[deleted]

[theleadensea@sh.itjust.works]

Justice shouldn't he punitive, it should be rehabilitative. For that purpose, jail should only be used when there is no chance of rehabilitation and the person needs to be separated from society because they're a danger to society.

[deathbybigsad@sh.itjust.works]

Or someone can just skip prison and become leader of the country instead ahem USA ahem

[princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

I think there's absolutely a middle ground where someone is currently a danger to society, but they're capable of rehabilitation. However, we absolutely need to continue that work on the outside once it's safe for them to be released if we want to reduce recidivism of violent crime.

[quarkman@lemmy.world]

depends on the definition of "danger to society"

[neatnit@discuss.tchncs.de]

I think it should be both. Punishment can be a good deterrent, and it's really not possible to measure how much of an effect the deterrence has. You don't have statistics on people who would have committed a crime if there weren't harsh punishments.

I know it's off topic but what has been proven to work best is to prevent crime by improving the lives of would-be criminals before they get to that situation. It's cheaper and just better in every way.

[flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz]

Sentencing to long prison sentences should be avoided. There should be two general categories:

• danger to others
• not danger to others

In the danger case the sentenced should be kept imprisoned until proven safe, otherwise only a light deterrent is needed.

There isn't much difference in the deterrence between 1 year and 10 years for most people. The really violent crimes are committed either without regard for oneself, or as a part of organization that already has a support system inside the prison.

[lucg@lemmy.world]

Regarding the first paragraph, the way they measure this is observing the incidence in different circumstances. Similar country but higher punishment? See if fewer people do the crime. Oversimplified.

The research shows that the deterrence effect exists but, beyond a certain punishment level, it doesn't do much anymore. What helps is primarily the odds of being caught at all (and then an appropriate punishment) and secondarily the time between violation and punishment (I didn't realise this would matter for adults but apparently so)

Going to jail for two years, four years, or six years, either way you lose your social life, the roof over your head (once you get out), your job, everything. It's a doubling or tripling of the sentence but is it really that different? If I'm okay incurring 2y prison sentence... I'm probably not the target audience for this but I imagine such a person would also risk 6y if they want someone gone that badly and the odds of being caught are low enough

Prevention is golden, as you say. But then rehabilitation is silver imo: if they lose everything, feel thrown out by society, what still drives them to do good afterwards? I'm sure many of them will simply want to better their lives but external motivation must also help

So I see it like the people who I saw saying upthread that rehabilitation should be the goal: if they're a danger to society, idk, whatcha gonna do but control that? Need to lock them up or similar (ankle thingy, idk). But if there's a good chance they'll get back on their feet and become taxpayers instead of prisoners or crime group members, then that's what we should asap strive for

[lucg@lemmy.world]

Why would a judge do that in the first place?

Or if they do, what prevents either side from going to the next court to get it overturned? And the next court after that

Idk if this is everywhere but the system I'm used to is this: the first two levels of court look at the case details in-depth, then there's a third 'last resort' court for if you think there was a mistrial (this usually gets rejected), and they can send it back to the second court to re-do if something crazy happened that's not in line with correct procedure as it sounds like it did in your example

If we don't trust a whole series of judges to pass judgment fairly, then I'm not sure we should have judges. Personally I trust these more to apply laws and case law than if we'd put elected politicians on the seat of judge, as basically happens with them choosing the sentence parameters (and as you see more and more often in my country; older judges also speak of higher and higher sentences being expected, makes me wonder if we'll go full-circle to medieval practices eventually)

[lucg@lemmy.world]

I'm not deep into this situation but my understanding is that no minimum sentence would have helped there. Nobody being above the law might have helped...

[lucg@lemmy.world]

Then the prosecution brings case law where a person of color in a similar situation got a very different sentence, or someone without the rich parents etc.

I'm sure there'll be biases but minimum sentences won't undo those. I'd find minimum and maximum sentences very unfair for situations like described by the person you replied to. Case law and perhaps a blinding system (Justice is blindfolded after all) where at least one of the judges involved doesn't get to learn things like "white guy with rich parents" might be a better solution if that's the problem this is intended to solve

[lucg@lemmy.world]

I would expect that judges have a fine moral compass for which crimes are worse than others. Better if they don't need to follow some administration's counterscientific "tough on crime" whim

You make a compelling case for maximums though. I hadn't thought of it as being a way to reduce torture or death penalty in the countries where that's on the table in the first place