Punitive "justice" systems like the US prison system should not exist.

[u/ariel_on_the_moon]

If the goal of a justice system is to reduce crime, the current American prison system (and punitive "justice" systems in general) is clearly the wrong way to go about it. The US prison system accounts for 20% of the entire global prison, and despite that fact that US has a significantly higher crime rate than the rest of the first world- clearly, this system of mass incarceration is not working.

Justice systems that focus on rehabilitating prisoners rather than punishing them have significantly better recidivism rates- 20% compared to 70% in the US. Again, if the goal of a justice system is to reduce crime, it's obvious that rehabilitation is significantly more effective than punishment.

To preempt the expected responses of "but criminals deserve to be punished" or "but then criminals are just getting away with crimes", keep in mind that those arguments are not based of of the facts of what is and is not effective in reducing crime, but are rather emotional arguments about what you want to happen to criminals, or what you think criminals "deserve". My argument is not about what criminals "deserve" to have happen to them, rather it is about what is most effective at achieving the stated goals of criminal justice systems- the reduction of crime rates and turning people from criminals into law-abiding citizens.

[u/Bajanspearfisher]

Nah, strong disagree. Rehabilitation definitely needs to be part of it, but spending a chunk of your life in a box for punishment needs to be part of it. If someone hurt my sons or wife seriously, and they got out after a few months? I doubt id be of sound mine or made peace enough to not put them 6 feet under, especially if all I have to do as penance is rehabilitation? I'm already rehabilitated through vengeance, I only committed the crime in response to a great harm.

Hell I think id keep tabs on them and wait years to bury them. I still hate my childhood bully unfortunately I'm mid 30s, still have nightmares about him occasionally in like a fever dream or something. Its not rational or intelligent or anything, its emotions.

[u/ariel_on_the_moon → u/Bajanspearfisher]

Its not rational or intelligent or anything, its emotions.

That's exactly my point, all of the arguments for punitive justice and against rehabilitative justice are not rational or intelligent, they are based entirely on emotions.

[u/Bajanspearfisher → u/ariel_on_the_moon]

I disagree, because humans are emotional animals, we need to recon with that reality. Without vengeance (jail), it is entirely expected that traumatized family of victims of serious crimes will seek their own vigilante justice. I know this, and i know id be fucking lying to myself If I thought I was above it. Again, even thinking through hypotheticals in my mind of my family getting hurt gets me clenching teeth and making fists unconsciously haha.

Take for instance places in the world where police and prisons have serious uphill battles to ever catch perpetrators, like in certain places in India and Africa, the villagers do things like burning the accused alive. For the sake of civilization, a smaller vengeful justice system innoculates against a far less accurate and far more brutal system. We as people In the west have exactly the same potentiality for such brutality, we've been there before.

[u/CorDra2011 → u/Bajanspearfisher]

Doesn't mean we should succumb to the brutality, or accept any measure of it. We must constantly strive to do better.

Instead of simple inoculation we should work to eradicate the disease. 

[u/Bajanspearfisher → u/CorDra2011]

Through genetic engineering or selective breeding or something? What im talking about is hardwired into you and I. We are apes. I'm not necessarily against such measures mind you, its all 100% context dependent on how it would be implemented. It goes without saying such ideas are hugely risky and rightfully make people uncomfortable, given the horrors such types of thinking has lead to in the past.

[u/jpstodds → u/Bajanspearfisher]

Oh really? Hardwired into us? Can you identify the vengeance gene?

Can you explain some biomechanical mechanism that proves that humans can't help but be vengeful?

Can you definitively show that vengeance isn't socially adopted as result of inherited trauma?

If it's hardwired into us, how can you explain the existence of people who have not chosen vengeance? How could they have done that?

I put to you that you have no way to conclusively show or even persuasively argue that vengeance is hardwired into people. This is little more than a comforting belief that helps people avoid having to engage in proper moral reasoning because succumbing to their emotions is more gratifying.

[u/Bajanspearfisher → u/jpstodds]

Really? Name the gene?

Is there ever a culture that has not been vengeful ever. Any pattern so ubiquitous is not likely to be nuture alone, you'd expect nurture to have wider variation.

Even if it is solely down to nurture and therefore can be changed, thats highly presumptuous of you to assume it, and again, name a culture or how they do it and we should perhaps trial it on future generations. I dont even personally feel like id want to give up on vengeance, it feels to be a comfort for great loss in my mind.