[HN Gopher] He's Bad, She's Mad (2019)
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He's Bad, She's Mad (2019)
Author : Tomte
Score : 20 points
Date : 2021-06-10 07:57 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrb.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrb.co.uk)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Before the centralisation of the prison estate in the later
| 19th century, criminal punishment mostly meant exile or
| execution.
|
| It is a profound dilemma - for me at least - which among the two
| is worse: To live in a society in which the sovereign maintains
| warehouses of living human bodies; or kills people for non-
| capital offenses.
|
| I would like a society with "neither". And if you ever spend a
| while in prison, or your friends do, or even if you read some
| accounts like this one, or Foucault's "History of madness in the
| age of reason", I think you might draw nearer to this conclusion.
| mc32 wrote:
| So, think about this. What if you could ship offenders who
| reach a threshold (violent felony) and you had a place to ship
| them to. A big island or large area 5000sq mi, let's say. Let
| that body set their own rules within that geographic area. How
| would they organize themselves and mete out justice?
|
| [not to be confused with early Australia or whatever in pop
| culture].
| bwestergard wrote:
| I think there are many reasons this is morally and
| politically unacceptable.
|
| But to name just one practical objection: this would only
| intensify policing of borders (internal to a state's
| territory or otherwise). Siberian exiles of Tsarist Russia
| were quite frequently able to make it back to the urban west.
| Leon Trotsky is one famous example.
| mc32 wrote:
| You could ease concerns by making it a choice. Regular
| prison with whatever sentence or they can live out their
| sentence in this area.
|
| They'd make the rules they live by. There is no "man". It's
| just them.
| bwestergard wrote:
| At that point, you might as well just have a genuinely
| rehabilitative prison area of the kind many European
| countries run.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast%C3%B8y_Prison
| lopatin wrote:
| Similarly Stalin was sent to Siberian prisons/work camps in
| early life. Every time he managed to talk his way out with
| the guards. Though unlike Trotsky, he went east afterwards.
| notshift wrote:
| What else should a society do about criminals?
| jokoon wrote:
| Rehabilitate them, give funds to initiatives that attempt to
| do something positive with those people.
|
| There are other things to look into, of course: the causes,
| like inequality, lack of education, mental illness, health,
| the justice system, legalize things that should not be
| illegal. It's also possible to hold a register of those
| individuals, and to signal the public about it, too?
|
| At least be open with the idea. It's fine if you disagree
| with it. If you're fine with capital punishment or prisons,
| then I guess there is no point for debate?
| xenocratus wrote:
| This is one of the things that popped into my head recently
| and isn't going away - society has accepted that "chronic,
| usually irrational sadness" is a mental health issue which
| can and should be treated. But a "chronic, usually
| irrational tendency for violence" is considered repugnant
| and worthy of long imprisonment. True, the effects fall on
| different categories of people (yourself vs others) and it
| might be difficult to identify it as a mental health issue,
| but I'd assume many repeat offenders might benefit a lot
| from psychological support. I know The Economist had an
| article recently about how the incidence of brain injuries
| is a lot higher in prison than in the general population
| [1]
|
| I'm no psychology expert, I'd love to hear an informed
| opinion on this.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/03/27/a-huge-
| share-of...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >"chronic, usually irrational tendency for violence" is
| considered repugnant and worthy of long imprisonment.
| True, the effects fall on different categories of people
| (yourself vs others)
|
| well first off some depressive people show an increased
| tendency towards violence
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4520382/
| (although also of course it is a well known statistic
| that being depressed often makes you a victim of violent
| crime as well or at least there is some relation between
| the two)
|
| also in my experience people who commit violence often
| suffer for the violence they have committed although that
| is very much dependent on the person.
| xenocratus wrote:
| And if they do not suffer, does that not imply that some
| mental functions available to the majority of people is
| lacking in them? I'm not trying to excuse them if they're
| culpable, but trying to fix instead of vilifying seems
| even more important when the cost of the actions falls on
| others.
| groby_b wrote:
| I'd recommend a read of "Why They Kill" by Richard Rhodes
| - which very much points in the direction of the tendency
| to violence behaving like an illness. (It does identify
| clear intervention points, too)
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| Having a chronic, irrational sadness is way less likely
| to incur in damage to third parties, while chronic,
| irrational violence puts vulnerable people in danger.
| Emphasis in vulnerable, irrational violence doesn't mean
| the person, if bad-natured enough, cannot pick easier
| targets, specially women and children. Their violence
| might also manifest in manipulation and abuse "as an
| outlet".
|
| It's less about getting help and more about wanting to
| get help. The depressive person might want that help
| because they realize they can hardly function, the
| violent person might not want that help because they
| discovered they can use violence as a tool.
|
| And that's why it's considered repugnant.
| xenocratus wrote:
| Ok, and understanding/knowing that somehow doesn't change
| the tone to "said person should be helped"? I get why
| it's seen that way if you're oblivious to mental illness
| being a thing, but we're presumably more capable of
| understanding mental illness, at least at society level.
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| Yes, of course they should get help, I'm mostly talking
| of why it's perceived that way.
| einpoklum wrote:
| You're _contrasting_ "society" and "criminals". Well,
| criminals are part of society. Some of us are criminals (or
| if you like: Have committed, or will commit, crimes). And -
| the extent of criminality in society is the result of policy
| (social policies in general and policing, prosecutorial and
| punitive policies in particular). The US has an incredible
| number of criminals (and jailed criminals). Some countries
| have more interpersonal violence, say, but less crime. Many
| (probably most) countries have a lot less of both.
|
| Also, you're implicitly assuming that the state is the
| instrument of society; but this is at most partly true.
|
| Finally, is criminality in the nature of some people? Is it a
| character trait? If it is not, then can we even answer your
| question? Is "deterrence" or "rehabilitation" (two common
| answers to your question) even meaningful? Especially when
| some acts or behaviors get de-criminalized, or criminalized,
| over time? Homoesexual relations; use of various substances;
| squatting real-estate; expressing different kinds of
| opinions; etc.
|
| So, yeah, I've shirked your question, but I really don't
| think it's a useful one the way you phrased it.
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190514093208/https://www.lrb.c...
| cafard wrote:
| He's Bad, She's Mad, It's Paywalled.
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