It's difficult to synchronize the crime and punishment properly in many cases, but punishment is there to let people know what they can and can't do. All the other things are secondary. Just telling people what they can and can't do isn't enough. People need to have consequences for their actions, otherwise what's the point of being good? Going to heaven? Yeah, no such thing for the growing atheist population. That's probably why the good people want the bad people to get punished accordingly. Good people want to do bad stuff all the time, but because they know better and understand that they shouldn't do to others what they wouldn't want done to them, they don't. But when someone comes along and doesn't give a crap about any of that and does whatever he feels like at the expense of others, the good people want that person to get punished. It just gets difficult to judge a proper punishment for people who go way past the minimum required for a lifetime sentence. Ideally, everyone should want to be good without having to fear the consequences if they were to be bad. But in reality that's just a pipe dream. Like Louis CK said. "If murder was legal, there would be a whole lot of murder."
I dunno, the whole "if it weren't for X we'd all become monsters" is quite an archaic view of human beings. Don't get me wrong I think consequences are important but I don't think they are quite as cynically motivating.
Perhaps "all the sympathy" was pushing it to much... but in general you see the criminal getting off a charge just by his lawyer twisting things around and then trying to create some sort of "you should feel sorry for this person and not punish them because they, had a bad home life, or suffer from anal warts or whatever other ridiculous things they come up with". Having an unhappy childhood and then blaming a crime that you do 15, 20 or more years later is a poor excuse to use IMO of course. Lawyers are snakes though... that's what they do is twist the truth. Such as in the Martin case... many things were twisted, many things were not even let out to the jury as far as what I know that is. Pictures of him with guns, pot plants, the fact that he was using a lot of the drinks he was getting to make LEAN and DMX... err wait, I mean so he could go home and snuggle up with his blankie and watch cartoons all night.
As I said on the other thread I think how people are "created" (genetics, upbringing, experiences, injuries, illnesses etc) will increasingly play more of a role in how they are judged for their actions. You can see kids all the time that have no chance of ending up behaving well. Bad parents, probably bad genetics, bad upbringing, bad nutrition, lack of education, etc etc. You can't expect such a person to develop with the same capacity for right and wrong as a person with a much better background IMHO. We aren't blank slates and we aren't fully in control of what we do or don't do.
No no, that's not what I mean. I mentioned Louis CK, but I don't agree with the sentiment that everyone would be killing people. If murder was completely legal, not even a misdemeanor or anything. Just entirely allowed. Then we would see many people committing murder, but not everyone. Even good people get very angry with somebody sometimes and if there were 0 legal repercussions for killing that person, then we'd definitely see some people, who'd never do it in the real world, kill that person. That's my opinion on it anyways.
So they get to use that as an excuse for their behavior? I grew up in a broken home, parents fighting ALL the time whenever they saw each other, verbally abused, my mother pretty much losing it for a while, my Father attempted suicide, and that's not even half of the problems I had growing up. I had to take care of myself from the time I was 9 years old... that means I cooked my own dinner, I cleaned, I did all the things most of the little brats running around out here have no clue about at 18 or 20, but I'm not blaming some of my issues on any of that. It's a lot more about getting through all of that and making something of yourself anyway. All I ever hear is excuses about these kids... it gets pretty old.
Indeed. And you can find people that got all the breaks you never did and turn out to be horrible criminals. But apply those sorts of lives to all sorts of people and your life will turn out more criminals than a more priviliged and balanced and nurturing life will. Especially combined with genetics. If someone has poor impulse control, has been battered and lived with violence all their lives then in some ways it IS an excuse. Not an excuse that should fully excuse their behaviour but a mitigating factor all the same. All I'm cautionng against is seeing people as fully in control of what they do or how they've turned out, and so when they transgress it's ALL on them. I think it's a mixture of variables and the more we understand those variables then perhaps the better able we are to influence them favourably. Don't get me wrong...if you commit a crime you get to be "punished" and removed from society.
aside from that, the problem of "punishment" is that most of those behind bars do very little to try to become a better member of society when they are out. There isn't enough done in the prison system to attempt to really "rehabilitate" these people when they do pretty much whatever they want in prison. Perhaps classes about history, or what you can have or do even with a criminal record, as I think most of them have no hope in themselves about a life after jail.
Well that's the job of a defense lawyer. On the other hand prosecuting lawyers will use every trick in the book to make the criminal out to be a baby eating monster. In Martins case the reason a lot of his background was ommitted was because it was irrelevant (and because a lot of the supposed facts about Martin weren't actually facts and a lot of the photos circulated in right wing chain emails actually weren't of Trayvon Martin, but were actually photos of other Trayvon's and in one incident right wing conservatives managed to mistake a photo of Trayvon Martin with a Photo of "The Game", a 34 year old gangster rapper). http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/martin.asp
That really depends on who you ask, one website will tell you one thing while another one will say the opposite... the point of that is that Zimmerman was not all at fault, even if the way he went about some things were questionable.
True, but certain websites produce considerably weaker sources than others and some just provide empty speculation and conspiracy theories. A lot of claims have been made about Trayvon as a gang banger... but no one has provided any credible evidence outside of the fact he was suspended for smoking weed (which is not an un-common activity for teenage males in Florida). I think Trayvon could probably of handled it better.. but I don't know what happened. It sounds like he was followed by Zimmerman, felt threatened, preemptively attacked and was then shot dead. Kind of like Rogan's stance on it: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__r9but1zkg"]JOE ROGAN TALKS ABOUT Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman - YouTube[/ame] It's one of the few times I agree with the guy.
I don't know if it was "tailored" for to do that, but people sure do like to revisit them often based on the statics.
The statistics say that people enjoy going back to prison? Really? I thought they just said that folks were likely to go back to prison.
