Some Thoughts on Punishment and Crime

Introduction

Generally, there are four reasons why one might to set up a justice system and punish criminals for their crimes:
I) Retribution: basically the concept of punishment because one deserves it.
II) Deterrence: The threat of punishment prevents crime from being committed.
III) Protection of society: prevent the criminal from reoffending by locking him/her up or using capital punishment.
IV) Reform: Prevent the criminal from reoffending by reforming his/her behaviour and reintegrating them into normal society.

Risk and Reward

I think an important bearing on how to justify the justice system is the concept of risk and benefit. Your two main options to prevent reoffense at their most basic are locking people up for life, or reforming them and reintegrating them into society(I'm leaving capital punishment out of the debate atm). The main advantage of locking people up for life is that there is no chance for them to commit the same crime again(presuming they don't escape). The main disadvantages are that it is probably more expensive and some people might actually regret their actions and want to become law abiding members of society, but are not given the opportunity. The main advantages of reform are that it can rehabilitate the criminal and they can contribute to society, and it is probably less expensive. The main disadvantage is that it is possible to fake a reformation, get out, and commit the same crime over again.
In weighing up these risks one has got to consider the damage done by the crime itself. Although reform is good thing, there is a problem if its success rate is low and/or it is difficult to tell which criminals have reformed. However, with a crime like say shoplifting, it is acceptable to attempt reform and then release the criminals even if it is difficult to tell which criminals have reformed. This is because although shoplifting is a bad thing, the damage it does to people's lives is negligible. It is a tolerable risk that they will commit the crime again.
However, for violent crimes, particularly rape, murder, torture and child abuse, I would argue that the risk is not acceptable. If there is even a tiny chance that a criminal will commit the same crime again in this instance, he or she should be kept in jail for life. This is because these kinds of crimes are devastating to human life and human happiness. This is one reason I suggest life sentences without parole for these kinds of criminals.

Crime and Psychopathy

Success of reform is vital when taking it into account as a justification. If the success of reform is always 0% or its benefits are negligible it cannot be used as a justification.
This is partly why I believe that reform cannot always be considered important. For instance, many of the most violent criminals are psychopathic. Psychopathy is a condition in which one has an in-group containing only oneself and does not care about other human beings. One trait of the psychopath is that he/she cannot feel remorse, guilt or empathy. In my humble opinion there is no point trying to reform this kind of criminal. Why? Because reform has to start with convincing the criminal that what they did was wrong. If a criminal does not believe what they have done is wrong, they will just reoffend when let out of prison. Of course, psychopaths cannot or do not feel this remorse and guilt because they only care about themselves and as far as we know, there is no way to make them feel what they cannot.
Of course, psychopaths are often highly intelligent individual who could completely and convincingly pretend to reform without any moral remorse.
These arguments add to the weight of the ones above to suggest a harsh punishment for violent criminals.
(Admittedly not all individuals who commit a violent act are psychopathic, but in these most horrifying of cases, they mostly are. Even if they aren't, they have shown themself capable of committing these horrible acts when normal people would have been restrained by guilt or empathy.)

Deterrence and Human Nature

Human nature is not always a moral or wonderful thing. There are natural feelings we all(well mostly) have, moral or not. Unfortunately, elements of that human nature involve violence. If violence is a part of human nature, we need deterrents based on this.
It may seem counter intuitive to insist on harsh deterrents based on nature. We are often used to the idea of lesser punishments based on things that "aren't our fault" so to speak. (Many people try to exonerate others by appealing to the traumas etc in their childhood or whatever, although whatever you do you can't escape determinism.) But of course in this instance it should be the opposite: if something comes naturally to us, we need a threat of harsher punishment in order to abstain from doing it.

Reform and Deterrence as Joint Justifications

Even with crimes where there is a tolerable risk of reoffense, we need a deterrent to prevent the crime from happening in the first place, as well as reform system. As far as I can think of, the best system would be based partly on both these options for dealing with petty crimes. For the first offense, a limited sentence should be brought in, alongside a reform program. The criminals that are reformed are fine; but for the criminals that reoffend there should be a escalating system of deterrence, say the prison sentence for the second offense is double of that of the first offense, etc. This will make sure, not only that many criminals are reformed, but that even for criminals we cannot reform that they will eventually reach a deterrence level high enough for them to stop committing the crime.

For example, say for most want-to-be criminals a 3 month sentence for crime Y is a large enough deterrent, so that is put into practise. However, person X is an exception who only a sentence of 1 year or higher is enough to deter them. If we attempt to reform them after the first offense and it fails, next time they commit the same offense there will be a punishment of 6 months. The criminal X is now at a level where he/she is deterred, because a further crime would put them in prison for a year which is at a high enough level to be a deterrent.

Reform and Human Nature

Ideas on reform also need to take into account human nature. We cannot expect magical changes in somebody's fundamental psychological makeup, and to hope for it is wishful thinking and dangerous nonsense(see the psychopathy thing above, for instance.) However, facets of somebody's human nature may be able to be channelled into other activities more beneficial than crime.
Here is an example based on evolutionary psychology:
Men in general, complete for status. This is observed when we see people buying the latest phones and other gadgets to keep up with the Jones'. This is because, evolutionarily, a man at the top of the status heap would get more women and thus father more children than other men. A 17-year-old may compete for status by shoplifting so he can own the latest things. It may be possible to reform this criminal by channelling the evolutionary desire into a more productive hobby like sport.
Although this is oversimplified I think it demonstrates the ideas behind what would be good reform. It is more realistic than actually changing human nature and thus more likely to be effective.

Conclusion

Overall, the more violent and damaging the crime is, the more protection of society becomes important, and for the most violent crimes it outweighs the benefits of potential reform. Deterrence is required to help control our human nature, and good reform will work to channel it.

NB: I did not use retribution as a reason for a few reasons. Firstly, it is not a particularly moral justification and only satisfies our base desires, rather than being productive. It is also harder to justify than the other three on philosophical determinism.

NB2 - Capital Punishment: From a purely retributionist standpoint, I would say that capital punishment isn't harsh enough. capital punishment is however, the most effective way of protecting society(if they were locked up they could still technically escape.) Many people also think that it is a powerful deterrent but I personally disagree as I believe that death is the end of all sensation(as a materialist) and many criminals are religious(eg. Paul Hill wanted to be killed so he could get to heaven--no real deterrent there.) As a deterrent it is easier to argue that capital punishment isn't harsh enough, as torture would be more effective if unethical.

Two Things That Poison Everything

There are two worldviews that I believe are in general bad for humanity. Obviously, one of those things is "religion" as you could probably tell from the allusion to Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great. But there is another worldview that permeates through society and that is a very bad thing: this view is called "postmodernism".

These two viewpoints are in many ways opposites. religion --or at least fundamentalist religion-- states that we already know the absolute truth. Postmodernism states that there is in fact, no truth at all, and that all "truths" are equally valid, inc. moral truth. Religion induces by its nature disdain for those infidels that will burn in hell, whereas postmodernism is a misguided attempt to include everyone. Fundamentalist religion is the rallying cry of the relatively uneducated right; postmodernism that of the academic left(of course, I generalise).

Why do people embrace postmodernism? It probably stems from the liberal belief that all people should be seen as equals. Unfortunately embracing all cultures as equal means that one cannot embrace all people as equal(by definition)--for example a society where women are treated awfully(eg, Saudi Arabia) is equal to a modern democracy where they have equal rights. (This argument would apply even if the misogynistic cultures were fictitious.) Of course, this is a big problem because it prevents people distinguishing between moral action and immoral action, and it encourages people not to criticise bad culture. It also promotes the idea that if something is cultural it's somehow sacred.

Postmodernists also often criticise Western culture. Of course, there are flaws in Western culture, but for a pomo to criticise it is hypocritical(if all culture is equal that includes the West.) They often talk favourably of more tribal cultures, even though to be frank they are much more immoral than Western culture in many ways. For example, in the Jivaro tribe up to 60% of the males die in warfare; it is about 40% for the Yanamamo. For Britain and Europe 20C it's about 2 percent, and that includes WWI and WWII!*

As for more general truth, well, let's face it, science works. Yes, I am perfectly aware of things like the problem of induction, but philosophical problems with science do not suddenly make all truth equal. I mean, even if there is no way we can get at absolute truth, that doesn't mean that absolute truth doesn't exist, and scientific evidence suggests that there is truth, eg gravity hasn't been proven wrong yet. And some "truths"(in the pomo sense) are backed up by evidence, and some are not. If truth was relative, why isn't there some evidence for every hypothesis?(Okay, you might want to say that we might not be able to always get at that truth. But science seems highly successful as demonstrating at least some "truths"(eg gravity) and not others...why would the scientific method only work for one type of "truth" and not others?)

Even pomos do accept science, even if they don't want to admit it. Pomos don't jump out of a window because the belief that they may fly like superman is not equal to the belief that they will go splat. Pomos don't attend a shamanic healing because the belief that shamanic healing works in not equal to the belief that scientific medicine(generally) works. Etcetera.

I believe religion and pomo to be both views that are too extreme: religion's claim that we know all the (important) truth is too strong, but pomo's claim that there is no truth is far too strongly in the opposite direction. In truth, our position is more in the middle. We know a lot, and we don't know a lot, also. I'm aware that all the truths we have now may turn out to be wrong, but this does not, of course, validate postmodernism.

* Statistics from Pinker, S. The Blank Slate, Penguin Books 2002, p. 57 (it's a bar graph, thus readings may not be 100% accurate).

The Meaning Of Propositions and The Existence of God

Meaningful propositions claim to say something about the way the world is. They make predictions about how things are. Take the proposition "I own a guitar." That proposition suggests that you could find a guitar in my house, perhaps a receipt for one or tablature or chord books, you could ask the guy in the music shop and he would tell you I'd bought one, etc. These pieces of evidence would suggest that the proposition "I own a guitar" is true. On the contrary, if you failed to find any evidence for the fact that I owned a guitar, you'd probably conclude the proposition to be false.

What of meaningless propositions? A meaningless proposition is a proposition that does not make a prediction about the way things are. If there is no way at all to provide any evidence for or against a proposition, then it is effectively a meaningless one, because it makes no difference whether it is true or false. A famous philosophical example of this is the "parable", if you like, of the "Invisible Gardener." It goes rather like this:
Two men are sitting, watching a garden. They have been watching it for a while, and have seen no gardener tending the plants. One man says to the other, "That would suggest that there is no gardener who tends this garden." The other man replies, "Ah, but it could be an invisible, intangible gardener."
The point of this demonstration is to show that the idea of an invisible, intangible gardener is not any different from no gardener at all, because the idea of an invisible gardener fails to make any predictions about reality. Thus, it doesn't actually matter if there is no gardener or an invisible one, because there is no difference.

What then, of God? The proposition "God Exists", what does that predict about reality? Here are some things that one would expect to observe if theism was true:

• Miracles happening only to believers that cannot be explained in any other manner, like amputees regrowing limbs, or Mount Everest moving 2000 miles away spontaneously, "Jesus lives" or "Muhammad is the true prophet" written in the sky, nonburnable or undefacable Bibles or Torahs etc.
• Prayer being effective.
• Good things happening to good people; bad things happening to bad people(ie. accurate smiting, rather than just indiscriminate viruses or natural disasters).
• No unnecessary suffering.
• An anthropocentric universe, with a spontaneous creation.
• Perfect and wonderfully inspiring holy book(s).

These are just a few things we might expect to see if God(in any theistic sense, at least) exists.

However, we actually see:

• The only miracles that happen are ambiguous, rare and can be accounted for my nature.
• Prayer doesn't work unless it is a coincidence.
• So-called examples of God's wrath are indiscriminate, and many good people suffer horribly.
• Unnecessary suffering occurs, such as victims of an incurable disease, or children dying because there wasn't enough water in a village etc.
• The universe is huge and has very little to do with humanity, who came about through the messy process of evolution over millions of years.
• Holy books are often littered with things like racism and violence. It would be unfair to say there is nothing good or inspiring in them(eg. Ecclesiastes is a great Biblical book) but one gets the impression that an omnipotent deity could have done better. Not to mention the factual inaccuracy of certain claims made in holy books.

This lack of evidence for God's existence suggests that he doesn't exist. It leads many religious people to either:

1. Say that science can say nothing about the divine; or

2. That, in fact, we don't have to observe any of those things to believe God exists; or

3. Define God in some Theological way, such as "God is the power of all Being", or "God is the spirit of love" or something equally vague.

But don't all these "options" lead into the trap of claiming that God is a meaningless proposition? 1, otherwise known as N[on]O[verlapping]MA[gisteria], claims that we can never say anything about God's exists using science. I believe this to be misguided, because if we can ask questions about what we would expect to observe if something is true that is some form of science. And obviously, with the existence of the theistic God, we can do this. I just did it above. Of course, you may want to claim that science cannot prove or disprove the divine--but that is a different claim altogether from the claim that science can say nothing about the existence of God. I would agree with the person who says science cannot disprove the divine. This is because the next observation we make on any scientific theory could technically disprove the theory--the next ball we drop could refuse to fall to the ground. The same with God; the next observation we make could be a Bible that refuses to be defaced when some atheist tries to write sarcastic comments in the margins. Moving back to the idea of a meaningless proposition, if no evidence can be used either way to decide the question of God, if the idea of a God can make no predictions about the universe, as NOMA would have it, "God exists" doesn't mean anything.

2 is better known as the method of faith. Of course, the method of believing without evidence is not considered to be a good idea. Believing with evidence to the contrary, like the observations I made above, is even worse. It may be acceptable to tentatively accept a scientific claim over another before the evidence is completely in. But when the evidence has ruled against you, it is irrational to continue to hold to that position. 2 is saying that observations about the universe aren't important in deciding what is true. But if we cannot observe effects of something, it may as well not exist.

3 is the obfuscations of theologians, rather than a claim made by average religious believers. This is just a way of accounting for the observations I made above. How exactly, though, to we show that "the power of being" exists? What effects does that have on reality, and how can we observe them?

Thus, my conclusion is thus: either you refuse to let your proposition of "God exists" make predictions about reality, and thus make it rather meaningless to believe; or you are open to evidence and let your proposition be confirmed or disconfirmed by the evidence.

So, Is It All Meaningless?

One of the most well-known criticisms of atheism by theists is that atheism makes life meaningless. If atheism(naturalistic atheism, I should say) is true, there is no purpose, and when we die we merely cease to exist, it's all for nothing. But is this point against atheism defensible?

Temporary Life

So if life is only a brief interlude in between eras of non-existence, does that make life worthless? To me, the answer seems to be obviously "no". Most positive experiences that we have are only temporary. Love fades and good feelings die, friendships fall apart, but that doesn't mean that love or friendship are meaningless.
In a way, atheism makes life more meaningful. This is all you are going to get, so you'd better make sure you enjoy it! Whereas for religious people it is often a chore to be endured until you meet your creator.

A Lack Of Purpose

"That may be so, but isn't the fact that your life is ultimately meaningless make it not worth living? What purpose can an atheist have?"-- a hear the theist say.

Many things are ultimately meaningless. Many things theists do are ultimately meaningless, regardless of whether God exists or not. A theist reading this blog right now would be an ultimately meaningless activity.
My life is indeed ultimately meaningless. Five billion years from now, the sun will explode and any life left on the planet will be wiped out(of course, the possibility that Homo sapiens is long dead before then is high.) But that doesn't mean that it can't have meaning to me, or to people who know me.

I'd also like to say that if God exists and that my purpose is to worship him, that is a purpose pushed upon me, not freely chosen. Whereas if the atheist chooses his own path, that is free, and ultimately far more fulfilling, as only following our own choices can be.