re: #358 researchok

No, punishment is an integral part of the justice system.

But it is not the only part.

Punishment qua punishment— the suffering of the incarcerated— is not useful. Nobody gains anything from the deprivation of prisoners. The deterrence value of punishment is the useful part of it. But many of the people committing crimes have a life outside prison that necessarily involves more hardship than we could create for them in prison without being as brutal as the thugs that run the neighborhoods they come from. We can’t compete with the inner city as a punishment for people, and we shouldn’t try. And of the dangerous criminals, the real professional assholes, they run the risk every day as a criminal of getting killed.

If you run the numbers, criminals make less than minimum wage. Some do better, very few have long careers. Most are not running the numbers, they are not considering the deterrent, because if they really envisioned getting caught then they wouldn’t really find the crime worthwhile. Humans think they have a chance to win the lotto and waste their money on that; they sure as hell will risk abstract years of their life because they don’t think they’re going to get caught.

Obviously, we need some level of deprivation and some level of punishment for the justice system to work. But as it stands now, the punishment of prison, and of being a felon, is a crushing one on every level, including the economic, and thanks to idiots calling for more punishment and less rehabilitation, that punishment pushes criminals into a life of crime after their release by shutting off options for them.