Torture, torture! It pleasures me! – The Emperor (Criswell) in Orgy of the Dead
I started forming considered political opinions at about the age of thirteen. As I’m sure you can imagine, most of those opinions changed a great deal as I matured and learned more about reality; as I’ve said in the past, “I used to consider myself a feminist, but then I graduated from high school.” But a few of those opinions have never changed, except perhaps to grow stronger as experience handed me ever-increasing evidence that my initial judgment was correct. One such opinion is that most cops are twisted bullies and that none of them can be trusted; I don’t think I have to tell you how that one’s developed. Another one, formed before the drug war resulted in an exponential expansion of those condemned to them, is that prisons are evil torture chambers that serve absolutely no function except the sadistic pleasure of those who support damning human beings to them. And everything I have seen, read and learned since that time has only served to convince me that my original opinion didn’t condemn prisons harshly enough.
For most of human history, prisons served only two functions: the first was holding people from arrest until trial or from trial until execution, and the second torturing them so as to break their spirits (for whatever reason). And though the Greeks and Romans experimented with the idea of using prison as a judicial punishment and the British started using penal colonies at the beginning of the 17th century, large-scale punitive incarceration was one of the more monstrous brainchildren of the 18th century. The Enlightenment had resulted in a growing distaste for overt state-inflicted violence, so governments embraced the fiction that prisons were intended to “reform” those condemned to them. And though that pretense continues to this day, wiser heads have recognized its falsehood for at least a century: as George Bernard Shaw put it, “Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.” But even Shaw might have been at a loss for words had he been able to foresee the abomination of American mass incarceration, the caging of human beings on a scale no tyrant, inquisitor or sadist of the past could ever have conceived: roughly 1% of the adult population imprisoned at any given time, and more than twice that many – over seven million Americans in all – under some form of “correctional supervision” (probation, parole, etc). About that term:
…surely, no sane person believes that prisoners are being “corrected” or rehabilitated in any way; in fact, the evidence is the opposite, that locking criminals up for long periods…merely makes them worse, and imprisoning those who break minor laws destroys their lives and/or turns them into career criminals. The reasons for this should be obvious; prisons are little more than schools for crime, where those who are not thoroughly violent when they get in are forced to become more violent to survive. Furthermore, excessive sentences remove prisoners from society for so long they forget how to behave among normal people and internalize the prison mode of behavior so that it’s difficult to “unlearn” when they get out, especially since criminal background checks, offender registries and other post-incarceration punishments often prevent former prisoners from ever returning to normal society…
It’s even worse for so-called “sex offenders”, who are stigmatized, barred from virtually all social interaction and even exiled to filthy ghettoes. But all this only refers to prisoners who are confined under normal prison conditions; about 80,000 people in the US are kept for months, years or even decades in solitary confinement, a practice banned in all civilized countries as what it is: torture. Solitary confinement psychologically demolishes people, often irreversibly, but rather than face up to this fact American “authorities” respond as they always do: with lies, excuses and obfuscation. Those locked in solitary are now usually said to be “sequestered” or “secluded”, unless they’re too young to vote; then they’re tortured in “protective custody”. Far from “correcting” prisoners, American prisons couldn’t be much better at breaking them beyond repair if they were specifically designed to do, and those in most other countries aren’t a hell of a lot better.
Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking all sorts of thoughts about “public safety” and “we can’t just let criminals get away without punishment” and other such malarkey. What if I told you that it’s possible to build prisons that really do what “authorities” pretend they’re intended to do: rehabilitate criminals so they don’t offend again? And what if I told you they were cheaper than the state’s beloved torture chambers?
…at the Somang Correctional Institution in [South Korea]…guards and prisoners eat meals together in a clean dining hall…228 people have served time there and been released…only two have been convicted of a second crime…The recidivism rate at the nation’s…[other] prisons is 62 percent. About 65 percent of Somang prisoners have been convicted of major crimes such as murder, robbery and rape…counselors try to deal with prisoners’ emotional issues. Then they move on to job education…and…techniques including meditation and therapy to help prisoners empathize with crime victims. The final stage comprises social adaptation programs to help a prisoner ease back into the world outside the prison walls…It costs about…10 percent less than the cost of running [other] prisons…
And lest you think this sort of thing wouldn’t work in the West:
…Arne Kvernvik Nilsen…[is] governor of Bastoy prison island…home to some of the most serious offenders in Norway, [which] has received increasing global attention both for the humane conditions under which the prisoners live – in houses rather than cells in what resembles a cosy self-sustaining village…and for its remarkably low reoffending rate of just 16% compared with around 70% for prisons across the rest of Europe and the US…”I run this prison like a small society,” [Nilsen] says…”I give respect to the prisoners…and they respond by respecting themselves, each other and this community…The staff…are…like social workers as well as prison guards. They believe in their work and know the difference they are making”…Bastoy is also one of the cheapest prisons in Norway to run…
What a surprise; help people to deal with their problems, to respect others and do something constructive, and they tend to become peaceful, productive citizens after release. Cage them like animals and torture them into sociopathy, and they become more bestial and sociopathic. This isn’t rocket science; any unusually-bright thirteen-year-old could understand it. Unfortunately, most of the people in charge of American prisons function below that intellectual level, and they will have to be removed from power (and Americans in general cured of their delight in torturing the “other”) before this country ever sees a “correctional institution” whose name isn’t a wicked lie.
In the US, there is also the status of ex-con. If you go to prison for any reason, you spend the rest of your life as an ex-felon. You’ll be unemployable at most non-crooked jobs, and certain constitutional rights will no longer apply to you.
Fortunately, with so much in the US being crooked, there will be plenty of crooked jobs to take after leaving prison. Rather than being a detriment, a prison record might show your new boss that you will be a good fit.
Now fully expect some people reading the above to say, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” or “execute everyone,” even if the “crime” is preferring pot to whiskey, or running an escort service.
I believe that many states allow someone who has served his sentence (as opposed to being out on parole) to petition a court for a return of rights, and that such petitions are routinely granted. Which isn’t to say that the general drift of your post isn’t true.
That depends on the state. Florida is notorious for making that hard to do, though there have been attempts at reform now and then.
Great article:)
I agree we hold too many people in our prisons here in the U.S. Totally agree with you on the war on drugs … it creates even more violent crime.
But for everything else … STRONGLY disagree.
And that’s because, I’m not interested in “rehabing” a murderer or a rapist, Maggie – I’m interested in PUNISHING them. Actually for murder and violent rape … I’m good with the old Roman-style crucifixion. I actually loved the electric chair – because that wasn’t a very humane way to put a dog down either – seeing as how the inmate catching fire was common. Those stories didn’t bother me one bit.
The “reoffense” rate for Bastoy Prison is around 16% and these are people who’ve already committed one crime against society. In Krulac’s prison – the “reoffending” rate would be 0% – they would quite literally be put UNDER the jail and if they ever got out – they would never want to do anything to be thrown back in.
What would you do, Maggie – with the three police officers that raped you?
Were I in charge – they would not be alive today. In fact, reading that story angered me so much – I considered emailing you to see if you knew their names just so I could “look” these “gentlemen” up since they live in the New Orleans area. Actually, I have a lot of cop friends (being a bouncer – it happens) and every time I meet one – I think about whether or not he’s “one” of your assaulters. That’s the impact that story had on me – unadulterated RAGE.
I’m not afraid of being called a “chauvinist” and I think it’s the job of GOOD men to handle the BAD men – and women should stay out of it. I don’t know how painful childbirth is and you don’t really know the depth of the darkness that resides inside men – you think you do – but you don’t. I’m all for giving women the vote – but since the day we did it – their “motherly instincts” have been nothing but a reprieve to evil men. Not all women are like that – Maggie Thatcher wasn’t – she seemed to “get it”.
Not all men will agree with me – especially the “feminized” men and they seem to be the majority today. But for me – fuck with “the tribe” – even once and you will regret it tenfold.
I would not put myself in charge of judging people who had committed a crime against me; I’m only human. However, apples and oranges: cops or other government actors convicted of crimes should face punishment MUCH more severe – at least three times as much – as other citizens committing the same crimes.
That’s where we are different and when I say … “I’m not a smart man” … probably what I’m actually saying is … “I’m not a civilized man.” There’s a point where I’m not interested any longer in academic debate or “experimentation” … I completely lose my curiosity about those things at a certain point and when that happens … other, more direct, means are required to solve the problem.
Guy commits murder – I’m not intellectually curious enough to figure out if I can turn him into a productive member of society or not. To me, it’s really easy … “Will the planet miss this guy? No? Oh well then!”
If someone commits a crime against someone close to me – he’s going to be judged … by me. Yes I realize that this society which loves and makes heroes out of criminals will judge me – but I just don’t give a shit.
Now – I’m not talking about “petty” things like pickpocketing – but rape? Murder? Violent assault … oh yes … the police will be the LEAST of that guy’s problems.
I don’t think I’m the only one. I don’t think your article will speak to most people on my side of this argument. Now, they may not be honest about it – but I’m being honest – the academics of “rehab” just shoot right around me completely – they don’t touch ANYTHING inside me because the purpose, to me, of incarceration should be punishment.
Meting out extreme punishment doesn’t work as a deterrent. There was a lot more violence in the times when crimes were punished by gruesome public executions than now. I don’t want only reoffending rates to go down (note that the cited prison’s reoffending rate is still a quarter of that of other prisons – this is a huge improvement), I want first offending rates as low as possible too.
Again … you guys are arguing points that I’m not the least bit interested in. You guys have the academic debate about whether or not extreme punishment is a deterrent or not.
I’m interested only in punishment.
But peripherally, I’d say that a person who says that extreme punishment doesn’t deter is the same person who would say that torture doesn’t “work” either.
And I know it does.
Torture only “works” in getting the tortured to say what the torturer wants them to say for the torture to stop.
Doesn’t do anything else, and never has.
I can probably dig up some studies that prove that if you really want.
And I can dig up the centuries old fact that torture has been used by every civilization going all the back to before the Greeks. Romans had TRAINED torture units – and the Romans didn’t involve themselves in things that didn’t work.
Second – I hear all this bullshit that the guy tells you what you want to hear. Of course he does! That’s when verification comes into play. You verify the info – if it’s wrong – he pays. End of story – he’ll tell you everything you want.
It’s the most infantile denial I’ve ever heard – that a guy under extreme pain won’t talk.
In what universe?
But that’s not what Illy said.
Of course he’ll talk.
“he’ll tell you everything you want.”
That’s the problem! He’ll tell you what you want to hear, as far as he can guess it. If you have to verify everything he says anyway, what’s the point?
I’m not even saying that it doesn’t work sometimes. Of course it does. What I’m saying is that it’s not a reliable way to gather information unless your goal is to support your story with “confessions” of facts you want believed.
How many prisoners confessed to locations of WMDs in Iraq?
How much of that “wealth of information” gained from the police turned out to be correct?
I think you need to read about Blondot and his N-rays sometime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Also, “the Romans didn’t involve themselves in things that didn’t work”?
Counterpoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astrology#Greece_and_Rome
Unless you’re saying that astrology works?
Then I take it that you believe that Europe was once infested with witches, who flew on sticks and had orgies with demons by moonlight? Because that’s the sort of thing you get from torture.
As for the Romans, a lot of them hung stone dicks on their chariots to bring them good luck. Now, maybe that works, but I doubt it. Besides, the Romans used torture more for punishment than for information gathering. The most famous case of Roman torture was Jesus; they didn’t ask any questions. No “Where are your followers hiding?” or “Do you know any zealots?”
Finally, if you are willing to see more violence committed as the price of satisfying your lust for punishment, then I hope to whatever Gods may be that you are never in a position of power. I want to see wrong-doers punished too, but I’m more interested in people not getting raped, beaten, robbed, and murdered in the first place.
Depends on the purpose. If it’s making the victim agree to whatever the torturers want them to agree, it will eventually work (or the victim will die). If it’s getting truthful answers, then I’ll disagree and say it’s unreliable (especially when the torturers refuse to accept the truth).
Again … you have to verify the information … that’s where all the studies STOP. They don’t study torture techniques the way they have ALWAYS been applied. Always – you extract the information and verify it – if it’s wrong …
“Well hey guy, the shit you told us is wrong – now look what’s going to happen to you … unless you want to tell us what really happened.”
Anyone who doesn’t think torture works – really has never contemplated the reality of it.
And no – torture doesn’t mean the one being interrogated dies.
KSM gave us a wealth of information after he was waterboarded – it took many waterboardings – but we got it. It would not have happened without it.
So, as the subject matter expert here, what would be your guidelines for using torture? Would you agree that torture should be treated sort of like an atom bomb (for lack of a better comparison); usable but only under the most extreme circumstances and within strict controls? Because (as you say) you don’t want the subject to die because that destroys the intelligence, would this be only for incorrigibles such as KSM who were never going to respond to more diplomatic interrogation tactics, or would the net be cast wider?
I will post something below this on why I know torture works.
I don’t run this tribe – I’m a member like you and the rules of the tribe say … “We don’t torture”. I respect that and would never violate that.
Having said that …
There is no need to torture an Al Qaeda foot soldier. He doesn’t know much anyway and enhanced interrogation short of torture methods is sufficient to get him to tell what he knows – and if he doesn’t – then one of his buddies will.
But, to answer your question – I think we were doing fine with enhanced interrogation techniques prior to the time that Obama outlawed them. There was A LOT that we could do back then short of damaging a guy physically …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140324/Kahlid-Sheik-Mohammed-cracked-CIA-kept-awake-180-hours-STRAIGHT.html
The key points in that article are (a) KSM did talk; (b) He would not have talked without tough measures being applied; (c) The information he gave us helped us foil terror plots. In other words – he gave us info that helped us save innocent lives.
Some don’t agree with applying those methods EVEN WITH the significant payoff of saving lives. I respect that opinion – I just really disagree with it.
By the way – KSM was NOT waterboarded 183 times. That is actually the number of times water was poured on his face. I saw something somewhere where KSM told the Red Cross he’d been waterboarded about five times. I think, based on the number of times he was “poured” – it’s closer to ten. That’s a guess though.
Also – the article I cite says that enhanced interrogation didn’t work on him – that’s false – since sleep deprevation is an enhanced method – and, now under Obama – also outlawed.
What made KSM talk was the entire “package” of techniques. We are at a disadvantage in that they all believe that we’re a nation of laws that opposes torture – which we do. So they will not talk until they become convinced that, no matter what they believe about the United States and our laws – the people confronting him are willing to violate them. So once KSM came to this realization that these creative methods would not end – he talked.
Having established that torture can be effective (as you illustrate below), then the question I think turns to the issue of trust. I can’t picture any topic today where a government’s pronouncement of “just trust us” is taken at face value by the people at large.
Let posit for a moment that Obama had not outlawed ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ Would you trust him and the people in his administration to wield those techniques judiciously and only on the select few of individuals who would not respond to any other form of interrogation? Would you trust a future president Chris Christie or Hilary Clinton?
That’s what formed the basis for my atom bomb comparison. The military has built up a formidable reputation for their scrupulous handling of these weapons. Of course they haven’t laid all their cards on the table, but they’ve found a way to share just enough of how their vetting methods work to prove to the U.S. populace that atom bombs won’t be used capriciously by a random general with a grudge. I don’t think a similarly convincing case has been made (by the government itself) regarding enhanced interrogation.
As for the Geneva Conventions, I suppose it comes down to whether it is more valuable to get the information through whatever means necessary or to be able to claim a moral high ground in order to gain more allies to your side and isolate your enemies. I don’t have an answer for that.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq – we captured prisoners who would not talk. We didn’t even attempt to torture them – because that’s against the Geneva Convention. They told us to “Fuck Off” – literally, you’d be surprised how many radical Mohammadans are familiar with that phrase. In the beginning – we’d hand almost all the prisoners over to the local police, either so they could hold them overnight (because we didn’t have the facilities to) or to wait for us to pick ’em up days or a week later for shipment to a holding facility under our control.
We’d ask them questions when we had them – they’d never talk. But you would be surprised the number of times the head of the local police would call us up and give us the information that the prisoner “volunteered” to him once he was under local police control. On one occasion we gave six captured insurgents to the local police to hold overnight so they could be shipped out the next morning. When we arrived to pick them up the next day, the local head of police had a WEALTH of information for us … but only five prisoners. “What happened to the sixth one?” We asked … “He tried to escape – we shot him.”
Riiiiiiiight.
Well we stopped handing prisoners over to the local police and we started dealing with them ourselves once we figured out they were being tortured. Of course – we never got any info out of these guys when we held them. I remember one time a guy DID talk to us and I asked the translator “What the hell did you say to him?”
“I told him we were going to hand him over to the local police if he didn’t tell me.”
That was an Iraqi translator … we promptly told him that even THAT form of coersion was illegal. It was hard to be mad at him – I thought it was pretty cool personally – but we had to follow rules and what he did was against those rules. We didn’t make the rules and didn’t have to agree with them – it was our duty to follow them no matter how fucked up we thought they were. And we all thought they were fucked up – to a man.
I could also go into my buddy, Al’s experience as a WWII Japananese POW. Al was tougher than me – yet the Japanese extracted every bit of information out of him using brutal torture techniques including outright sexual assault of the most painful kind. They started out asking him questions they already knew the answer to. There was also the “mystery” in his mind of what his fellow shipmates had told the interrogators – he couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t talked. In fact, his interrogator affirmed to him regularly that they HAD talked to him. So confusion is a part of the process. Al was asked what the design collapse depth of an S-Class submarine was. He gave an incorrect answer. He was immediately beaten until he passed out – because the Japansese already knew the correct answer. When he came to – they asked him more questions. Eventually, with this shifting back and forth between questions they knew and questions they didn’t – he was so worn down he just responded with the truth each and every time. Of course – they beat him when he didn’t know something – just to make sure he didn’t know it.
Studies that say torture doesn’t work – are bullshit. It’s pretty much 100 percent if the interrogator knows his shit.
That doesn’t make it fucking right.
Studies that say something I don’t believe are wrong, because I know better.
See, it doesn’t take so many words to say that. See you next Sabat.
I agree that something should be done about the prison system. For a start, we could admit that the “War on Drugs” (AKA Full Employment for Eliot Ness Wannabes) is a failure, and let everyone in prison on drug charges go free.
And somebody needs to take the “Sex Offender Registry” and cram it up the backsides of the idiots who have run it into the ground.
But I’m leary of the experimental prisons, for the same reason that I discount the “successes” of experimental schools; I want to know to what degree they are self selecting samples, or otherwise skewed.
As for Krulac’s comment; I am content to see society move towards a day when the citizenry is broadly armed, and the murderers and rapists we imprison are the ones nobody shot on the spot.
And I look forward to the introduction of circular firing squads. Them evil rapists and murderers won’t be getting away with it, once that’s done.
http://lawcomic.net/ Goes into the ‘whys’ of incarceration and punishment; including some reasons the courts and society generally don’t talk about.
In the ‘bad old days’, after you were released from prison, it was possible to go far away and ‘redeem yourself’ in a new location, where your past was unknown. This is no longer possible, but the law and society haven’t caught up to the new reality.
What we have instead is perpetual punishment for any offense; which was never intended and is causing great harm.
Ending penalties for consensual crimes would be a good start, though.
As with most evil crap it’s all about economics; no doubt it would be cheaper to actually rehab criminals but then they wouldn’t get tossed back into the system. More criminals means more prisons/corrections officers/judges/lawyers/etc. Infinite growth economics creates the unique problem of always having to grow and the solutions to this problem usually seem kind of evil (prison system/military industrial complex/drug war). Just the price of “progress”, no politician is going to be re-elected after shrinking the economy even if they got rid of a bloated corrupt entity.
If anything I would expect a drastic drop in prison population to *improve* the economy; more people can do more work, and less labor would be directed at canceling out other labor. Keeping people in prison in order to keep the prison-industrial workers employed seems like a textbook broken window fallacy to me.
Now, the prison unions and their bought politicians may see it differently.
I’m with Maggie on this one. Modern prisons are mostly stupid. If you want deterrence, improve law enforcement. (the certainty of punishment is a *far* more effective deterrent than the size of the punishment) If you want rehabilitation, the alternative prison methods mentioned above sound like they work pretty well. If you want punishment itself, corporal suits fine and costs considerably less. Fuck calling it cruel and unusual; the crime training camps we call prisons are crueler, and I doubt many people would choose them over, say, whipping.
To improve the economy there would have to be new jobs for the prisoners and prison/justice system workers. Most prison guards aren’t really qualified to do much of anything else and most prisoners have no marketable skills either. Perhaps in the long-term the economy would eventually improve but the short-term impact makes it impossible to reform the system.
Yes, modern prisons are stupid. What exactly do you mean “improve law enforcement”? There is already a damn cop every 20 fucking ft shaking people down for petty shit. Never forget the old saying “When seconds count the police are minutes away”, and they are more likely to fuck things up for you than help you.
Improving doesn’t mean increasing. Improving law enforcement means getting them to stop harassing people for petty shit and concentrate on what really matters and making them accountable for their fuck-ups, definitely not increasing their numbers.
If I remember right, increasing police numbers is one of the few things that really *does* deter crime as a whole. I got that from Freakonomics, but I don’t remember what study the author was citing. It’s not critical to my point. When I said “improving law enforcement” I just meant making it so criminals are more likely to be caught; the specific method is irrelevant as long as it works.
Whether the crimes being deterred ought to be crimes at all is an orthogonal question. I’m of the opinion that a lot of shit on the books *shouldn’t* be. The drug war is exhibit A, and of course prostitution is on the list too.
And the reason they stay on the books is 1) they are easier to investigate, arrest and prosecute than other crimes, especially white collar crimes; 2) they make Law Enforcement look like they are doing something positive, justifying pay raises and budget increases; 3) they keep the privatized prisons full, because there is often a clause in their contracts guaranteeing a minimum population.
While I agree with the general tenor of your article, I do think that “deterrence” is just as ugly as vengeance. A harsher sentence just so others aren’t tempted?
What about a bit of “thinking out of the box”? For it’s obvious that the “box” isn’t working: the US, with about 5% of the world’s population has around 25% of the world’s prisoners.
I thought of the mention of deterrence as meaning that the worst sort of unrehabitable criminal was locked away and thus couldn’t contine murdering and raping whileocked up. If one thinks of this as part of deterrence then I guess this somewhat works. How many people are alive today because genuine monsters were serving prison sentence instead of out looking for pray? Then again, before the Enlightenment we simply executed hopelessly evil criminals and I can’t help but thick we would be better off with no penalties for consential “crimes”, a lot less prisons, and a good deal more seedy executions for the few Ted Bundys and Jose Medellins.
Sorry for my spelling, I am away from home using a tablet.
Dear Stephen, thank you! Yes, lives have been saved by keeping those who have no conscience, no remorse, etc., away from society for the rest of their lives. Those of us who have lost a family member and/or friend due to murder know firsthand the devastation they cause and how society has to be protected (especially those who are left living after the minimum 30% of murder cases in the US that involve family killing other family). So sick of hearing this automatically means we want them tortured, starved, beaten, etc. No, at least some of us don’t. We want them to be treated decently in prison. We shouldn’t have to get any ###*** for being convinced that some should never be free again. Those who haven’t had a family member and/or friend murdered don’t fully know what it’s like. It’s the same as those who have never done sex work saying they know how things should be for those who do sex work or have in the past. There’s criminals who don’t have a conscience. They can’t be cured in counseling. The advice of experts on them is to stay away from them as much as possible. Prison does this for society with these people. So tired also of hearing no one cares about prison reform, etc., etc. Wrong. Some do it on a small scale. An example of this is being a pen pal for a prisoner. There’s groups that support the family/friends of prisoners also. People are working for reform and have for years. 1 of the biggest reasons I’m for decriminalization of sex work is because too many are in prison for it and it takes the cops AWAY from going after violent criminals. I’m against Drug War for the same reason. For people to want truly violent people with no conscience and no remorse in prison for life isn’t unreasonable especially if they’ve been affected firsthand. Something I hardly ever see from those who think some shouldn’t be in prison for life: where are your offers to take these people in after they’re released? Seriously? If you’re convinced they’re cured, etc., then why not offer to take them in? Put your money where your mouth is and don’t just talk: do what you say is the best way to handle these people. Also, those of you for killing criminals on the spot with no trial, etc.: do you ever think of the family/friends of the criminal who had nothing to do with the crime? People think criminals exist in some kind of vacuum because it’s easier to. Do you care about the effect this would have on their possibly innocent family/friends? What about if the wrong person gets killed? Have a solution for that possibility? These things aren’t as cut and dried and easy as people make them out to be. Thanks again to Stephen for speaking out.
Forgot to say on earlier post am sick of hearing: no one changes in prison; they only get worse, etc., etc. Some do huge turnarounds for the better in prison. Karla Tucker is my favorite example of this. Also, in regards to sociopathy: there’s some people that are literally born that way and others that in childhood grow into that due to abuse, etc. (Charles Manson is an example of this). Those that are already that way when they go to prison aren’t going to change. No counseling can help them. Is it really worth the risk to let these people free? Those of us who have lost a family member and/or friend to violence are really struck (and not in a good way) by the willful ignoring of these things. I’m all for drastic change for people (like in Karla Tucker, mentioned above) but the truth is some can’t change and don’t want to even if treatment could lead to that.
It comes down to what I call the Hannibal Lecter test: is the person so dangerous that we cannot risk his being released into the world even by an act of God, such as an earthquake that tears the prison walls down. If the answer is yes, the kindest thing to do is kill them.
Dear Richard, I’m with you on that some deserve the death penalty. However, they should always have a trial first. I wish if the people that push for killing people right after they’re caught doing a crime could be put back in time (temporarily) to see what that standard made life like. It’s always easier to talk then put your money where your mouth is. I wonder why they’re not organizing groups of people to do this killing and include themselves in them? If they’ve never lost a family member and/or friend to violence they have a fraction of the idea of what it’s like to deal with the courts, prison, etc. Like I said earlier, why is it I never hear them say I’ll be glad to take that person in when they’re released from the type of prison I think is the best? Thanks for speaking up my friend.
Of course that is with a trial, and I think the death penalty should require a higher standard: substantial material evidence; not circumstantial evidence or eyewitness testimony which has proven so notoriously unreliable.
Dear freegirard, what about cases where the only evidence is eyewitness testimony? Those do exist. Thank you for not joining in with the kill them while it’s happening, no trial, etc. mentality. I have yet to hear one of those pushing this say they’ve had a family member and/or friend murdered and/or have to deal with a family member who is up for the death penalty.
As i said, capital punishment is a last resort. If we could send those who meet the “Hannibal Lecter” standard to a penal colony on the Moon or Mars, with the only contact through robot ships, that would be better. There are some people who just scare me to death to think that there is any way they might get out again.
In those cases, Laura, you don’t have a death penalty. It’s just too risky. You can’t un-execute somebody after the Whole Genome Test of 2023 comes back negative.
Dear Sailor Barsoom, this is one of the reasons life without parole sentences are needed. I’m for those along with the other MVS I’ve interacted with.
I see the right and wrong of all the techniques discussed here — prison, torture, even killing — as very much context dependent.
In particular, I cannot go along with sentencing anyone to death once he’s in police custody, because governments have shown they’re neither wise enough nor uncorrupt enough to be allowed that power. Ever.
On the other hand, I have no problem with a victim or bystander blowing away somebody caught in the act of a rape, robbery, or hostage holding. There, not only is harm to innocents being prevented in real time, but the killing will certainly be reviewed afterward by authorities and the public, who will be able to punish the killer if it wasn’t justified.
I trust juries a lot more than anybody who is part of the system, especially if the juries aren’t actually prevented from doing their own research. Yes, public opinion should have a veto over convictions, and over practices that can amount to torture. (I do not buy the reverse, though: the public is quite capable of hating people who don’t deserve punishment, especially when biased media go out of their way to stir up that hate — and this happens on both the left and right.)
Re. krulac’s attitude, which I’m sure represents a lot of people: To me this illustrates why it’s bad policy to assign soldiers the job of police. Even the most civilized country needs an army, but the time to send them in is only after a considered decision is made that it’s really necessary to kill or destroy the target. If that decision is left up to soldiers, even senior commanders, they will make it too soon and destroy people who don’t deserve it.
Of course, today’s police are rapidly crossing the line and effectively becoming soldiers, causing that same problem (and the feds’ present policy of providing military arms to local police is making it much worse). Police who have any business being police always give other people the benefit of the doubt.
Some of you might be interested in how torture was discussed in the 18th century in the lead-up to the American Revolution:
http://exurbe.com/?p=2339
Torture has always been offered as an effective way of getting at the truth as well as punishing the guilty.
If you actually believe that, read up on the Inquisition.
Properly applied, torture will eventually get you the truth. Improperly applied, it will eventually get you what you want to hear.
Properly applied interrogation techniques will also get you the same results; not as fast, but more accurately.
Why are you so hung up on punishment Krulac? Locking people away in solitary confinement is torture, and will drive people insane, leaving them unable to function in the “real” world.
For everyone except the most serious psycho or sociopath, there is a possibility of rehabilitation. I think that once a convicts time is served–including parole–all of his rights should be returned to him unless he was convicted of a violent crime, in which case he should have to petition the government to reinstate his rights (and responsibilities as a member of the militia) under the Second Amendment.
Becoz he’s got hypogonadism and his diatribe was always entirely predictable. No insult intended to the hostess, Maggie. My impending ban from this blog was entirely worth it.
Why would I ban you?
I believe he thinks you are going to ban him for saying rude things about Krulac, who is such a delicate flower that he obviously can’t defend himself.
Pretty much agree. And unlike Krulac I believe that sleep deprivation and the other “enhanced” techniques are all torture. There’s a good reason we have the 5th Amendment, and I believe it was meant to ban all such things.
(Aside: I find the current leftist “take” on the Inquisition amusingly wrong, though. I know Maggie likes the neopagan movement, but I don’t buy that there was much of any such thing back then. The real reason for the Inquisition, star chambers, heresy trials, and “witch” burning was simply to exploit the ignorance of the masses in resisting the Protestant Reformation.)
Clarification: I’m expressing agreement with freegirard, not the other guy.
It depends on which Inquisition you are talking about. In Spain, it wasn’t Protestants they were mainly worried about – it was whether all the Moors and Jews that chose to convert rather than be expelled from Spain were _sincere_ Christians. And so Isabella created a monster – even by medieval standards.
Generally the property of condemned heretics, witches, etc., was seized by the Crown. Isabella allowed the Spanish branch of the Inquisition to keep this property. (It was rather like asset forfeiture today, only the process has been smoothed so neither a confession nor a conviction is required to steal your money and property.) The only limit was that they had to get a confession for a valid conviction. So the Spanish Inquisition profited every time a wealthy man could be induced to confess something. Choking on a piece of pork was sufficient to charge someone with secretly remaining a Jew or Muslim. And after extracting the confession, they worked equally hard to extract the names of more crypto-Jews, crypto-Muslims, witches, Protestants, or whatever, so they could torture more suspects and confiscate more estates.
Our modern-day police interrogators are less skilled than the Inquisitors, but they are probably _more_ corrupt. If you look for it, it’s not hard to find cases where suspects “confessed” to something quite as physically impossible as flying on a broomstick – but the cops didn’t come back and ask for the truth, and the DA used that confession to get a conviction!
Actually JD, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches), the Catholic Church’s official “how to” guide, was published in 1487. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
That was more than 30 years before Luther nailed his Theses to the door of the church.
Persecution of heretics and others by the Inquisition and its predecessors had been going on for centuries. This included Jews, Cathartists, witches and other pagans.
No one is ready for the Spanish Inquisition!–Monty Python
My feelings about imprisonment, punishment and torture are complicated and I have nothing to add to the very stimulating debate here.
However I must disagree with GBS (it wouldn’t be the first time):
I don’t know about “official objects”, but to my mind, segregation is more important than all of those. Keeping criminals separate from the law-abiding public so they can’t commit harm again for a prescribed period of time. And by harm I mean murder, robbery, burglary, rape, serious assault.
As for prisons themselves, I wouldn’t mind giving one of those Norwegian types a try. It couldn’t hurt.
Sasha: Of course, it depends on the crime. A premeditated murderer should be segregated for the rest of his life; I would consider it more humane to execute him, but our criminal justice system is far too sloppy, error-prone, and corrupt to trust with that power. OTOH, locking up nonviolent drug dealers, gamblers, and hookers does less to protect society than locking up the cops, lawyers, and politicians that pursue such cases would.
In between, there are lesser violent and non-violent crimes with actual victims. The problem here is that, while giving a thief the same sentence as a murderer hardly seems fair (nor smart – if the sentence is the same, why not kill all possible witnesses?), under the current system the thief is almost certain to continue stealing every time he is turned loose. And stealing what you’ve worked long and hard for is taking a piece of your life. You aren’t going to get it back from the thief; they’ll generally do more damage breaking in than the value of what they steal, and then the fences only give them ten percent. It’s not murder, but if you add up the hours of labor stolen from all the victims of a busy thief, it’s likely to total many lifetimes. It’s similar with “giving someone a beat down” – the results are unpredictable, but quite often the victim never will heal completely.
Back when a “life sentence” was not a life sentence, released murderers actually had a lower recidivism rate than most other criminals. Except for a few sociopaths, it takes a lot to bring a person to the point of killing another human, and such circumstances are probably not going to recur, but someone who is unable or unwilling to earn a decent living will always have a reason to steal.
So what do you do with thieves, assault-and-battery cases, etc? I think we’ve stumbled towards half of a semi-reasonable solution with “three strikes” laws. Give the criminal a couple of chances to reform; if he persists in crime, get him away from us forever. (The missing half, of course, is a system that gives them a decent chance to reform – that is, a prison that rehabilitates when possible, and a chance at a not-too-bad job upon release.)
A guaranteed minimum income which is just enough to get by on largely insures that one isn’t stealing in order to not starve, freeze to death, etc. In the rare cases where that still happens, the sentence should be low and should include counseling on how to make better use of the little money one has.
This would also mean that few if any people are dealing drugs, acting as leg-breakers for loan sharks, or (to get back to the main theme of this blog) becoming prostitutes in order to survive. Those who continue to be drug dealers anyway should be left alone (unless they engage in dishonest business, like selling DOM for LSD or meth as ecstasy), those who continue in prostitution should be left alone, and those who continue to be leg-breakers should be arrested, tried, and if convicted, sentenced, and the sentence should be harsher than if they were doing it to put food in the belly (which, again, they should be able to do with no job at all).
The death penalty is something which yes, some people have coming, but our government (and I dare, the various governments of the world) has proven itself unworthy of wielding.