VOY: Repentance

[CharlesPhipps]

The argument for me on the Death Penalty is so many people have been sent to death row for police malfeasance, biased juries, unequal application of the law, and making "examples."

What, like the one on Disco?

I feel like the fact that the Federation did make an example of Burnham and it was a miscarriage of justice was one of those things that would have made an interesting episode in its own right. However, they just merrily skipped past it.

[Nealithi]

You do not sound insane. The fact that the system itself is if not broken, then skewed toward keeping a minority in its place. While comforting the majority that things are under control, is interesting.
The mix of oppression and security theater, the government 'message' of don't do wrong and nothing bad will happen to you. Could be heavy.
What you missed was a coda. The Voyager crew flying away, not understanding how these people live like this. Or a 'one day they will realize this isn't the way. But we can't force them'. Which to me is a better take on the prime directive.

[CharlesPhipps]

Good call.

[Fianna]

Something interesting to think about:

If you see the main purpose of punishment (capital or otherwise) as being a deterrent against future crimes, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether the punished person is guilty. As long as people believe the punished person is guilty, it will still have the same effect of convincing them, "if I break the law, that could happen to me, too".

[Thebestoftherest]

Something interesting to think about:

If you see the main purpose of punishment (capital or otherwise) as being a deterrent against future crimes, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether the punished person is guilty. As long as people believe the punished person is guilty, it will still have the same effect of convincing them, "if I break the law, that could happen to me, too".

True but a lot of criminals might think it worth the risk still, and might have a mindset of "If I get CAUGHT that could be me."

[Nealithi]

Something interesting to think about:

If you see the main purpose of punishment (capital or otherwise) as being a deterrent against future crimes, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether the punished person is guilty. As long as people believe the punished person is guilty, it will still have the same effect of convincing them, "if I break the law, that could happen to me, too".

True but a lot of criminals might think it worth the risk still, and might have a mindset of "If I get CAUGHT that could be me."

Especially if the real criminal survives to see someone else punished for it. They can laugh about it among their peers and it would deter them, less.

[CrypticMirror]

Very few criminals ever expect to be caught. That is why deterrence rarely deters.
Criminals basically fall into three broad categories, no matter the crime.
1. The desperate, crimes of desperation. Those criminals are so desperate that the prospect of getting caught just is a non factor, they are too desperate for that to matter. A lot crimes relating to poverty and destitution fit in here.
2. The arrogant. Mainly white collar, but also the ones who think they are above the law (abuses of authority, that sort of thing) or that they are too clever, fit here. They do not believe they will be caught, or if they are then they won't get punished. Again, deterrence does not deter those who think they will get away with it.
3. Crimes of impulse and passion. You ever see someone get so angry they haul off and hit someone? Or just do something super stupid on a whim? Deterrence measures are not going to deter people who get caught up in the moment.

Tougher sentencing never touches those, but what will are enhanced social welfare policies which uplift people out of poverty and create societies where people are less likely to be walking around angry all the time. Sadly that doesn't fit with our thirst for revenge or desire to make sure that someone, somewhere, somehow, doesn't get something they don't deserve. It doesn't feed into the power fantasy, but it does work.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Something interesting to think about:

If you see the main purpose of punishment (capital or otherwise) as being a deterrent against future crimes, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether the punished person is guilty. As long as people believe the punished person is guilty, it will still have the same effect of convincing them, "if I break the law, that could happen to me, too".

Are you suggesting that theatrics are an effective form or supplement to justice enforcement?

In society it's basically illustrating the same principle that if we have any functioning system of incarceration then it will have a positive effect against lawlessness -- if people are aware of someone being incarcerated then that will be a natural consideration when plotting to commit a crime.

[Fianna]

Very few criminals ever expect to be caught. That is why deterrence rarely deters.
Criminals basically fall into three broad categories, no matter the crime.
1. The desperate, crimes of desperation. Those criminals are so desperate that the prospect of getting caught just is a non factor, they are too desperate for that to matter. A lot crimes relating to poverty and destitution fit in here.
2. The arrogant. Mainly white collar, but also the ones who think they are above the law (abuses of authority, that sort of thing) or that they are too clever, fit here. They do not believe they will be caught, or if they are then they won't get punished. Again, deterrence does not deter those who think they will get away with it.
3. Crimes of impulse and passion. You ever see someone get so angry they haul off and hit someone? Or just do something super stupid on a whim? Deterrence measures are not going to deter people who get caught up in the moment.

Tougher sentencing never touches those, but what will are enhanced social welfare policies which uplift people out of poverty and create societies where people are less likely to be walking around angry all the time. Sadly that doesn't fit with our thirst for revenge or desire to make sure that someone, somewhere, somehow, doesn't get something they don't deserve. It doesn't feed into the power fantasy, but it does work.

When people decide to take a risky action, both "how likely is this to go bad?" and "how bad will it get if it does go bad?" are things they think about.

Like, I've driven over the speed limit many times. That I feel comfortable taking that risk is partly because the odds of a traffic cop monitoring my speed at that particular moment and deciding to pull me over are low. However, I also feel comfortable with it because driving five or ten miles-per-hour over the speed limit doesn't carry a very harsh penalty. If caught, I'll have to pay a small sum of money, and that'll be it; I won't go to jail, I won't have my license taken away, I won't even be delayed more than a few minutes while they write me the ticket. If they changed the law, and I was facing serious consequences if caught speeding, then I'd definitely be more careful about following that rule of the road.

Of course, harsher punishments can have diminishing returns. For most people, being sent to prison for any length of time is seen as a "my life is wrecked forever" event. Increasing the length of incarceration, or upping the ante to execution, theoretically makes the punishment worse, but it won't have any added to deterrent value if the would-be criminal already saw the shorter prison sentence as completely unacceptable. In which case, yeah, they won't go through with it unless, as you said, they're either confident they won't get caught or are past the point of caring what happens.

[AllanO]

If you see the main purpose of punishment (capital or otherwise) as being a deterrent against future crimes, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether the punished person is guilty. As long as people believe the punished person is guilty, it will still have the same effect of convincing them, "if I break the law, that could happen to me, too".

There is some tricky self reference here. People will usually include the individual person in question thinking about implementing/participating or whatever in the system. If they believe that the people they believe are guilty are guilty then no problem and that is what believe normally means, but then a system to punish the guilty and ones they believer are guilty are just the same thing because X (people who are guilty) and Y (people who people believer are guilty) are equated. So "system that punishes X" is by that equality the same as "system that punishes Y". So in cases where basically all the people believe the same way (or on average etc.) you can't set up the system you imagine.

So now you make one group of people (group1) implement/manage or whatever the system and a second group (group2) of people are subject to it. So now what you've done is group1 administer a system where rather than punish the guilty they punish people that group2 believe are guilty. The thing is that means group2 believes the system punishes the guilty. Also group1 thinks group2 are often enough wrong about who are guilty that it makes sense to distinguish the category "people who are guilty" and "people who group2 think are guilty". This situation is very unstable if group2 finds out group1 is playing this con and has reasons to think group2's assessment of who is guilty is wrong then it either collapses back to the first scenario I described (and so punishing who you believe is guilty is just the same as punishing the guilty) or it collapses into a system that punishes the not guilty (or not reliably believed to be guilty etc.) which clearly is not going to deter anyone.

Now in real life we often learn that our or other people's assessment of who is guilty turn out wrong. However if we really learned that our own assessment of who is guilty is so often wrong that we needed to distinguish "believe to be guilty" and "is guilty" then what would actually happen is that we would have learned to stop believing people were guilty (or that so many people were guilty etc.). In which case there would be no (or far fewer) people we believe to be guilty to punish. So this is a fascinating rabbit hole of the way belief works and the way we fail and succeed at recognizing our own fallibility etc. but I'm not sure it is a big problem for the sensibility or fairness etc. of deterence.

Very few criminals ever expect to be caught. That is why deterrence rarely deters.

I think this misses something there are clearly a class of crimes that don't get committed unless normal deterrence goes out the window. So like looting in the case of blackouts etc.

Now some of that is disregulation caused by the fact that a lot of what we do is just doing what those around us are doing. So if people around us are smashing stuff we smash stuff. That is more about role models than deterrence.

However I do think we can think of instances where there is some general deterrence that when removed causes an uptick in crimes or other unwanted behaviour.

In some cases the deterrence may only shift the behaviour. Like if you announce speed cameras and traps on a stretch of highway, people don't speed on that stretch of highway, but everywhere else they speed as much or more than ever. People don't get mugged at the atm covered by 10 CCTV cameras but do 2 blocks over where thee are no cameras etc.

Still I think there are clear cases where if we removed deterrence, enforcement etc. more crime happened and that part of the difference between jurisdictions in crime rates is how well they enforce a law and so deter infractions. It is just that even with a good functioning enforcement system there is a level of infractions and those are the infractions that for the reason you described are not amenable to deterrence (ie reduction by adding more enforcement, harsher penalties etc.). However that is consistent with their being a large amount of anti-social/criminal etc. behaviour suppressed by the current level of enforcement and deterrence versus a potential "wild west" scenario with basically no enforcement or deterrence.