American society

AssHatZombie said:
You said this.

"The only two pragmatic reasons for a society to even have a punishment system are for reform and deterrence. Yet, society has it's greatest support the retribution system, which is pointless."

You're trying to make a false distinction between retribution and punishment. They're really just different emotive colorations of the same actions.

Your propagandist technique goes thusly:

1. Create a SHAME FACTOR for a fraudulently created false distinction.
2. Label all instances of the class with the fraudently create false category., even legitimate ones.
3.Proceed to rant and rail.
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Reform, deterrence and retribution are three separate concepts. "Punishment" is a non-specific catch-all term that needs to be further defined before it can be brought into the argument as you've tried to make it. Reform, deterrence and retribution are all specific forms of the general concept know as "punishment", they rellate to the purpose of punishment.
 
RStringfield said:
The thesis seems a bit shaky. France has some of the worst prisons in the western world. Protection from police in much of Europe does not exist.



Restitution to the victim, not the state, should be the point of the justice system.
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I don't know much about French prisons (fortunately) but when you say protection from police in much of Europe I have to ask you to be a bit more specific. Are you talking about the CRS in fully cry? Fact is in much of Europe the police have less authority than the average US cop.

Restitution to the victim is the mark of civil law (as in private law, not European law). The state owns the criminal justice system, victims are pawns in the bigger game.
 
Watermark said:
Punishment does not have to be metered out because of retribution. If pure punishment is to be levied out, it should only be done so for the deterrence factor. While the criminals are being punished, we should try to reform them and educate them so that we can reduce the recividism once they're out of prison.
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Retribution is valid. There are some crimes which are so horrendous that society's need for revenge has to be sated.
 
Diuretic said:
I don't know much about French prisons (fortunately) but when you say protection from police in much of Europe I have to ask you to be a bit more specific. Are you talking about the CRS in fully cry? Fact is in much of Europe the police have less authority than the average US cop.

Restitution to the victim is the mark of civil law (as in private law, not European law). The state owns the criminal justice system, victims are pawns in the bigger game.
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Resorative justice is used in New Zealand and a few other places.

It's not often that people propose replacing entire justice systems with it. But in the old angle-saxon times, just about any crime could be "restored" by paying a "blood-price". The blood price was, of course, judged by social status. But it helped lessen the blood feuds which had been wrecking the Anlo-Saxon society.
 
Watermark said:
Why is retribution backwards looking? It's punishment for a crime that happened in the past.

Why is reform forward looking? Because it's an attempt to solve future problems. I stole the concept out of encyclopedia brittanica. Take your complaints to them.
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Oh I thought you were implying that punishment is some sort of retrograde concept that should be abandoned, and was in that sense "backward looking". I didn't realize you were stating the obvious like a moron. Of course people are punished for crimes in the past. No doubt. Punishment as a concept will be with us throughout time, however. Crimes in the past must be punished so citizens can see for themselves that crimes WILL be punished; thus, punishment prevents future crimes. Can you understand that?

Another important feature of imprisonment is protecting the populace from the miscreant in the present time.
 
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Watermark said:
Resorative justice is used in New Zealand and a few other places.

It's not often that people propose replacing entire justice systems with it. But in the old angle-saxon times, just about any crime could be "restored" by paying a "blood-price". The blood price was, of course, judged by social status. But it helped lessen the blood feuds which had been wrecking the Anlo-Saxon society.
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I like the idea of restorative justice. I know it's used in Maori circles in New Zealand but here in Australia we use what we call the "Wagga Wagga model". It was developed (using restorative justice theory) by a policeman in Wagga called Terry O'Connell. He taught police the process in his home force in New South Wales and he travelled to the UK to teach it (Thames Valley was one force). Another interesting authority is John Braithwaite at the Australian National University who's done a lot fo work on it.

Anglo-Saxon justice was communal justice up until the regional kings began to realise that this was a powerful tool of social control if they could grab hold of it. Some did. The Dooms of Alfred come to mind. Then of course in walked William I and that was that. Goodbye customary law, hello centralised law of the King of England. The law ceased being communal property and became the tool of the King and of course, the Church. It went downhill from there.
 
Diuretic said:
I like the idea of restorative justice. I know it's used in Maori circles in New Zealand but here in Australia we use what we call the "Wagga Wagga model". It was developed (using restorative justice theory) by a policeman in Wagga called Terry O'Connell. He taught police the process in his home force in New South Wales and he travelled to the UK to teach it (Thames Valley was one force). Another interesting authority is John Braithwaite at the Australian National University who's done a lot fo work on it.

Anglo-Saxon justice was communal justice up until the regional kings began to realise that this was a powerful tool of social control if they could grab hold of it. Some did. The Dooms of Alfred come to mind. Then of course in walked William I and that was that. Goodbye customary law, hello centralised law of the King of England. The law ceased being communal property and became the tool of the King and of course, the Church. It went downhill from there.
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Decentralizing the law would be a good idea. Community residing leaders have a tougher time being assholes when they have to live around the people they subjugate. This is precisely why international law is such a bad idea.
 
I don't know enough about international law. I have this vague idea that it's supposed to regulate relations between nations, that it's not supra-national but as I said, I don't know enough.

Yes, decentralisation would be a great idea. Unfortunately governments will never let of the most powerful tool of oppression they possess. After all the law legitimates them.
 
Diuretic said:
I don't know enough about international law. I have this vague idea that it's supposed to regulate relations between nations, that it's not supra-national but as I said, I don't know enough.

Yes, decentralisation would be a great idea. Unfortunately governments will never let of the most powerful tool of oppression they possess. After all the law legitimates them.
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That's defeatist thinking. Balkanization is good. Distributed planning is a superior paradigm, though centralization is the preferred model of elitists and powermongers. We are not a single organism.
 
AssHatZombie said:
That's defeatist thinking. Balkanization is good. Distributed planning is a superior paradigm, though centralization is the preferred model of elitists and powermongers. We are not a single organism.
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Nup, not defeatist, just a realisation that most of us are dumb fat cows (metaphorically speaking, that's not an insult to mass-challenged people) who haven't got a fucking clue about what's really gong on but will continue to suck on the soma tit, be born, work, reproduce, die, without really understanding who's getting a good life and who's getting the shitty life.
 
Diuretic said:
Nup, not defeatist, just a realisation that most of us are dumb fat cows (metaphorically speaking, that's not an insult to mass-challenged people) who haven't got a fucking clue about what's really gong on but will continue to suck on the soma tit, be born, work, reproduce, die, without really understanding who's getting a good life and who's getting the shitty life.
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But more people can be informed of their real situation and take reasonable means to get control of their lives back. Going along with their lies because you think people are too stupid for the truth is a cop out. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
 
AssHatZombie said:
But more people can be informed of their real situation and take reasonable means to get control of their lives back. Going along with their lies because you think people are too stupid for the truth is a cop out. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
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Or to be convinced that the most evil one is really to good guy and to vote for him.
 
AssHatZombie said:
USC. You were right about Bush way back when, and nobody would listen, but YOU were right. Better now? Please heal.
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heck no I will not heal/quit bitching on how stupid 51% of the voters were. they still are not too bright. what are you a defeatist quitter AssHat ?
 
AssHatZombie said:
But more people can be informed of their real situation and take reasonable means to get control of their lives back. Going along with their lies because you think people are too stupid for the truth is a cop out. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
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Funny you'd use Burke, the bloke who told his electors he would vote on how he saw things, not on how they wanted him to vote.

How are people going to be informed of their real situation? There are people who watch Fox and think they're getting objective journalism.
 
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