April 26, 2008
I found this link via Fark. Some violent criminals have attempted a defense based on their genes predisposing them to violent anti-social behavior. Some variants mentioned are MAO-A and AVPR1a, which you may be familiar with if you read Gene Expression. At least on one occasion the defendant got off on the basis of his act not being a result of “free will” due to his genetic condition. I of course find the entire concept of “free will” to be incoherent and a blemish on our justice system. A sensible take on the issue is in Greene & Cohen’s “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything“. If you really are hard-wired to kill, all the more reason to get rid of you as we might a rabid dog.
April 27, 2008 at 7:12 am
If you really are hard-wired to kill, all the more reason to get rid of you as we might a rabid dog.
Sounds good. What I don’t get is why castration is not used as an alternative to the death penalty.
April 27, 2008 at 11:40 am
What I don’t understand is the sentence of life in prison: as prison’s sole purpose, imo, is to rehabilitate criminals, those sentenced to spend the rest of their life in jail should just be given the death penalty. It costs $30,000 to jail each inmate per year. Gimme a break…
April 27, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Castration makes sense as a penalty for rape, but it doesn’t stop you from killing anybody.
m, why do you think rehabilitation is the purpose of prison? I’ve never heard of any evidence that it actually serves that purpose. Instead it incapacitates (which is nothing to sneeze at). It does cost a lot to jail people for life, but what with all the appeals it can cost more to execute. I’m with you on a life-sentence not being that different from the death penalty, especially considering how long people can stay on death row. For a while it was safer to be there than selling crack on a corner.
April 27, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Sounds good. What I don’t get is why castration is not used as an alternative to the death penalty.
Ummm…
Well, aside from the historical kill-joy associated with any sort of negative eugenics, castrating a murder is rather presumptuous isn’t it? You’ve still got a murderer, just without regular hormone levels, and what if that doesn’t solve the problem?
April 27, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I’ll modify and clarify :)
You’re right, of course - prison’s function is to incapacitate. Such incapacitation is considered by some to be “punishment” for crimes. Perhaps on a sort of cosmic level or to ensure that citizens don’t take the law into their own hands for revenge - that’s true.
However, from a societal perspective, the actual purpose of that incapacitation, with all of the expenses involved, is basically twofold:
(1) to serve as a deterrent to others;
(2) to punish the criminal so that they don’t commit the crime again when released.
Society hopes to maximize its gains in this process - to create a high enough level of deterrence to others with as low a cost as to create a rehabilitated inmate. If an inmate cannot be rehabilitated, society should maximize its deterrence. The best way to do this is with capital punishment, probably in the same manner as the murderer killed his victim. (also - there’s a nationwide genetic database being set up in order to better weed out the innocent and track down the guilty…I saw it yesterday in America’s Most Wanted).
April 28, 2008 at 12:04 am
Evidence that prison doesn’t deter crime.
April 28, 2008 at 12:31 am
That’s a study I would have to look over. I have a hard time believing that they can control for all of the independent variables. For example, a great deal of kids are charged as adults when they’re 17 or 16. How does that come into play? Prison is also seen in many sub-cultures in America as a right of passage, which goes toward your point regarding deterrence - but only regarding the prison system as it is now. If it’s structured differently, in such a way to destroy it’s allure among the criminal underclass, how would that change things?
Here’s a post I read scrolling the site of Jim Rogers, the famous investor. He traveled the world on his motorcycle and wrote about it:
“19 November 2000 – The positive side to the severely strict punishment system in Saudi Arabia means that I feel remarkably safe walking the streets and don’t clutch my bag for fear of pickpockets or thieves. Men (the only workers in the stalls and shops) leave merchandise outside their shops when leaving for prayers; by law the shops must close during prayer times.”
Now, I don’t think we should be chopping off hands or legs of thieves. And while I suppose it’s debatable whether prison deters crime (especially in today’s climate), a strong death penalty, if applied in the right manner, most certainly does.
April 28, 2008 at 7:53 am
just without regular hormone levels
Levels of testosterone are the primary determinant of aggression levels. It will have an effect on a person’s tendency for murder.
April 28, 2008 at 9:43 am
You libertarians and anarchists are aware that it’s going to be the government doing all this killing, torturing, maiming, and castrating, right? The people you don’t trust to build roads or run schools are to be given the powers of life and death. Sounds like a plan!
April 28, 2008 at 11:51 am
I’m not either, thanks. I’m basically a monarchist (heavily modified), nationalist, immigration restrictionalist.
April 28, 2008 at 12:19 pm
m, there are many countries that have lower crime-rates than the U.S. There are so many differing factors that I don’t think we can attribute Saudi Arabia’s even primarily to their justice system.
Many anarchists believe that these functions can be carried out by private organizations. The fact that a huge number of prisoners are there for victimless crimes and that prison has little deterrent/rehabilatory effect could be seen as evidence that the government should not be trusted to wield those sorts of powers. Given that it does wield certain powers and take on certain responsibilities, we can certainly critique the manner in which it does so.
April 28, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Any private organization with the power to inflict punishment is going to be indistinguishable from a government, and have the same problems as a government. Power corrupts. The libertarian view that the Pinkertons are preferable to the cops has always mystified me. At least with the cops, there is a small chance of them being honest and just; the Pinkertons are by definition for sale to the highest bidder.
Given that it does wield certain powers and take on certain responsibilities, we can certainly critique the manner in which it does so.
Certainly true. For instance, you can oppose the death penalty on the grounds that the government should not have the right to take life, or the right to inflict a punishment which is inherently irreversible if it turns out an error was made in the judicial process.
April 28, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Any private organization with the power to inflict punishment is going to be indistinguishable from a government
The protection agencies theorized by anarchists are voluntary, often modeled after those in medieval Iceland.
At least with the cops, there is a small chance of them being honest and just; the Pinkertons are by definition for sale to the highest bidder.
I would actually like to see data comparing the Pinkertons to the cops (I would check the index of Bruce Benson’s book, but it seems I have misplaced it). The cops by definition work for the state, I have no reason to think the “small chance of them being honest and just” is higher than for the Pinkertons and no special reason to object to the “highest bidder”.
For instance, you can oppose the death penalty on the grounds that the government should not have the right to take life, or the right to inflict a punishment which is inherently irreversible if it turns out an error was made in the judicial process.
The government already wields guns and kills people. The punishment of incarceration is also irreversible in some sense: you cannot get back the years taken from you. If you die in prison (which is common even for people on death row) nothing more can be done for you if it is shown you were innocent.
April 28, 2008 at 6:01 pm
You should probably read Jane Jacob’s Systems of Survival to get some idea of why the value system of government and business need to be kept separate.
The government already wields guns and kills people.
Well, yes. The choice is to either help it do that better (for some value of “better”), or give up, have a revolution, and replace it with something else. Aside from the practical difficulties of actually achieving the latter option, you at least need to demonstrate that it would be an improvement. That’s sort of the minimum threshold.
April 29, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I read the Slate article. You’ll notice it says that the study contradicts decades of evidence to the contrary.
Well, according to Tim Harford in his book The Logic of Life, citing Steven Levitt’s work (testing Becker’s theory of the rational criminal), deterrence doesseem to have an effect on youth crime in states where the adult system is significantly more harsh than the juvenile (Ch 1, p 22-23).
May 1, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I have never understood those who oppose the use of the death penalty without wishing to take guns, clubs, and other weapons of deadly force away from the police. If their objection is to the state’s taking life, it should not take it under any circumstance - so why should police have the means to take it? If the objection is that an innocent life might be taken in error by the action of the state, it is much more likely to be taken by a policeman than by the executioner.
A cursory examination of reports of police shootings is all that is necessary to demonstrate this. I am aware of several recent cases in my state in which the person shot was either innocent entirely of crime, or in which any crime that he might have committed was not capital. The mentally ill, whom longstanding legal precedent forbids executing or indeed judicially punishing in other ways, are often killed by police. On the other hand, the recent advent of DNA testing and the invariably extensive judicial review of capital sentences make it less likely than ever that an innocent or insane person will be executed.