of equal intrinsic value.”
Both ends of the political spectrum twist up these fundamental truths. And as a result you have:
On the left - injustice as a result of the idea that the vulnerable/minority groups/victims of trauma have have more intrinsic value (heightened moral status) and therefore their offenders require more punishment.
On the right - injustice as a result of the idea that those who keep order/nationalists/keepers of the “sacred” have more intrinsic value and therefore their offenders require more punishment.
The left prioritizes individual autonomy, the right prioritizes group order. They’re both important and one cannot meaningfully exist without the other.
Both sides misrepresent the justice system as a great equalizer (religious or not, that is a title that ought to be reserved for God or I guess if you want - the universe/karma). And both sides end up diminishing the inherent value of the human beings who violate their preferred moral foundation.
There is something truly odd about treating a sex crime as worse than murder. I am fairly confident that the vast majority of rape victims would not prefer having been murdered. Rape is not "a fate worse than death". This is not in any way to minimize it, it can have profound life-long consequences. But you get a life, to work through those consequences.
I appreciate this expansion on the note you posted a few weeks(?) ago. However, my thought at the time still remains. This line: "Feminists quite rightly suggested that we don’t take sexual violence seriously enough." sticks out in a piece where it seems every other sentence is about how we take sexual violence (or maybe "violence"?) *too* seriously. I'm still trying to figure out how you square that.
Is this close?
When considering the spectrum of sexual crimes, we treat everything like the severity, though not frequency, weighted average. This results in us treating the minor incidents much more seriously than warranted while not taking seriously enough the truly heinous crimes.
Or maybe:
Our perception of sexual crimes sets the overton window such that moderate crimes are over-punished, major crimes are under-punished, and minor crimes are ignored
Suppose that two countries are looking at stopping drink driving.
One adopts measures like random breath testing, licence removal, driver education, support for victims of drink driving, and, where appropriate, prison sentences. Careful, evidence-based analysis, community consultation, and planning are employed
The other adopts a high-profile campaign giving enormous sentences to people who kill someone while drink driving and denouncing them as the worst monsters imaginable. The minister gives endless interviews about how it's time to get "TOUGH'.
I think the first country is taking it more seriously, and that, I think, is the difference between taking something with genuine seriousness and merely raising the level of moral intensity.
These claims:
“Don’t conceive of punishment as an attempt to ‘undo’ crime or cancel it out symbolically, because there can be no satisfaction here.”
And
“Remember, everyone involved is human, and thus an object of value.”
Are so important. I would just amend to say… “an object of equal intrinsic value.”
Both ends of the political spectrum twist up these fundamental truths. And as a result you have:
On the left - injustice as a result of the idea that the vulnerable/minority groups/victims of trauma have have more intrinsic value (heightened moral status) and therefore their offenders require more punishment.
On the right - injustice as a result of the idea that those who keep order/nationalists/keepers of the “sacred” have more intrinsic value and therefore their offenders require more punishment.
The left prioritizes individual autonomy, the right prioritizes group order. They’re both important and one cannot meaningfully exist without the other.
Both sides misrepresent the justice system as a great equalizer (religious or not, that is a title that ought to be reserved for God or I guess if you want - the universe/karma). And both sides end up diminishing the inherent value of the human beings who violate their preferred moral foundation.
There is something truly odd about treating a sex crime as worse than murder. I am fairly confident that the vast majority of rape victims would not prefer having been murdered. Rape is not "a fate worse than death". This is not in any way to minimize it, it can have profound life-long consequences. But you get a life, to work through those consequences.
I appreciate this expansion on the note you posted a few weeks(?) ago. However, my thought at the time still remains. This line: "Feminists quite rightly suggested that we don’t take sexual violence seriously enough." sticks out in a piece where it seems every other sentence is about how we take sexual violence (or maybe "violence"?) *too* seriously. I'm still trying to figure out how you square that.
Is this close?
When considering the spectrum of sexual crimes, we treat everything like the severity, though not frequency, weighted average. This results in us treating the minor incidents much more seriously than warranted while not taking seriously enough the truly heinous crimes.
Or maybe:
Our perception of sexual crimes sets the overton window such that moderate crimes are over-punished, major crimes are under-punished, and minor crimes are ignored
Suppose that two countries are looking at stopping drink driving.
One adopts measures like random breath testing, licence removal, driver education, support for victims of drink driving, and, where appropriate, prison sentences. Careful, evidence-based analysis, community consultation, and planning are employed
The other adopts a high-profile campaign giving enormous sentences to people who kill someone while drink driving and denouncing them as the worst monsters imaginable. The minister gives endless interviews about how it's time to get "TOUGH'.
I think the first country is taking it more seriously, and that, I think, is the difference between taking something with genuine seriousness and merely raising the level of moral intensity.