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[–] 7 points 5 days ago

I'm very practically minded. I want whatever reduces ricidivism so that it lowers repeat offenses and makes society safer, which seems to put me on the side of reformation. I don't even care about "justice." I want what gives the best practical outcomes. I've never heard an argument for retribution that wasn't just some sort of moral outrage about how it doesn't give the offender what they "deserve," but I can't pretend I care about that.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    Justice, by definition, cannot be retributive, as retributive justice is nothing more than vengeance, bloodlust, or simple reaction.

    Every incarcerated individual deserves not only humane conditions, but being treated as a human as well. In turn, that means that all justice must inherently be reformative. That does not mean that we should let violent criminals out after two months in prison, but for whatever term a person is incarcerated, the system should strive to help the person understand the error of his ways through education, and offer a hope for an alternative existence.

    Violent criminals also make up a proportionally tiny amount of the prison population, and even then, many violent criminals are violent because of violent growing conditions, state violence, lack of education, and a lack of prospects. Offering education, a jobs program and training, and the ability for the individual to not feel like a rat in a cage is the very least a socialist justice system could strive to accomplish.

    The death penalty further stands as the single most reactionary form of justice available. I don't care whether the judge is Chinese or American, any imposition of death by state apparati is a travesty and incompatible with socialism.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    I don’t care whether the judge is Chinese or American, any imposition of death by state apparati is a travesty and incompatible with socialism.

    I would draw a distinction here. If the state's existence or authority is threatened, then the death penalty is valid, especially if it is a nascent socialist state. The preceding revolution and its survival would be more important than any one individual's right to life.

    Once a revolution has attained stability and maturity, then the death penalty couldn't be justified. And of course, no death penalty issued by a capitalist state is ever justified.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago

    I agree, however while the period directly following the revolution presents a number of exigent circumstances that require the death penalty, such as the execution of war criminals, state actors, and so forth, that period does not last for a particularly long time.

    I was referring more to the modern Chinese state and the continued usage of the death sentence and penalty. With the Chinese state fully consolidated and no longer facing imminent annihilation from internal or external actors, continuing to use the death penalty for criminal prosecution is an unnecessary travesty. There is nothing that the death penalty offers that simply sentencing an individual to life in prison does not offer.

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  • puyi was a great success of the early chinese communist government. restorative justice/reeducation generally has better results than retribution.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 days ago* (1 child)

    Depends on the issue and its severity. Minor shit like shoplifting (disregarding everything else); obviously not retributive to a fucking extreme, if at all.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago

    Shoplifting shouldn't be a crime at all.

    Shoplifting creates jobs (corporate will need to hire more workers to help spot shoplifters)

    Shoplifting helps the poorest among us lead a better quality of life

    And shoplifting cuts down on the massive profits our corporate overlords make.

    All of these are legitimately good things. Go out there and shoplift people. Those people have an entire store full of things you don't have. They are not going to miss it if you take some for yourself.

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  • Well, prison isn't working. I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK people get sent to prison for not paying their TV license while others walk free after committing the most heinous violent crimes. Something needs to change.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago

    Rehabilitative. No cruel and inhumane conditions.

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  • [+] -8 points 5 days ago (11 children)

    Ideally, no punishment at all, and only rehabilitation.

    Criminals are always either made by environmental pressures, or they are made by bad genetics. There is no reason for anyone to be criminal other than these two.

    If a person is made to commit a crime by their environment, well it is not very fair to punish them, is it? It is the fault of their environment - you should try and fix that instead and make sure that the person does not commit another crime again. If I had a hungry child and the only way I could feed them was by assaulting a security guard and shoplifting, you can't really blame me for doing that. No sane person could guarantee that they wouldn't do the same if they were in my shoes.

    On the other hand, if a person commits a crime because they just can't help it and they are 'broken' in some way, it is still not fair to punish them for it, is it? They just can't help it. If, hypothetically, my body was defective such that I breathe out chlorine gas and people near me die because of that, you can't really blame me for that, can you? I can't help but breathe. It is not fair to punish people for that which they can't help but do. You should instead make sure they cannot hurt others without punishing them.

    Therefore, it logically follows that punishing a criminal is always morally unjust. Preventing crimes is the moral responsibility of society as a whole, and punishment is the state lashing out to mask its incompetence.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 5 days ago* (10 children)

    I genuinely find the idea of people having "bad genetics" to be an extremely vile and ableist concept that takes away the accountability of people who commit awful acts. We seriously need to push against this concept.

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  • [–] -4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (8 children)

    No we don't. As materialists, we believe that all that exists in the world is material. What controls a person's behavior is neurons firing in their brain at any instance, what fires these neurons is the precise arrangement and connections between said neurons.

    There are two things, and two things only that can influence how neurons are wired in your brain - that being your environment and your genetics. Unless you believe in a sky daddy, there is nothing else that has been scientifically proven to influence the way you behave. It therefore logically and scientifically follows that every action you make is a fact of either genetics or environment or both combined.

    We need to push against the idea that people are not susceptible to bad environments and genetics and therefore it is upon the individual who commits a crime the responsibility for said crime rests. That is a vile concept.

    Free will does not exist. Those who commit crimes are always victims of past or present crimes themselves. To think otherwise is idealistic and not materialistic.

    And outside of crimes, people do really have bad genetics. This is not ableist, what the fuck are you talking about really? What do you think genetic disorders are? Try telling someone with hemophilia that they haven't got a genetic problem, they just have to try really hard to make their blood clot. That's stupid.

    A "crime" is a social construct. There are no acts that are universally crimes. Even things like murder are okay depending on the context, such as if done in self defense or in times of war. Even stuff like pedophilia who almost everyone in the world currently alive today would consider a crime wasn't universally a crime across the entirety of human history. As such, there are moral implications of blindly accepting crimes as always products of individual responsibility especially when said crimes are defined by imperfect, or even morally reprehensible societies. According to Israeli law, all Palestinian hostages they hold in their prisons are criminals who did "awful" acts. Do they have to take accountability?

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  • [+] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (4 children)
  • [–] -2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

    a mere tautology

    And? Are tautologies banned in this community? What's the problem here?

    But once we come to know this law, which acts (as Marx pointed out a thousand times) independently of our will and our mind

    And our mind, eh? And our mind. Engels is not talking about what we're talking about here.

    The mastery of nature manifested in human practice is a result of an objectively correct reflection within the human head of the phenomena and processes of nature, and is proof of the fact that this reflection (within the limits of what is revealed by practice) is objective, absolute, and eternal truth."

    Again, Engels is in perfect agreement with me here. There is still no free will.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)
  • [–] -3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 child)

    Free will consists in understanding, little by little, the laws of necessity and then applying this knowledge, little by litle, to practice. And with practice it's the same thing. Through practice we derive our knowledge quantitavely

    This is not free will. You are operating with a custom definition of free will that only you subscribe to.

    Free will is not the ability to independently act as independent agents. Free will is the ability to make your own decisions unimpeded and independent of external factors. Life doesn't have this. Humans are limited to doing things that their brain allows them to by nature of how it's wired. You cannot recite the entire works of Shakespeare off the cuff right now, even if you will yourself to do it so hard right now. That information is simply not in your brain right now.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    I was not arguing against the idea that "people are susceptible to bad environments", I was only arguing against the idea that "bad genetics" are what make bad people, as an autistic person, I shouldn't have to explain why I think this is vile.

    Anyways, I'm not going to respond to you any more than that, because this is fucking absurd. Do not think this means you are correct.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago

    I also have autism. This objectively influences the way I think and behave and I'd argue that it makes me more susceptible to impulsive behavior that would be "criminal" then were I not to have it. The thing is, that means neurotypical people are able to carry out harmful acts much more subtly (or even legally in case of cops).

    But it's also a matter of me disregarding a law because I don't think it fair. There's also the rather nebulous terminology of "bad" and the high variance within each category. It is indeed a mix, we don't exist in a vacuum, and the world doesn't exist independently of us.

    But I agree, hounding someone who has "bad genetics" is a horrific problem and it often is what causes incidents. I know of a couple of twins who had a child. This is as close to stereotypical "bad genetics" as it gets but do you know what people are going to do? They're going to pick on the poor child, slander and harm them rather than seeing them as someone who likely needs help through no fault of their own. Condemning the victim. Probably driving the victim to harsh action, thus fueling the "bad genetics" fire.

    Don't think we're immune to genetic judgments. Too often we see people with pedophilic attraction as freaks who must undergo conversion therapy or some shit lest they endanger everyone around them. This is a textbook case of us saying bad genetics make bad people. Despite the fact that the ICD says the attraction on its own is no cause for concern, therapy targets distress and behavior should it be relevant, and the vast majority of people with the attraction never do anything and just go throughout life.

    In conclusion, I deny that genetics aren't a dactor at all in behavior, but I condemn the notion that any set of genetics on their own is going to influence anyone to commit harmful actions provided they're not deprived like a plant growing without water. Even then, an autistic kid throwing some tantrum, if you REALLY want to count that, has absolutely nothing on the horrendous travesties those neurotypicals in power have done. I guess it's the opposite. In an ableist society, having "GOOD" genetics might make one more suceptible to accessing and abusing power over others.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 days ago

    arguing against the idea that "bad genetics" are what make bad people

    I have never said that genetics are what make bad people. I said that there are two things that can influence a person's behavior, their genetics and their lived encironemnt.

    Genetics obviously contribute to a person's behavior and this much is a known scientific fact. You can ignore it all you want but that doesn't make it not true.

    as an autistic person, I shouldn't have to explain why I think this is vile.

    I fail to see how that's "vile". I haven't looked into autism spectrum disorder but as far as I know it is a mostly genetically defined disorder. But even so, how is that "vile" or "ableist"? I too have disorders I suffer from that I inherited, ie, that I got from my genetics.

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  • [–] -3 points 6 days ago

    retribution is good for white oppressive westerners imo, maybe a chance of reformation after that IF they behave as it's only fair

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago

    I am not expert. In fact I am the furthest from one. But I think these topics are contextual and depend on the criminal and legal climate of the place. I am hesitant to speak in favour of punitive punishment because without grounding it in actual studies and research it can come off kinda chuddy.

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