What should we do with criminals?

I can't be 100% sure, but it's something I'm always working on in my head. How can we create a system that is safe, beneficial (in terms of rehabilitation) to people who commit crimes? Legality and morality aren't the same, so just because one breaks a law does not make one necessarily a bad person, and I think that's important to take into account because, at least here in the US, the prison system is a great way to turn a decent human being who fucked up into an unrepentant asshole. I'm against the death penalty, and I'm a prison abolitionist insofar that I believe most people, aside from the truly violent people, are capable of being rehabilitated, restored, and in the process they can pay for the crime they committed not by sitting in a cell and treated like shit every day, but actively work in the community to make amends (again, non-violent crimes).

So if, for example, we have someone who stole a TV, they just work to pay back that TV, and any damages they caused, and at reasonable pay rates, none of this pennies a day bullshit. To me that kind of thing seems simple enough. The violent criminals? I don't know. I don't like the idea of locking them up, and I don't like the idea of letting them go, and I'd rather do the former than the latter anyway if I was pushed into making such a choice, but even if they have to be locked up, they can at least be provided with decent food, decent facilities, none of this dehumanizing shit that goes on, especially in private prisons.

Oh, and I'd decriminalize recreational drug offenses. You smoke weed? What the hell are you doing in here? Go home, you're free. The war on drugs is horseshit anyway.

Also, %1000 agree with you on seizing people's property. That is nothing but a hundred tons of bullshit masquerading as law and order. I'd make it so that if the police lose your property, or "lose" your property, they must give you 150% full cash value for what it was when it was new in return, and more weight would be given to the person whose property was confiscated than there would be for the police, because police lie. A lot.

Spot sees the words "mental illness," imagines a very small and specific subset of everyone that's ever suffered from mental illness, and sees red at the thought of me "stigmatizing them further," as though I'm giving a speech to the UN instead of posting something on a tiny bulletin board with a few dozen active members, half of whom would never take anything I say seriously.

Spot needs calm the fuck down, because he's not the only person that knows many people who struggle with mental health issues, and he's not the only person that's sensitive to the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Spot also needs to recognize that whether he likes it or not, the term "mental illness" covers wide range of mental health conditions and disorders that affect mood, thinking and behaviour, including a lot of things that people don't generally think of when they hear the term mental illness. If I said "people that miss work often do so due to physical illness," would you come at me for stigmatizing hardworking diabetics and eczema sufferers?

Are you kidding me? The law has clearly defined statutes for crimes committed as the result of temporary mental illness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense#Temporary_insanity


And I'm not saying that mental illness inevitably leads to crime, I'm saying that crime often has it's roots in untreated mental illness. It's like if you say that most serial killers are men, that doesn't imply that most men are serial killers. Didn't we all do logic puzzles like this when we were younger?

I think the science of mental illness is extremely new, and I think there are a lot of conditions out there yet to be properly categorized. The term dyslexia wasn't commonly used in America until the 1930s, and Texas was the first state to mandate screening for it in 1985. ADHD wasn't recognized in any form until 1968. Asperger's wasn't added to the DSM until 1994.

We have no problem ranking chess players and saying that some people appear to have stronger cognitive abilities than others, and that some people have a maximum capacity for critical thinking ability no matter how hard they study or apply themselves. Why shouldn't we also recognize the flipside of that?

It's been pointed out before that wage theft accounts for more money than all other forms of theft combined, but most employers when caught only have to pay back some or all of the stolen funds. No fines, no additional restitution. I think compelling regular non-violent thieves to pay back even twice the value of what they stole is reasonable in a lot of cases.

yup

If you're saying that employers who cheat their employees (and yes, wage theft is the biggest contributor to theft overall) should have to pay back their employees at twice what they stole from them, I am completely behind you on that. Make it so that cutting into your employees income for your own profit comes back on you two fold is brilliant.

If you can't appeal to their sense of ethics *cough*, kick them in the wallet nuts.

Wage theft. The bullshit is getting deep in here.

Do you not know what the term means, or are you just determined to deepthroat the corporate boot that hard?

Are we talking the actual, legitimate failure to pay the agreed-upon wages for hours worked, or some make-believe labor theory of value entitlement bullshit that has you pretending you deserve more than you accepted when you took the job? I am obviously opposed to the former and heap deserved mocking on the latter.

Yes.

Ah. Well then, fuck those employers with my blessing. Dig every last penny directly from their rectums with a melon baller if necessary.

I'd be in favor of charging the entire Board of Directors and anyone in HR that deals with payroll with Theft of Services.

Spot is very much calm, fear not.

However spot is also very much aware of the impact that prejudice has on psyche patients and is under no illusions that it is, without hyperbole, not only largely unwarranted but also comparable to racism in it's effects.

I made a distinction early on between a mental health condition and a learning difficulty for good reason.

One, under UK law, is covered by the Mental Health Act and allows people to be detained for assessment and treatment for a variety of time frames. Some (37, 48) of it's sections deal with cases where a criminal offence is involved, others allow for detention in lieu of an offence. I deal primarily with the former.

The second is covered by the Mental Capacity Act which makes provision for what personal liberties may be deprived in order to safeguard someone with limited cognitive functions.

The two should not be conflated and whilst both can be used for claiming variations on diminished responsibility it's crucial to understand why they are distinct and also that for either to be seen as a direct causal factor in criminality is deliberately a high bar.

The MHA is about treatable conditions which, whether long or short term, temporarily alter someone's state of mind. For such conditions to be a direct cause of a crime is far more rare than you are suggesting. More often the defence is used to argue that someone is incapable of fully defending or explaining actions which occurred when ill. Please try to understand that difference because the law does and does so with good reason.

The MCA, on the other hand, deals with conditions like autism, LD, FAS, alzheimers, etc, which literally refer to someone who may not have the baseline capacity to understand the consequences of specific actions, for themselves or others.

You are compounding the two where the law has long since recognised the need to differentiate. Using the clauses of one to deal with the other represents an overreach of powers whose remit is deliberately limited and situational.

It's a human rights matter, but also an acknowledgement that the strategies employed to deal with the two are very different and that many years have gone into correcting the mistakes made by arbitrarily grouping them together.

Now, returning to the original issue I took with the OP, you stated most crimes are committed as a result of financial instability and mental illness.

Concentrating on the latter for now you have "clarified" that you are using the term broadly in a way neither I nor the law recognise. You are also projecting the overly publicised exception as a norm.

I'm pointing out that by doing so you are misusing that term in ways which are not only dangerous but also already anachronistic. We've spent many years correcting that mistake and the unnecessary suffering which came from casting such a wide net.

You want to discuss what we should do with criminals, but take offence when it is pointed out that several of your premises rely on rehashing mistakes we've already learnt from at great cost.

This seems related to the thread...

Here is something we should all realize. I try to make light of my jibes at mentally ill people because it is a condition they cannot stop. Just as much as I cannot stop being transgendered. Or just as much as a black person cannot stop being black, or a gay person cannot stop being gay, or a person from some country cannot stop being from that country and having their cultural attributes. What I am trying to say is recognition of the attribute does not need to come with a degradation of the person.

I think this is what @spot261 is trying to get at. The idea that being mentally fucked up causes you to commit crimes or be a bad or evil person is not true. There are even people who suffer from overwhelming compulsion who try to shield others from what they know they will be compelled to do.

Heaping on the social stigma and insult of being crazy simply makes it worse for the person who is often fighting their hurtful actions. You do not build a person's strength by insulting them and kicking at them. I would imagine that view comes from his position and experience with these people.

Calling black people thugs, criminals, and lazy does not make them want to get up and prove you wrong. Why would they want to join a group that thinks of them that way and they have to overcome such stupid bullshit? I cannot blame them for the ones who throw shit at white society when we shit on them. That is not welcoming and accepting. That is not comforting or any place you really want to be. It may be overall better at timew for some, but that does not make it good.

Spot is right, our revulsion and insults towards crazy people hurt them and make them not want to be near us. I will say it works in practice because I get along with some real nutbars in life who other people have trouble with. It is sort of a sign for me that if a person has some "crazy" people around them they are often a decent person or crazy themselves.

What the fuck bullshit is this?!? You are the very first person to post a screaming torrent of vile names to anyone who posts anything near what you are currently ranting against.

You were wrong and you know it. Admit it.

My concern here would be private employers figuring out some way to abuse their inmate workers, or just treating them poorly because they know there's a ready supply for replacements.

I feel like a situation where the prison farm or factory or whatever works as a nonprofit makes good sense. I'm told "government cheese" isn't actually a thing anymore, but why couldn't it be? There's no shortage of food banks that could make good use of regular free shipments from a prison farm. Or they could manufacture free or low cost school supplies, or winter coats for low income families and socks for the homeless.

I think there's a valid space for the government or an arms-length crown corporation to operate certain businesses that are beneficial to society but not necessarily massively profitable if the pricing is to be fair or accessible, like the post office or public transit. (Not suggesting prisoners staff either of those, though.)

I normally try to ignore you when it's obvious you're day drinking, but do you mind clarifying what you think I'm ranting against?

Also, when was the last time I posted a screaming torrent of vile names? I'd love to see that.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. Go back and check who "liked" my post.

Put up or shut up, drunkie.

ah. The Kirk1adm approach. sad ...

Being black and crazy, I can confirm that first paragraph

But I think even for his premise, Doc would agree that the rampant epidemic of angry white shooters who have taken to murdering [insert too many minority groups here] aren't suffering from mental illness. It's just entitlement. Same for the Beer Belly Putsch on Jan 6th, same for that Rittenhouse brat, same for the Florida school shooter that only barely made a dent in that conversation because the kids driving the conversation were rich and mostly white.

Thats not to say there aren't a disproportionate amount of inmates on death row with debilitating illness that deserve a full revisit of their trials or that prison hasn't become a defacto holding pen for a number of ppl with illnesses (namely, homeless people arrested on vagrancy charges a la Lally from Orange is the New Black), but we are all one bad day away from a jail cell in America bc of the police state we have here.

I'd call it a programming error or cultural brainwashing, similar to the programming error in Japanese culture that causes so many people to see suicide as an easy option. Something is leading rich and middle class white boys to believe that a violent rampage is a reasonable answer to a lot of life's problems. An endlessly reinforced sense of entitlement is likely a huge part of that.

I have a friend that spent a decade working in a section of the criminal justice system where she'd end up interacting with the worst of the worst on a daily basis, and when I recounted this thread to her yesterday she agreed with me. She talked about how people with mental or neurological disorders made up the majority of the guys she'd interact with it, whether it was FASD or something that led to reduced cognitive function and impulse control, or higher functioning sociopaths and psychopaths that lacked the capacity for guilt or empathy.

We both agreed that it's not a case of "mental and neurological disorders causes crime," but rather "crime has roots in mental and neurological disorders." And that's not coming out of a place of judgement, both of us have struggled with our own challenges in the past that I have no desire to get into here.

Before science understood the mechanisms behind dyslexia, people thought dyslexics were just too lazy or stupid to read properly. But now we know better. Before science came to understand the mechanisms behind gender dysphoria, people thought transgender folks were just being weird for no good reason. But now we know better. I feel like science will eventually get to be a point where we can look at antisocial behaviors (for want of a better term) and identity the root causes behind a lot of it.




*When I talk about crime I'm obviously referring to "real" crime, not the dystopian American experience that basically criminalizes being poor or insufficiency pale.

Consider the number of routes that observer bias plays into this.

Making the reasonable assumption your friend dealt with people actually within services of some kind she was meeting people who were detained or under the care of probation services.

1) People with MH and/or LD issues are more likely to be unemployed.

2) They are more likely to be in difficult financial positions.

3) They are more likely to be drug users where self medicating or making poor life choices are likely.

4) They are more likely to be targeted as potential clients by dealers aiming to create dependent addicts.

5) They are more likely to be open to persuasion by criminal elements.

6) They are more likely to owe debts to said dealers/criminal elements.

7) They are less likely to have stable family support networks.

8) They are more likely to be suspected of criminality.

9) They are more likely to behave erratically when challenged by law enforcement about those suspicions.

10) They are less likely to be able to argue a coherent defence.

11) They are less likely to be able to afford a decent lawyer.

12) They are more likely to be viewed as guilty by a jury based purely on appearances.

13) They are more likely to have pre existing criminal records and social circles because of all the above.

14) They are even more unlikely than before to be unemployed due to all of the above.

15) They are more likely to be viewed as challenging in jail if untreated leading to longer sentences.

All of the above can, and does, readily lead to a disproportionate representation within the criminal justice system without having to resort to claims that mental health or any other variants on neuro atypical conditions are actually a cause of crime.

How many of the above can be said to be self fulfilling prophecies which have their roots in prejudice?

Or fix all the roads and the bridges. I could get behind that. Maybe even crack open the piggy bank without coercion.

YES

Even if some of those guys aren't allowed near schools or playgrounds, nothing says they can't build them.

OK, I think we all need more rainbow text. The pretty colors please me.

Very nice.

Now, consider the point I'm making.

A number of those factors are, by their very nature, self reinforcing. Negative perceptions which lead to negative realities which in turn serve to confirm the original perception.

You wanted suggestions on a positive way forward in helping dealing with a perceived problem. I'm doing exactly that.

Taking the UK as an example again (as I can comment on our systems), we deal with mental health imperfectly but by and large have been moving on the right direction for decades.

Where the problem lies more tellingly is in addressing perceptions which are outdated and counter productive. Challenge those perceptions and we have a meaningful way forward.

The media, both entertainment and news, play a big part in this. Consider the number of times you read "the suspect, who has a history of paranoid schizophrenia...." in an article, without ever seeing the relevance or the balance addressed.

Rarely do such articles go beyond innuendo unless they can add to the sensation by doing so. They leave the implication that the history of illness is relevant if they can't state it directly. They never state that someone has a history of paranoid schizophrenia but specify it actually had nothing to do with the crime.

Likewise you rarely (but sometimes) read that the victim was ill and targeted as such.

Most tellingly you rarely see the news reporting that someone committed a crime who was perfectly well. At the best nothing is mentioned at all, after all why report an absence of information? At worst the suggestion is made as speculation anyway.

It's not as if the perpetrator is going to sue.

Likewise most portrayals in media focus on serial killers, rapists, child molesters. Again, the link is being reinforced in people's minds without a meaningful challenge.

What we need are more positive portrayals in the media, more balance and accountability in reporting, more challenges to assumptions and more people speaking up about their experiences.