Comment by mlissner

>harsh sentences never seem to cause crime to go to zero

Harsh sentences work great when used with the inevitability of punishment. It is obvious that a harsh sentence does not discourage a criminal to commit a crime if they expect to avoid any responsibility

I would argue that removal can be analyzed into the other categories, or into something that isn't the province of punishment.

1. the deprivation of freedom is retributive

2. the prevention of additional crimes can be said to be deterrence of an active sort

3. the protection of society isn't part of punishment per se, but a separate end

This becomes clear when we consider imprisonment in relation to various crimes. Violent criminals are imprisoned in part because they are a threat to the physical safety of others. However, is an embezzler or a mayor embroiled in shady accounting a threat to anyone's physical safety? Probably not. So the purpose of their removal is less about crime prevention and more about retribution.

Would love to read into this research if you have a link or something to search

The technical term is incapacitation. (Other commenters in this thread are also referring to it as “removal”.)

For criminals that act alone, variations in the severity of the sentence doesn’t seem to have the impact you might expect it to have on how much it actually deters people. (And there is the issue that people in prison can share strategies between themselves for how to more effectively commit crime, which is not an ideal outcome.) So indeed, incapacitation is a very important factor. When it’s studied, you often see numbers like “increasing the sentence by 10 years prevents 0.2 crimes due to deterrence and 0.9 crimes due to incapacitation”.

I say this applies to people acting alone because, although I have no proof, I suspect that organized crime is a bit more “rational” in their response to changes in sentencing. If sentencing were set up so that engaging in a category of crime was not profitable for the criminal organization, I’m pretty sure they would realize this and stop. This logic doesn’t apply to individual people, because the average person committing a crime has no idea what the sentence is or their odds of getting caught, and they obviously don’t do it often enough that the random variation is amortized out.

I've read the Bible. Especially as you get towards the end, the books don't seem to have an especially lofty view of the criminal justice system.

I will agree with you that a criminal justice system built "on pragmatism" would certainly conflict with the tenants of many world religions. I recently read Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, which outlines why pure pragmatism needs to be tempered by a respect for, and indeed love of, every person accused or convicted of a crime.

You are baffled by the western concept of justice.

In western philosophy an offender is considered to have offended against society even if their crime is of a personal nature. As such, they are tried, condemned, and punished by society according to codified rules. A victim, if there is one, is not really a part of this process.

There is a fundamentally sound basis for this philosophy, including equity (different justice for different people is no justice for anyone), impartiality, and respect for human rights.

There are other philosophies of justice: for example, the traditional "I'm strongest I get the best stuff" or "you dissed me ima kill you." Some are codified similarly to western justice ("killing a man is requires you pay his heirs 100 she-camels of which 40 must be pregnant, killing a woman is half that, killing a Jew one-third, and so on"). Others involve negotiation between victim (or their families) and offender -- which often works out well, since the offender is often is a position of power to start with and is very likely come out on top.

The simple "an eye for an eye" is just the beginning of a very very deep rabbit hole you can go down on the road to enlightenment.

I think you're confusing or conflating civil and criminal courts. If someone breaks a law, that's generally a matter for the state to decide in a criminal court. If someone was damaged (i.e. if the victim feels the perpetrator owes them compensation), that's a matter for them to bring up themselves in the civil courts. These are separate functions; one situation could be tried in both courts. A famous example off the top of my head is that even though OJ Simpson wasn't criminally convicted of murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, a civil court found him liable, awarding tens of millions of dollars in damages, to be paid to their families.

Distancing the victim from the outcome of sentencing is by design and, arguably, for the better in a democracy. Crimes violate the social order, not just the victim. It behooves us all to have a system wherein (in theory) the system, not the victim, applies a set of rules to determine punishment, as contrary as that might seem to one’s sense of self, morals, etc. It’s a part of why “justice is blind.”

I strongly disagree. The victim is generally deeply incapable of being objective about the situation. How many perpetrators of domestic violence would go free because their spouse is too scared to ask for proper punishment? This is already a big problem with securing cooperation for prosecution, and I'd aim to make that better, not worse. You'd have enormous disparities in sentencing based on the personality of the victim. Should mugging a vindictive asshole carry a harsher sentence than mugging a nice person who believes in second chances no matter what?

The justice system is pretty far from actual justice in many cases, but this wouldn't get it closer.

There are (institutional, complicated, well-ordered) civil and criminal systems elsewhere in the world where victims are much more directly involved in sentencing and punishment, and you probably wouldn't want to live in one.

Most criminals aren't in a financial position to pay compensation. And even if you get a judgment, good luck ever collecting. When a drunk driver damaged some of my property I didn't bother sueing him because he was obviously a worthless deadbeat.

In most US jurisdictions the victim of a crime is allowed to make a statement during the sentencing phase of the trial. So the victim can certainly request release if they want it although the judge isn't obligated to adhere.

To be honest, that could certainly be filed under "rehabilitation". Giving people the skills they need to be productive members of society is definitely in that wheelhouse.

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Does he actually get the salary, or does the prison take huge overhead?

Sounds fair, and it sounds like an excellent programme. I hope the developer's life continues on this new trajectory.

He played a lot smaller part than the Sackler family, who ran Purdue Pharma and pushed their drugs into communities. They killed a lot more people than this guy, and yet none of them are in jail.

> But this guy was selling carfentanil

Do you have a source? It seems that guy was selling MDMA and marijuana. Here's the relevant quote from https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/

I was caught with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver, and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now)

I find it somewhat amusing that I woke up to this post at ~9 AM, and was surprised at the crowding-out of discussion about the article, by people sort of half-groping at a straw or two they picked up, trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?...based off the straw they're holding.

It is now 4 PM, about to clock out for the day because I gotta wait for CI run thats >30m. I come back here and it's still going on. This is #3 comment I see when I open HN, ensuing thread takes up two pages scrolls on 16" MBP.

It's bad of me to write this because, well, who cares? Additionally, am I trying to litigate what other people comment?

The root feeling driving me to express myself is a form of frustrated boredom -- rolling with that and verbalizing concretely, a bunch of people writing comments with the one thing they're hyperfocusing on their record to drive a conclusion on their value as a person/morality, and then people pointing out that's not some moral absolute, asking for links, discussing the links...

...well, it's all just clutter.

Or YouTube comment-level discussion, unless we're planning on relitigating every case he's been involved in.

This all would be better if it the kangaroo court stuff was confined to a thread with all of the evidence against him, so we didn't have a bunch of weak cases, or if people didn't treat this as an opportunity to be a drive by judge. Article def. ain't about his crimes, and he ain't saying he's innocent or an angel.

(and the idea that "drug crimes" implies "hippie selling weed or psychedelics" so calling them "drug crimes" is hiding the ball...where does that come from? Its especially dissonant b/c you indicate the mere fact he sold an opiod is so bad that this guy is...bad? irredeemable? not worth discussing?...so presumably you care a lot about opiods, so presumably you know that's whats driven drug crime the last, uh, decade or two?)

Justification to abolish democracy, and because everything else is worse I guess we're going to have to go to a voluntarist ancap NAP-respecting society!

And you take personal responsibility if someone innocent is convicted? Once you have executed someone there is no coming back. Or are you saying you're OK with some innocents being killed so you can save some money (taxes)?

Sure, some people might say that. I’d say that’s also quite cruel, and that there might be a third option that’s better than both.

If he killed anyone he should be charged with murder or manslaughter.

Any yet there are coke-cola machines everywhere including inside police stations which kills more people each year.

And only one company is allowed to import the specific leaves/material (coca leafs). The government restricts everyone from importing them unless it's one of the biggest companies in the world.

He didn't kill anyone, unless he misrepresented the product and the customer used the product incorrectly and died as a result. Even then there's argument for tainted product and considering the persecution around the industry, I as a juror would acquit any charge reliant on that as the underlying logic. Even then, if I foresaw more than 12 years sentence for anyone I would acquit and jury nullify on human rights grounds. Humans must be free. The big moral failure of modern states is their lack of unmolested opt-out.

People like big strong dominating government until it gets replaced with the Mormon church, or a Caliphate, then nooo it's not statesmanship but just religion. (Hint: all states are religions, and codes are religious texts. What do freedom of religion and freedom of association mean in this context, instead of the toothless safe-for-government one you're used to thinking of it in?)