Quote:Original post by mattnewport
Quote:Original post by Dmytry
It is obvious that he talks about purprose, the purprose for which the justice does "punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, or even non-intervention" - for preventing/decreasing the crime (and ultimately for making live nicer). That's what taxpayers are largely paying money for.
It's not really the matter of opinion, it's matter of being able to parse his statement.
It is a matter of opinion because there is a school of thought that punishment or 'justice' is just as, if not more, important than prevention or reduction of crime.
A lot of people (maybe most people) think that crime prevention is or should be the goal of criminal justice but that is by no means a universally held opinion.
Rational person democracially controls the justice system to increase his safety and safety of people he care about. Irrational person of course can have all sorts of motivations why have police (say one may like the brave look of police officers, or feel compulsive ugre to pay).
If you want retribution, hire hitman really.
Quote:
[edit] Wikipedia explains the distinction between the two schools of thought: Theories of retributive justice - most real world justice systems, including the British one that is the root of the original article, reflect a mixture of both views of justice in their structure.
Retribution? Ha.
How many years in nice european prison would be retribution for lost life? How it can even be compared, inconvenience versus lost life?
Since the capital punishment has been abandoned almost everywhere, you can hardly talk about retribution, as there's no retribution even in most severe case that provoke maximal ugre of revenge (murder that is).
Of course justice must also be "fair" when it comes to non-punishing innocents, respecting privacy, etc etc, in that nobody thinks it's nice to live in society where it isn't "fair" because it would lower the quality of life.
Or this stupid "what utilitarian view might promote" example of executing few shoplifters live on TV (which would need to be done regularly). Human life cost something, and unusually severe punishment for extremely small percent of offenders is really rather ineffective deterrent in practice, it just falls into cathegory "sunbathes is linked to cancer". Executing all shoplifters would also have higher cost than gain.
"Retributive justice" does kind of make sense for small crimes (like theft etc), but this sense that it makes is again utilitary, as there's utilitary value in having order and maintaining this order by compensation for violations (but compensating only as long as it is good for overall value).
edit: whoops, justice for purprose of maintaining practically useful order that's "restorative justice".
In the topic, again, it's argued with utilitary arguments by just about everyone here: the precrime thing has too much potential of abuse.
[Edited by - Dmytry on December 2, 2006 2:48:41 AM]