Bullied Kids More Likely to Become Psychotic Preteens

[Simon_Jester]

That is specific deterance- general deterance is making an example of someone for everyone else. It doesn't require conprehension on the person who is being punished part.

The policy of general deterrance has some serious flaws as jurisprudence.

First, it still only works on individuals who can be deterred; you'll still have crazy people who are unable to make the right choice, rather than merely unwilling. For people who can be rationally deterred, you might as well make an example of other people who can be rationally deterred. There's not all that much profit in heaping extra examples on the pile.

Second, it's questionable whether punishment for general deterrence is fair to the individuals being punished. Is it right to punish someone who doesn't understand the charges they're being punished for, simply because it will have a salutary effect on those who do? I think that saying "yes" to that is a step in the wrong direction; take enough such steps and you wind up grabbing random people from the "usual suspects" class so that you'll have someone to make an example of for high-profile crimes. Deciding that the mental state of the defendant is irrelevant doesn't automatically lead you there, but it does make it more likely that you'll end up there.
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Among other things, a person who is mentally disturbed enough that they can't understand what they're being punished for isn't going to be very good at mounting a legal defense, for the following reasons:

1) Such people are generally poor, and therefore forced to rely on state-provided lawyers (if the state bothers to provide one). They cannot afford to hire a lawyer based on the lawyer's reputation, and are unlikely to notice if their lawyer makes a mistake, which means that they're less likely to get appeals even when the law says they deserve one.

2) Such a person is likely to make self-contradictory remarks, to break down under pressure and say whatever they think interrogator wants to hear, to act against their own interests in the courtroom, and so on. And they'll do all these things not because they are guilty, but because they are stupid or deranged. This makes it difficult to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, because it's hard to rule out the possibility that the holes in their testimony are the product of a crazy mind rather than a liar, that they confessed because the police asked leading questions, and so forth.

In societies where guilt must be established beyond reasonable doubt, that's a problem. Which is where the legal concept of "competency to stand trial" comes from (at least in US law). A person who lacks the mental ability to understand the charges against them and aid in their own legal defense may need to be locked away in an institution, but they shouldn't be locked away in a prison.

[Samuel]

First, it still only works on individuals who can be deterred; you'll still have crazy people who are unable to make the right choice, rather than merely unwilling. For people who can be rationally deterred, you might as well make an example of other people who can be rationally deterred. There's not all that much profit in heaping extra examples on the pile.

Nope. Bad plan. You don't know in advance who can be rationally deterred and if claiming that it doesn't work on you gets people out, everyone will do that.

Second, it's questionable whether punishment for general deterrence is fair to the individuals being punished.

Why is this a problem?

take enough such steps and you wind up grabbing random people from the "usual suspects" class so that you'll have someone to make an example of for high-profile crimes.

Except than it means that people can get away with crimes and the crime rate goes up- after all, if you can commit crimes and stay out of jail it isn't a good deterrent. Sure, we are punishing people, but if they aren't the people who are actually guilty of the crime, than the guilty parties go free and unless you have a perfect conpiracy it gets out that all you need to commit a crime is a good fall guy.

Utilitarianism DOES take into account the responces to your actions.

A person who lacks the mental ability to understand the charges against them and aid in their own legal defense may need to be locked away in an institution, but they shouldn't be locked away in a prison.

Hey, I'm fine with that. Deterrance just needs you to be off the streets and in a place people don't want to be.

[Ariphaos]

No I don't. I just don't care. Pragmatically, any legal system which gives too much weight to your mindset only opens up the door for any sufficiently dishonest prick and his lawyer to get him off any crime. This is not a hypothetical; we've seen it done.

Again, I've no problem with execution when cases get that severe. If society lets a person get so far gone that they actually represent a threat to other people, at best, the reasons should be an afterthought - they need to be removed.

If they are found to be legally insane, they can instead spend their time on death row being psychoexamined.

Wrong, fucktard. You claimed that if someone has sufficient mental problems, their brain is necessarily "broken", and a person with a "broken" mind should not be blamed for his own actions. Why does that argument not apply to sociopaths? The fact that you didn't phrase your argument that way does not mean it does not lead that way.

I don't see anything wrong with that, personally. That you get your panties in a bind over it is, frankly, not my issue. If a sociopath is sufficiently manipulative that they are a danger to those around them, they should be removed.

The issue I have with blaming -them- in such instances is that these sorts of cases are, in theory, preventable. Send the sociopath-turned-psychopath or psychotic nut to death row, go back through his childhood and try to find out what the warning signs were, learn to find and address them in society, preventing future cases.

If they know that what they are doing is illegal and carries consequences, then that's too damned bad, isn't it? The only time insanity should be viable as a criminal defense is when the delusional person actually thinks he was not doing something illegal. For example, if someone is so insane that he thinks he's killing a squirrel when he in fact is killing a person. However, it's quite a stretch for you to mutilate my argument from "assholes should not be able to use childhood bullying as an excuse for their behaviour" to "there is no such thing as severe psychosis", Mr. Strawman.

I've honestly no idea how you are taking that to be my argument. Once it gets to the point where they pose a serious risk of killing someone they need to be removed from society. I am not suggesting you let your kids get friendly with someone who genuinely believes little people are demonic and need to be exterminated.

They're a perfectly valid response to your logic that anyone whose mind is "broken" should not be blamed for his actions, you lying little shit.

Well, point out exactly where I lied and how and I will apologize for my error. Otherwise I am just going to assume you are trying to get a rise out of me.

That's rich, from a dishonest little fuckwad who took my original argument about "assholes" being held responsible for their own actions and declared that I was denying the existence of all mental disorders.

Where did I say you denied them?

You said you did not care:

I don't give a shit whether the person is "able" to take responsibility for his own actions.
...
Irrelevant to my position. I don't care whether they can fix themselves.
...
Irrelevant to my position. I don't care whether asshole behaviour comes naturally to him.
...
Irrelevant to my position. I don't care whether they want to fix themselves.

And thus, I inferred that you did not, in the general case, since, if a person is running around with loose nuts, they should be fixed or removed. If they cannot do this themselves, it is up to society to do so whether society wants to or not, or pay the price for not doing so.

Oh right, because there is no such thing as deterrent?

I thought I explained how it can be counterproductive for psychosis in my post?

A person who is hallucinating, has delusions, sees patterns that are not there in reality or is incapable of actual rational thought is not necessarily going to think of your action as a deterrent. I referenced a fairly specific example of a sort of person that I am sure we have both experienced - people who genuinely believe God is talking to them. Everything we say and do gets put through that filter. Your idea of deterrence is their martyr complex.

---

Anyway, I missed Kuroneko's post:

I'm not sure why you'd make such an analogy. If the experience with the software is odious enough, the typical response would be to hate both the software and its makers, but in your analogy, the person "is" the software.

As a programmer I tend not to have this reaction. When an odious situation occurs, it's usually one of a few select situations:

1) My own damned fault
2) Hardware issue
3) A situation in which I can trace down the development team and sometimes even the individual responsible, and personally explain to them what went wrong and hopefully how to fix it.
4) Doing something that has absolutely no business being supported. I suppose I could swear up a storm about all the goofy screwups in my adventures with virtualization, but some technologies need a decade or two to mature and I need to make a value judgment about which ones I want to be a part of.

So I don't generally blame the software anymore. Except maybe ed.

It would be begging the question to presuppose that there is just one place where the fault lies...

I was trying to propose a simplified case, but anyway...

If the flaw is at least partly the result of prior choices of the neural network itself, then sure. A person is not just a neural network running through a predetermined set of training data. How much constraint there is on one's choices and future circumstances is varies quite a bit on one's situation, sure, but to deny that a person has no part in his or her own upbringing is just silly.

To be more direct, in the event of most mental disorders - Aspergers, sociopaths, psychosis - something is actually functionally wrong with the input. They lack the ability to perceive empathic cues (Aspergers), the ability to genuinely possess those reactions (sociopaths), or some factor of their world does not coincide with reality (psychosis).

Aspergers and sociopaths can learn. Psychosis can be corrected.

In an era where we can account for and address these issues when caught early enough - and early enough is always getting later - blaming them strikes me as nonproductive, however. You can, if you really want, but unless you address the issue your actions do not prevent new incidents from occurring, and prevention should really be the goal of any justice system.

And again, if someone needs to be removed from society, remove them. If something is incapable of holding responsibility for its actions and cannot be trusted, the proper response is to not let it take action.

[Superman]

Legally speaking, it's always been my understanding that true insanity ("insanity" is a legal term, not medical) applies when a person cannot truly distinguish right from wrong. So, in theory anyway, someone may be found to be legally insane when they have an exceptionally low IQ, or when they have some kind of "break" from reality (a psychotic episode, for example).

Xeriar, when I started reading your posts, it seemed like you were talking about people with emotional issues, what might be called a personality disorder in the psychiatric world, and now you're trying to make a comparison with something like Aspergers, or even schizophrenia (which causes psychosis). It's not a simple matter of someone having a "mental illness" because each of these are completely different. Someone with say... Down Syndrome, can't really be held accountable for his actions in the same way as someone who battles severe depression, or who is a sociopath. People in the latter probably even have fucked up childhoods, but they're still expected to follow the rules of society. It's not a simple matter of "broken" or "not broken."

[Simon_Jester]

Nope. Bad plan. You don't know in advance who can be rationally deterred and if claiming that it doesn't work on you gets people out, everyone will do that.

Which is why "not guilty by reason of insanity" is a defense only allowed for people that professionals can confirm to be crazy. You can't just say "Nope, I'm too crazy for rationality to control my actions" as a get out of jail free card. And I like it that way, but not because of the deterrent effect it will have on people who aren't crazy.

Second, it's questionable whether punishment for general deterrence is fair to the individuals being punished.

Why is this a problem?

Because I like having a justice system that behaves ethically and not unethically. I'm not satisfied with a legal system that acts unethically towards the individuals who fall under its eye, and I think it's unethical to apply unfair punishments to people.

If, of course, we're going for an unethical justice system and we want deterrence, we have a whole menu of ways to change the system to make it scarier. Killing or imprisoning people who don't understand what you're doing to them is just the beginning of your options.
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take enough such steps and you wind up grabbing random people from the "usual suspects" class so that you'll have someone to make an example of for high-profile crimes.

Except than it means that people can get away with crimes and the crime rate goes up- after all, if you can commit crimes and stay out of jail it isn't a good deterrent. Sure, we are punishing people, but if they aren't the people who are actually guilty of the crime, than the guilty parties go free and unless you have a perfect conpiracy it gets out that all you need to commit a crime is a good fall guy.

Yes, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. The trouble is that not having to worry about factors like the defendant's mental competence encourages the courts to become intellectually lazy. That's the chief virtue of applying the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard; it forces the prosecution to get their ducks in a row before the punishments can be handed out. When it's applied consistently, it's good at telling the difference between people who are guilty and who look guilty. Remove things like the standard of competence to stand trial and that becomes less true.

Utilitarianism DOES take into account the responces to your actions.

The weakness of utilitarianism is that in application, it's easy to stop your analysis too early and not notice the deeper problems with the way you're doing things. Personally, I prefer to mix my utilitarianism with other stuff rather than taking it straight.
________

A person who lacks the mental ability to understand the charges against them and aid in their own legal defense may need to be locked away in an institution, but they shouldn't be locked away in a prison.

Hey, I'm fine with that. Deterrance just needs you to be off the streets and in a place people don't want to be.

... OK. All I have to say to that is that I am supremely indifferent to how much deterrent effect I get from a legal system that treats defendants unfairly. If a system I consider fair satisfies someone who prefers deterrence over all other concerns, I'm happy they're happy. But I don't think the system should be set up specifically make them happy.

[Samuel]

You can't just say "Nope, I'm too crazy for rationality to control my actions" as a get out of jail free card.

Irresistable compulsion? I'm not sure what the current state of the insanity defense is in the US though (or else where).

Because I like having a justice system that behaves ethically and not unethically. I'm not satisfied with a legal system that acts unethically towards the individuals who fall under its eye, and I think it's unethical to apply unfair punishments to people.

If, of course, we're going for an unethical justice system and we want deterrence, we have a whole menu of ways to change the system to make it scarier. Killing or imprisoning people who don't understand what you're doing to them is just the beginning of your options.

How is punishing people disproportionately unethical? The only problem is that it makes people more desperate- if you make the penalty for rebelion the same for being late, all people who are late are going to become rebels. That is why we have punishments scaled up by severity.

The trouble is that not having to worry about factors like the defendant's mental competence encourages the courts to become intellectually lazy.

Insanity is a defense and thus established by the defense, not the prosecution.

The weakness of utilitarianism is that in application, it's easy to stop your analysis too early and not notice the deeper problems with the way you're doing things.

If ethics was easy...

All I have to say to that is that I am supremely indifferent to how much deterrent effect I get from a legal system that treats defendants unfairly.

The goal of the criminal justice system is to reduce crime. All other considerations are a means to that end. It is set up with things like fair trail and the like because those are all essential for reaching that end, but they are not the goal of the system.

[Simon_Jester]

Irresistable compulsion? I'm not sure what the current state of the insanity defense is in the US though (or else where).

It's not a "get out of jail free" card, because there are real consequences to being found not guilty by reason of insanity. 'Criminally insane' is not a label you want stuck on you for the rest of your life. And there's a burden of proof involved. You can't just go:
"Your Honor, I am crazy and should not be punished."
"Oh, well then! I guess you get this one as a freebie!"
________

How is punishing people disproportionately unethical? The only problem is that it makes people more desperate- if you make the penalty for rebelion the same for being late, all people who are late are going to become rebels. That is why we have punishments scaled up by severity.

Punishing people unfairly can mean one of two things:

1) Punishment that should not have been applied at all, because it is wrong to punish the subject. That includes punishing someone for a crime they did not commit, and punishing certain categories of people that it is unfair to punish. Which is where criminal insanity comes in; it is not right to punish people for acts that they could not make a rational decision to avoid. It may be necessary to keep such people away from the community at large, and to try and snap them out of the craziness, but those are different from the purpose of punishment.

2) Punishments that are disproportionate. This isn't the type I meant, but I think it's unfair too. Punishments that are too light aren't fair to society at large, for reasons that I'm sure are easy for you to understand. Punishments that are too severe aren't fair to the individual, because they involve taking more from the individual than the specific act they committed justifies. And they aren't fair to society, either, because they tend to cross the line from deterrence to terrorization of the public.

Consider the effects of the American "War on Drugs" for an example. Possession, transportation, and distribution of drugs is punished very harshly, so much so that the social effects on communities with heavy drug use becomes devastating. We wind up with overcrowded prisons, a lower class that's grown so accustomed to the idea of long prison sentences that they no longer carry a stigma, and entire neighborhoods where so many of the adult males are in prison at any one time that the place undergoes social collapse. It's a policy disaster, even aside from the question of whether it is just to put someone in prison for five or ten years over relatively small quantities of drugs.
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Insanity is a defense and thus established by the defense, not the prosecution.

Competence to stand trial is established by the prosecution, not the defense. This stops the prosecution from picking easy targets that cannot effectively defend themselves against the charges as a way of boosting their conviction rate and creating the illusion of an effective legal system. Which they will do if you give them the chance, rationalizing it by deeming the incompetent defendants to be "criminal types."
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The goal of the criminal justice system is to reduce crime. All other considerations are a means to that end. It is set up with things like fair trail and the like because those are all essential for reaching that end, but they are not the goal of the system.

I believe that the criminal justice system is only right to pursue its goal when it stays within certain constraints. The constraints are defined by ethics and common sense.

A court that ignores ethics in the attempt to knock the crime rate down another point winds up causing more problems than it solves, even if it succeeds in reducing the crime rate.

[Samuel]

It's not a "get out of jail free" card, because there are real consequences to being found not guilty by reason of insanity. 'Criminally insane' is not a label you want stuck on you for the rest of your life. And there's a burden of proof involved. You can't just go:

I know (although people on occasion do try to fake it- but it is over represented because they tend to be high profile as well). If I remember correctly, the current system is to make sure that they are sane before either releasing them or punishing them. The second one sort of makes fixing them up redendant, especially if you do it for death penalty cases.

Punishments that are too severe aren't fair to the individual, because they involve taking more from the individual than the specific act they committed justifies.

I wasn't aware there was some external standard we could use to guage how much was too much.

And they aren't fair to society, either, because they tend to cross the line from deterrence to terrorization of the public.

How? That only applies if we make something a crime that large number of people are guilty of and selectively enforce it so people have to worry if they are next or blackmail. Making spitting gum on the sidewalk won't do it.

Possession, transportation, and distribution of drugs is punished very harshly, so much so that the social effects on communities with heavy drug use becomes devastating. We wind up with overcrowded prisons, a lower class that's grown so accustomed to the idea of long prison sentences that they no longer carry a stigma, and entire neighborhoods where so many of the adult males are in prison at any one time that the place undergoes social collapse. It's a policy disaster, even aside from the question of whether it is just to put someone in prison for five or ten years over relatively small quantities of drugs.

Yes, but this caused by the fact that the situation is so bad, the law can't compete and just makes things work. When you are dealing with people who having individuals they know die by gunfire is a fact of life, the threat of prison is alot less scary. Not to forget the large amount of money that the trade offers.

When reward outweighs the risk plenty of people will step in to meet demand. Of course, risk is the punishment times the odds of being caught, so even maxed out it might not work.

Competence to stand trial is established by the prosecution, not the defense.

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/crimlaw ... tence.html
This seems to imply otherewise:

The presumption that the defendant is competent to stand trial may be called into question by defense counsel, the prosecutor, or the trial judge...
The Supreme Court held that the Due Process requirements of the Constitution permit a State to require a defendant claiming incompetence to stand trial to be charged with the burden of proving his incompetence by a preponderance of the evidence.

Am I misreading it?

I believe that the criminal justice system is only right to pursue its goal when it stays within certain constraints. The constraints are defined by ethics and common sense.

More accurately, the fact they cannot arrest or watch everyone and have to deal with the fact that the machinary is made of people.

[Samuel]

Er, I sort of forgot what my point was. Could you restate what you are arguing against so I don't accidentally make an idiot of myself.

[Ariphaos]

Legally speaking, it's always been my understanding that true insanity ("insanity" is a legal term, not medical) applies when a person cannot truly distinguish right from wrong. So, in theory anyway, someone may be found to be legally insane when they have an exceptionally low IQ, or when they have some kind of "break" from reality (a psychotic episode, for example).

Xeriar, when I started reading your posts, it seemed like you were talking about people with emotional issues, what might be called a personality disorder in the psychiatric world, and now you're trying to make a comparison with something like Aspergers, or even schizophrenia (which causes psychosis). It's not a simple matter of someone having a "mental illness" because each of these are completely different. Someone with say... Down Syndrome, can't really be held accountable for his actions in the same way as someone who battles severe depression, or who is a sociopath. People in the latter probably even have fucked up childhoods, but they're still expected to follow the rules of society. It's not a simple matter of "broken" or "not broken."

Err, I never intended to refer to personality disorders, sorry if it seemed like that.

When I made the comparison between sociopaths-aspergers-psychotics above, I was pointing out that there are things you can't expect people with some disorders to do, at least not intuitively. It's one thing to deal with them accordingly but entirely another to ignore or (in the case of schizophrenia and the mass of largely progressive issues it covers) inflame the condition.

[Simon_Jester]

Er, I sort of forgot what my point was. Could you restate what you are arguing against so I don't accidentally make an idiot of myself.

My basic position is that it's wrong to apply criminal punishment to someone who is or was mentally incapable of one or both of the following:
1) Making a rational decision to follow the law at the time they committed the crime,
2) Understanding that they are being punished as a consequence of something they did.

I further object to the concept of punishing individuals who are thus incapable as a form of "general deterrent" against others who are mentally capable. I have a collection of reasons for this, some pragmatic*, and some and ethical.**

*I believe that the practice of punishing the weak as an example to the strong encourages courts to become intellectually lazy, unjust, and therefore inefficient.
**I believe that treating the life and fate of the weak as a tool to be used for its salutary effect on the strong, and doing something that would clearly be wrong if not for that effect, is in itself wrong. This is because I do not approve of using people primarily for their value as tools towards some external end.

[Simon_Jester]

Er, I sort of forgot what my point was. Could you restate what you are arguing against so I don't accidentally make an idiot of myself.

My basic position is that it's wrong to apply criminal punishment to someone who is or was mentally incapable of one or both of the following:
1) Making a rational decision to follow the law at the time they committed the crime,
2) Understanding that they are being punished as a consequence of something they did.

I further object to the concept of punishing individuals who are thus incapable as a form of "general deterrent" against others who are mentally capable. I have a collection of reasons for this, some pragmatic*, and some and ethical.**

*I believe that the practice of punishing the weak as an example to the strong encourages courts to become intellectually lazy, unjust, and therefore inefficient.
**I believe that treating the life and fate of the weak as a tool to be used for its salutary effect on the strong, and doing something that would clearly be wrong if not for that effect, is in itself wrong. This is because I do not approve of using people primarily for their value as tools towards some external end.

========

Punishments that are too severe aren't fair to the individual, because they involve taking more from the individual than the specific act they committed justifies.

I wasn't aware there was some external standard we could use to guage how much was too much.

There are some cases where the punishment is clearly too little (a ten dollar fine for first degree murder), others where it is clearly too much (beheading for littering), and still others where it is hard to tell. I favor staying towards the middle of the "hard to tell" range, where it is not obvious that the punishment is disproportionate to the harm done by the criminal. Beheading litterers may well discourage littering quite efficiently, but the goal of discouraging littering doesn't justify killing people in job lots.

The fact that the means would achieve the end cannot justify the means by itself, both because there is more than one end to be considered and because there is more than one possible set of means.
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And they aren't fair to society, either, because they tend to cross the line from deterrence to terrorization of the public.

How? That only applies if we make something a crime that large number of people are guilty of and selectively enforce it so people have to worry if they are next or blackmail. Making spitting gum on the sidewalk won't do it.

When the public fears that the court system will be arbitrary, that it will apply excessive punishments, and that it will not be concerned with separating the innocent from the guilty, the public will fear the courts.

Since I believe that governments are the rightful property of the citizens, this strikes me as a profoundly wrong arrangement. One way to start setting up this profoundly wrong arrangement is to apply extremely harsh punishments, harsh enough that a moment's intemperance or carelessness could suddenly cost someone their life or their future.

Crimes should not carry punishments more ruinous than the amount of harm caused and the level of premeditation involved will justify.
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Yes, but this caused by the fact that the situation is so bad, the law can't compete and just makes things work. When you are dealing with people who having individuals they know die by gunfire is a fact of life, the threat of prison is alot less scary. Not to forget the large amount of money that the trade offers.

When reward outweighs the risk plenty of people will step in to meet demand. Of course, risk is the punishment times the odds of being caught, so even maxed out it might not work.

Yes, but the problem isn't just that people don't fear the prisons. There's also the effects of putting such a large proportion of the population for so much time. When most adult males has been to prison, prison is no longer seen as "the place where bad people go." It is instead seen (with reason) as an engine of oppression used by the state to weaken the community as a whole. Moreover, the people being sent to prison are going into an environment that encourages them to pick up violent and illegal behaviors from their fellow inmates, which has other bad effects when they get out.

Collective effects matter. For prisons to have a worthwhile effect, they must be seen by society as a place of punishment for the wicked, not as some sort of rite of passage or normal state of being. Once they lose that perception, no amount of prison sentences can possibly stamp out crime in the community, because the community will no longer place any real value on staying out of prison.

Competence to stand trial is established by the prosecution, not the defense.

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/crimlaw ... tence.html
This seems to imply otherewise...

You're right. Sorry.

More accurately, the fact they cannot arrest or watch everyone and have to deal with the fact that the machinary is made of people.

Especially that last bit. Because the "machinery" is made of people, there are some things that it is just plain WRONG for the "machine" to do to the people it "processes."

[Samuel]

I believe that the practice of punishing the weak as an example to the strong encourages courts to become intellectually lazy, unjust, and therefore inefficient.

Weak and strong?

The fact that the means would achieve the end cannot justify the means by itself, both because there is more than one end to be considered and because there is more than one possible set of means.

Er, this is better phrased "if achieving the end causes more damage than otherwise would have occured, it isn't worth it."

When the public fears that the court system will be arbitrary, that it will apply excessive punishments, and that it will not be concerned with separating the innocent from the guilty, the public will fear the courts.

None of those are based on the severity of punishment. If punishment is standardized, it won't fit the first category and punishment is not related to determining guilt or innocence.

One way to start setting up this profoundly wrong arrangement is to apply extremely harsh punishments, harsh enough that a moment's intemperance or carelessness could suddenly cost someone their life or their future.

We already have that. If you screw up in a lisenced profession, you drive drunk and kill someone, etc...

Crimes should not carry punishments more ruinous than the amount of harm caused and the level of premeditation involved will justify.

The reason we punishment premeditation is to punish people who plan out crimes. Technically, killing someone on accident, spur of the moment, plotting to kill someone and plotting and carrying it out are all different crimes and all have to be detered seperately.

There's also the effects of putting such a large proportion of the population for so much time.

Well, that is because the government tried to wage a war on drugs. I don't think that this is a sane responce to the problem due to the exact effects you are mentioning.

This only is an issue when you have a crime that a large portion of the populance is commiting though.

Because the "machinery" is made of people, there are some things that it is just plain WRONG for the "machine" to do to the people it "processes."

I was refering more to the fact that the people who work for the jutice system would manipulate things and so that providing secrecy is a bad plan.

[Simon_Jester]

I believe that the practice of punishing the weak as an example to the strong encourages courts to become intellectually lazy, unjust, and therefore inefficient.

Weak and strong?

Generalized terms in this case. "Weak" meaning those who are not capable of mounting an effective defense in court, generally due to mental incapacity; "strong" meaning those who are so capable.
_________

The fact that the means would achieve the end cannot justify the means by itself, both because there is more than one end to be considered and because there is more than one possible set of means.

Er, this is better phrased "if achieving the end causes more damage than otherwise would have occured, it isn't worth it."

I don't agree, because it doesn't say the same thing. I know the way I phrased it is a bit tangled, but I don't think it can be better restated as something substantially different. The end is not the problem. The means are the problem; in this case the means of using extremely harsh punishments to deter criminals. Deterring criminals is fine, but the fact that doing X deters criminals does not mean X is a good idea: we have goals other than "deter criminals at all costs," and there are many ways to deter criminals so that we're not restricted to X and only X.

One way to start setting up this profoundly wrong arrangement is to apply extremely harsh punishments, harsh enough that a moment's intemperance or carelessness could suddenly cost someone their life or their future.

We already have that. If you screw up in a lisenced profession, you drive drunk and kill someone, etc...

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear enough. Those aren't examples of what I meant.

What I mean is that when people fear that something that they can realistically do by accident- something that they cannot make a rational decision to avoid- will ruin them, then there is no refuge from the fear. Driving drunk can wreck your life, but you can plausibly hope to avoid it by foresight, and it takes more than an instant to screw it up, because you can't get drunk in an instant and it's hard to get drunk by accident. Screwing up in a licensed profession can wreck your life, but the scale of the screwup must be unusual; most people can reasonably tell themselves that if they pay attention they won't screw up.

Imagine if you could be executed for speeding on the first offense, and if the law were enforced consistently. That would be an example of what I'm talking about- drive too fast for an instant and you die. Everyone would have to watch their speed like a hawk every moment, or drive far below the posted limits,. The consequences of breaking the law would be so dire that you couldn't afford to be in a position where you might break it by accident.

The result would be drastically slowed traffic, and possibly a fair number of accidents resulting from people watching their speedometer when they should have watched the road. It would be a mess, because the people would not only fear the consequences of breaking the law, but fear them too much. The actions they'd take out of fear would go beyond what is justified by whatever it was that made us pass a law in the first place.

So some punishments are too great because they compel individuals to spend too much effort making sure they comply with a law that, in the grand scheme of things, isn't that important. Others are too great because they hurt individuals more than the need for collective security justifies. There can be a lot of overlap here: if you start beheading people for speeding, you're hurting them more than the need to be safe from speeders justifies and you're forcing an unreasonable level of speed-consciousness on the public.
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Well, that is because the government tried to wage a war on drugs. I don't think that this is a sane responce to the problem due to the exact effects you are mentioning.

But the effects are not caused simply by the government "declaring war on drugs." They are caused by specific tactics the government uses in the "war". To 'fight' the 'war,' the government decided to punish all drug offenders very harshly, in an attempt to deter anyone else from dealing or using drugs. It didn't work. It backfired horribly. And I think there's a lesson here.

I know of no country that ever managed to abolish any major, common type of crime (such as murder or theft) by coming up with especially harsh punishments. I think there must be something wrong with this idea; we can't keep increasing the deterrent effect endlessly by ratcheting up the punishments. Just as importantly, at some point the incremental increase in deterrent no longer justifies hurting people more than you were before.
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Because the "machinery" is made of people, there are some things that it is just plain WRONG for the "machine" to do to the people it "processes."

I was refering more to the fact that the people who work for the jutice system would manipulate things and so that providing secrecy is a bad plan.

I was afraid of that. However, I maintain that we need to remember my point as well as yours- there has to be a limit on what you can do if you want your government to behave decently, and there are a lot of reasons not to want indecent governments.

[Invictus ChiKen]

As someone that was brutally bullied in all levels of School up to and including college with the administration only stepping in when I defended myself (untill my CRJ professor broke a lot of them ) I'd like to toss a response in.

I find it interesting that someone like you who presumably does not believe in a soul and thus would ascribe all behavior to electrochemical processes would then go and ask "Why can't this sequence of processes occur in this person?" as if the individual in question can fix himself by force of will alone rather than genuine external aid of some sort.

It's not as if you blame the physical machine when you face a software bug. A relevant example might be - if someone feeds a neural network bad training data, causing a problem, where does the fault lie?
1) The neural network's architect, who allowed a flaw to slip into the design that it could not correct for the improper training?
2) The individual who performed the improper training himself?
3) The neural network itself, which is physically incapable of correcting its own behavior while the flaw remains in place?

You forget that even if you go with the meat machine idea human beings are a self correcting type. If your not stupid or totally fucked up in the head one can seek help to correct there problems. For that matter if you believe in a soul why would you be shocked that it does not learn the same way as the rest of us, I mean seriously dude what do you think I soul is?

It comes down to the fact that to some extent we have freewill. Sure I know my background has fucked me up, but everyday I choose not to be an asshole, to not physically hurt those around me. I CHOOSE to get help when I can afford it and I CHOOSE to try and make the world a better place and not let what was done to me control the now in my life.

It's late and I am rambling so I'm gonna stop now before I start sounding like a chapter from a self help book.