{"id":28507,"date":"2015-11-07T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28507"},"modified":"2015-10-28T07:05:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T11:05:29","slug":"qotd-humane-punishment-for-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/07\/qotd-humane-punishment-for-criminals\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Humane punishment for criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern countries pride themselves on their humane treatment of prisoners. And by \u201chumane\u201d, I mean \u201clock them up in a horrible and psychologically traumatizing concrete jail for ten years of being beaten and raped and degraded, sometimes barely even seeing the sun or a green plant for that entire time, then put it on their permanent record so they can never get a good job or interact with normal people ever again when they come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compare this to what \u201cinhumane\u201d countries that were still into \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d would do for the same crime. A couple of lashes with the whip, then you\u2019re on your way.<\/p>\n

Reader. You have just been convicted of grand theft auto (the crime, not the game). You\u2019re innocent, but the prosecutor was very good at her job and you\u2019ve used up all your appeals and you\u2019re just going to have to accept the punishment. The judge gives you two options:<\/p>\n

1) Five years in prison
\n2) Fifty strokes of the lash<\/p>\n

Like everyone else except a few very interesting people who help provide erotic fantasies for the rest of us, I don\u2019t like being whipped. But I would choose (2) in a fraction of a heartbeat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And aside from being better for me, it would be better for society as well. We know that people who spend time in prison are both more likely to stay criminals in the future and better at being criminals<\/a>. And each year in jail costs the State $50,000; more than it would cost to give a kid a year\u2019s free tuition at Harvard. Cutting the prison system in half would free up approximately enough money to give free college tuition to all students at the best school they can get into.<\/p>\n

But of course we don\u2019t do that. We stick with the prisons and the rape and the kids who go work at McDonalds because they can\u2019t afford college. Why? Progressives!<\/em><\/p>\n

If we were to try to replace prison with some kind of corporal punishment, progressives would freak out and say we were cruel and inhumane. Since the prison population is disproportionately minority, they would probably get to use their favorite word-beginning-with-\u201cR\u201d, and allusions would be made to plantation owners who used to whip slaves. In fact, progressives would come up with some reason to oppose even giving criminals the option<\/em> of corporal punishment (an option most would certainly take) and any politician insufficiently progressive to even recommend it would no doubt be in for some public flagellation himself, albeit of a less literal kind.<\/p>\n

So once again, we have an uncanny valley. Being very nice to prisoners is humane and effective (Norway seems to be trying this with some success<\/a>), but we\u2019re not going to do it because we\u2019re dumb and it\u2019s probably too expensive anyway. Being very strict to prisoners is humane and effective \u2013 the corporal punishment option. But being somewhere in the fuzzy middle is cruel to the prisoners and incredibly destructive to society \u2013 and it\u2019s the only route the progressives will allow us to take.<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2013-03-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern countries pride themselves on their humane treatment of prisoners. And by \u201chumane\u201d, I mean \u201clock them up in a horrible and psychologically traumatizing concrete jail for ten years of being beaten and raped and degraded, sometimes barely even seeing the sun or a green plant for that entire time, then put it on their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,9,41],"tags":[343,99],"class_list":["post-28507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-law","category-quotations","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7pN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28508,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28507\/revisions\/28508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}