Hmmm, 'humane justice' really isn't at the top of my list at the moment.

If I had my way, I'd smack the little *******s round the head a few times and give them a taste of their own medicine before sending them off to a US style 'Boot Camp'.

But that's only me.

(Edited by Whistler 05/12/2005 22:30)

(Edited by Staff 06/12/2005 14:52)

Lets face it these young muggers will at some point rejoin society... This means it is slightly counter productive to train them to become hardened criminals, which is something that easily happens in such a brutal youth detention system. Of course they should be punished in some way as what they have done is clearly wrong but giving them a free fast course in how to become a hardened criminal... that doesn't seem very sensible to me.

(Edited by Chambler 06/12/2005 08:12)

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by Whistler
Hmmm, 'humane justice' really isn't at the top of my list at the moment.

If I had my way, I'd smack the little ******s round the head a few times and give them a taste of their own medicine before sending them off to a US style 'Boot Camp'.

But that's only me.

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Violence begets violence. Boot camps were tried in the seventies and abandoned because brutalising juveniles boosted re-offending. Giving them a "taste of their own medicine" might make victims feel better, but it perpetuates the crime cycle.

Punish them, but don't punish the public in the process.

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by Byron
(quotes)
Violence begets violence. Boot camps were tried in the seventies and abandoned because brutalising juveniles boosted re-offending. Giving them a "taste of their own medicine" might make victims feel better, but it perpetuates the crime cycle.

Punish them, but don't punish the public in the process.

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I'll remember that the next time I get belted over the back of the head then.

There an actual point hiding under the sarcasm?

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by Whistler
I'll remember that the next time I get belted over the back of the head then.

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For the individual that gets mugged it is a serious pain however the fact the people will be mugged is a fact of life as no matter how hard you punish people it will never be a 100% deterrent so if you now can avoid those criminals from becoming more harden criminals than this will benefit of the overall society (as the damage a harden criminal will do (to other people) over his entire career is probably a lot worse) weighs heavier than the "pleasure" that the victim gets from very heavily punishing the mugger.

The justice system is there to protect society not for the benefit of the victim. This doesn't mean that people shouldn't be punished for their crimes however they should be punished in a way so that they are let loose in society again "better" than when they where taken out, otherwise whats the point? Overall hard sentencing and hard prison enviroments only achieve the opposite. So yay we just spent tax money on 4 years of room and board so a criminal can further their criminal education?

(Edited by Chambler 06/12/2005 22:42)

Chambler - please don't preach to me about the criminal justice system. I've worked for the Crown Prosecution Service for the past 16 years and work in a Crown Court on a daily basis. And most of us who work there, including a lot of experienced police officers, agree that the sentences handed out, and the punishment, is feeble to what it should be. In fact, most of us agree that a lot of the young thugs who appear there should be given a good thrashing because all else has failed.

Byron - yes, the point behind my sarcasm, as you put it, was that, after being attacked myself at the weekend, my tolerance for 'people' like that has run out. Especially given what I have said above in response to Chambler.

(Edited by Whistler 06/12/2005 22:48)

I know bugger all about the justice system and what not, but the way I look at it I don't always agree 'Violence begets violence'. How can you punish a youth who has mugged someone so they won't do it again? Nowadays youths are getting away with too much and the law is not strict enough on them I don't think. They get away with it and therefore carry on doing it. If you look back at when kids were given the caine at school, it worked. It was one way of keeping the children in line, look at schools nowadays and they are complete chaos. I think its pretty much the same outside of schools.

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by Whistler
Chambler - please don't preach to me about the criminal justice system. I've worked for the Crown Prosecution Service for the past 16 years and work in a Crown Court on a daily basis. And most of us who work there, including a lot of experienced police officers, agree that the sentences handed out, and the punishment, is feeble to what it should be. In fact, most of us agree that a lot of the young thugs who appear there should be given a good thrashing because all else has failed.

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This might surprise you but I do still remember where you work (photographic memory) and not everything I say is for your benefit only but are meant for the overall discussion. It is my opinion and my views and not a personal attack on your views as both are two valid sides of the same coin, however what kinda discussion do you get if everything agrees with each other?

However seeing as you have a lot of experience with the criminal justice system (on the right side of the line) you should know that there is a reason why there is a seperation of powers. Because you are so often touched by the effects that criminals have on people (due to your work) you might not be the most objective person to judge on how certain problems should be approached. This doesn't mean that the experience that people in the executeive part of law enforcement is invalid or anything, however, experience do tend to lead to tunnel vision and overall clouded judgement.

I'm not against harder punishments if they actually work (not saying they don't or do here) as I'm in favour of punishments that work. If harder punishments mean that criminality is reduced I'm all for it however if it means that the criminals we do put away come out a lot worse than they went in we lose sight of the overall objective which is creating a safe enviroment for everyone and than harder punishments only worked for xx years until these people are set free again. Here in the Netherlands we see that being held at a police office for xx hours and a long talk with a set of police officers and xx hours of cleaning busstops has the wanted effect for many native youths, however, for some ethnic groups it is a status symbol within these groups to be held by police etc so it doesn't have the wanted effect and other punishments are needed. However there are groups that say this is discrimination as you punish some elements of ethnic minorities harder than most of the native youths....

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by Whistler
Byron - yes, the point behind my sarcasm, as you put it, was that, after being attacked myself at the weekend, my tolerance for 'people' like that has run out. Especially given what I have said above in response to Chambler.

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I'm very sorry to hear that Whistler. Hope you weren't badly hurt and your attackers are caught before they can do it again.

But when they are, why impose a punishment that makes them worse. This isn't about tolerance for muggers, what they've done can never be excused and they should be punished accordingly. It's about ensuring the punishment is effective. Studies have shown time and again that brutalising criminals adds to the problem, whereas education and rehabilitation in prison helps them. And by helping them, you're helping the public.

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by SPIKE
I know bugger all about the justice system and what not, but the way I look at it I don't always agree 'Violence begets violence'. How can you punish a youth who has mugged someone so they won't do it again? Nowadays youths are getting away with too much and the law is not strict enough on them I don't think. They get away with it and therefore carry on doing it. If you look back at when kids were given the caine at school, it worked. It was one way of keeping the children in line, look at schools nowadays and they are complete chaos. I think its pretty much the same outside of schools.

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Youths aren't getting away with it. Lax sentances are a myth, sentances have been getting harsher over the past decade, and our prison numbers have shot from 40,000 to 80,000, yet crime still rose.

Caning kept children in line by terror, which is barbaric, there are plenty of alternatives that work. The problem in schools has far more to do with undersourced teaching and fragmented social groups than the loss of thrashing. As I said in a pervious thread, it was completely ineffective for teenagers and adults, the same names regularly showing up in the birching book.

Punish violent criminals by means that don't harden them. Prisons and beatings feed into the macho mindset that defines their existence: making them face up to their own inadiquacies and the damage they've done is much harder on them because it breaks the hard man shield they're using to hide from it.

No doubt you get some born thugs when you've done, and by all means lock them away somewhere, but don't assume they're all irredemable in the process.

I'm in the nurture corner.

It's been proved time and time again that cracking down on youth, and adult, criminals not only does nothing to stop crime, it actually propogates it. They go into offender centres or prison, they learn from already hardened criminals and they become more skilled, more determined criminals themselves. Hard lines batter youths into submission, but that just creates resentment and anger which eventually whips back into society's already beaten face.

What we need is a system that nurtures, educates and counsels these youths. A system that shows them that what they've done is wrong, but explains why it's wrong and how it affects the victim. Interation with victims and demonstrations of the pain and agony they've crime has caused them can and has been very effective in deterring criminals.

I think these things would really help combating petty crimes and things like mugging.

I guess a core issue is 'whats the value of punishment, if it doesnt rehabilitate'? The claimed point of any punishment, from sending a kid to his room, to locking up a burgler is 'this isnt very nice, so i better not do it again'.

However it seems to be increasingly agreed that just locking people up doesnt have that effect. Which begs the bigger question, Is there some legitimate concept that people should be punished (ie suffer) for making others suffer, and this represents some universal idea of 'justice', that doesnt fall into the category of a societally sanctioned form of 'revenge'?

Is sending someone to jail, knowing that it wont help then, just because they were nasty to someone, so they 'deserve' something nasty back, really seem any better than an individual justifying physical violence on someone as 'payback' for violence on them?

That makes me sound like a liberal, and im not, just making a point

On one side, instinct says 'revenge isnt good', on the other, we scream for some intrinsic sense of a balancing of the scales, its almost as intrinsic as gravity, people shouldnt 'get away' with what they did...

Of course theres also the issue of responsibility, we are getting increasingly down the road of concluding that all personality problems are the result of a) genetics, and b) upbringing, neither of which we have any control over, and if its not our fault, why should we be punished for anything that happens because of them?

Personally Im all for sending people to jail, while investing money in communities so you arent just dropping them back into exactly the same societal situations that drove them to drugs/violence/crime, whatever. However I'll leave you with a question?

If there was some cast iron 100% effective rehabilitative treatment, say a pill, would you really want these people sent to jail, so they could go through the motion of making amends? Further more, for more serious crimes, isnt it largely insulting to suggest that someone you dont know sitting in a jail cell for a predetermined period of time, in some way accounts for a deep personal trauma? Would in fact, the idea of 'punishment' fade out slowly with time, until it seems like a bizzare old fashioned concept like medeivil witch tests?

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by Wobag
Would in fact, the idea of 'punishment' fade out slowly with time, until it seems like a bizzare old fashioned concept like medeivil witch tests?

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When better ways of rehabilitation are invented the idea of punishment might slowly fade out and indeed become a bizzare old fashioned concept as why would you pay to lock someone up so they can't contribute to society in a positive manner when with a 'pill' you can rehabilitate the person and make sure they can contribute to society (as in that case every pound counts double as you don't have the costs and instead you have benefits).

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by Wobag
I guess a core issue is 'whats the value of punishment, if it doesnt rehabilitate'? The claimed point of any punishment, from sending a kid to his room, to locking up a burgler is 'this isnt very nice, so i better not do it again'.

However it seems to be increasingly agreed that just locking people up doesnt have that effect. Which begs the bigger question, Is there some legitimate concept that people should be punished (ie suffer) for making others suffer, and this represents some universal idea of 'justice', that doesnt fall into the category of a societally sanctioned form of 'revenge'?

Is sending someone to jail, knowing that it wont help then, just because they were nasty to someone, so they 'deserve' something nasty back, really seem any better than an individual justifying physical violence on someone as 'payback' for violence on them?

That makes me sound like a liberal, and im not, just making a point

On one side, instinct says 'revenge isnt good', on the other, we scream for some intrinsic sense of a balancing of the scales, its almost as intrinsic as gravity, people shouldnt 'get away' with what they did...

Of course theres also the issue of responsibility, we are getting increasingly down the road of concluding that all personality problems are the result of a) genetics, and b) upbringing, neither of which we have any control over, and if its not our fault, why should we be punished for anything that happens because of them?

Personally Im all for sending people to jail, while investing money in communities so you arent just dropping them back into exactly the same societal situations that drove them to drugs/violence/crime, whatever. However I'll leave you with a question?

If there was some cast iron 100% effective rehabilitative treatment, say a pill, would you really want these people sent to jail, so they could go through the motion of making amends? Further more, for more serious crimes, isnt it largely insulting to suggest that someone you dont know sitting in a jail cell for a predetermined period of time, in some way accounts for a deep personal trauma? Would in fact, the idea of 'punishment' fade out slowly with time, until it seems like a bizzare old fashioned concept like medeivil witch tests?

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I have no moral objection to devoting part of a sentance solely to punishment, and I don't think it'll ever go away. As your say, there's some intrinsic desire to balance the scales. But if that punishment actually makes things worse, as jail in its current form does, I find that unacceptable. In effect you're sacrificing public safety for vengance.

Hard background never removes personal responsibility in my book (save in extreme cases where the offender's mind is unbalanced) and it's been a major error on the part of the Left to paint criminals as victims. What they should do is show that retalliation endangers the public while rehabilitation helps them, and their methods are harsher than slinging someone in a cell: education and restorative justice strip away offenders' defence mechanisms and lay bare their inadiquacies in a way mindless brutality does not. Focus on this, and they'd get a lot more support.

Tabloid fantasies of baby killers living in luxury hotels and taking windsurfing holidays don't help either of course.

But we musn't abandon the idea of redemption in the process. For all my dislike of organised religion, it did serve as a vehicle to spread complex philosophy like forgiveness and atonement among the public. The idea people can pay a debt, change in the process and earn forgiveness for their wrongdoing needs a champion again. You only have to witness the recent media incomprehension when Gee Walker forgave the racist killers of her son to see how alien those ideals have become.

Maybe we should go to more "alternative punishments" for minor crimes just like Judge Mike Cicconetti does in the states Full Article (possible inappropriate image with the article for the younger kids or the extreme prude )

This judged has series of wacky punishments which are an alternative to prison and designed the fit to crime. For example: One man caught with a loaded gun was sent to a morgue to see dead bodies while a woman who abandoned 35 kittens in a forest was told to spend a night in the woods. A defendant who called a police officer a pig spent two hours inside a pen with a pig, complete with a sign saying: "This is not a police officer." Two teenagers who scrawled 666 on a nativity figure of Jesus had to lead a donkey through the streets, with a sign saying: "Sorry for the jackass offence." During recent heavy blizzards, he ordered defendants to clear snow. A teenager was told to sit blindfolded outside a porn shop he stole from with a sign saying "see no evil".

His argument for these alternative punishments is: "Do we serve the community better like that or by putting someone in jail at a cost of $70 (£45) a day?" and he might have a very good point.... if it is effective why not?

However it aint always effective as a drink-driver who ran away from police was ordered to run in a race and his finishing position would determine his sentence. He trained hard, finished fifth and spent five days in jail. However, days later, he used his new found fitness to snatch a women's purse. (He was jailed by another court.)