h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What abut those so-called "people" who have no reason to be treated like Humans. Like Hitler and his officers? They didn't seem to know about human rights. Should we still grant them the same rights we have?
How about my Lady's ex boyfriend? His IQ is a negative intager and I doubt he's a person, he just looks like one (an ugly one at that).

what a co-incidence. Hitler also claimed that certain people were not "people", and so there was no reason to treat them like humans. It's a shame you couldn't meet - you'd have had so much in common.

Ouch. I would agree that making exceptions where human decency is concerned does become a slippery slope, though.

Oops. That was a little over-harsh, wasn't it? Sorry...

*invokes Godwin's Law on self and dissapears in a puff of netiquette*

It is a bit of a slippery slope. If you say that people like Hitler renounce their own rights by their actions, and you then treat them as if they have no rights, you then renounce your own and so on and so forth.
The best thing to do is just to get on with it and not think about the ethical consequences.
Or is it? I'm not sure.

Perhaps you need bad guys who are trying to do good - vigilantes, american foreign policy, and so forth. Or perhaps it keeps them out of trouble and gives them something else to do apart from trying to take over the world.

Perhaps we just need to hang them all. But then that would take us down to the level of them... you can't respect everyone's human rights unless everyone else also respects everyone's human rights, because in order to deal with people who don't respect human rights you have to take away some of their rights, which in a sense makes you the same as them.

What about animals that are so inteligent that they are almost human? Would an exceptionaly smart ape like a chimp or a bonobo have any sort of human rights? They have demonstrated powers of thought equil to a young human.

No, they should have ape rights. They are not human, and lucky so. I personaly believe that most dogs in Europe have more canine rights (and less duties) than a lot of children. The amount of space a dog has to have surmounts that of a kid, so where is the sense in that?

In many respects we are very liberal about how to implore human rights in our society. If you would take the rights as written, I cannot think of any reason for a nation to uphold an army. This is one of the things I also criticise with a lot of fundamentalist christians I got to know, who will say "Thou shalt not kill" but would readyly join the army during wartime. If I would want to return to be a christian I think I would join the amish. (But I think I am just idialising their pacifism...)

nah - there's no 'dangerous kids act' that forces us to put down violent* children. Instead we drug them into insensibility and call it 'progress'.

* or those with Attention Defficiency and Hyperactivity Disorder

There are a lot of bad things we do and call progress. Letting murders out of prison, for one thing.

MaW wrote: "There are a lot of bad things we do and call progress. Letting murders out of prison, for one thing."

"Murderers", I assume.

So there's no reprieve for murderers, then? Life imprisonment no matter what. Hmmmm. If I kill my wife accidentally, in an argument that got out of control, and you kill a security guard to get the money she's guarding, are we to be treated the same? Given that I killed my wife, even though it wasn't intentional, why don't I take this opportunity to kill my father-in-law, whom I've never liked? Two life sentences are much the same as one...

Once someone has served their sentence, have they not paid their debt to society? Can't they be released, and given another chance to be a contributing, constructive member of society?

Who matters most - the murderer's victim, to whom no further harm can be done, or the potential future victims he *might* harm *if* he was released?

The important thing when you're discussing prisons is to decide what they are for. Is it revenge, deterrence, reparation or the protection of potential future victims? Probably, it's some mixture of these. But without deciding what prison is for, it's almost impossible to determine whether (for example) murderers should be released after a time, or imprisoned forever.

It's not easy, this human rights stuff, is it?

Pattern-chaser

That´s why we are disscussing it, aren´t we?

Eeek. You're right, I meant murderers. I also meant letting them out early. I understand that there can be certain partially mitigating circumstances - killing in self-defence, for example, although obviously this should not be encouraged. What is not on is when people are sentenced to life imprisonment - and they stay in for fifteen years. Surely life should mean life. People who deliberately kill three, four, five or more people in cold blood surely don't deserve to be released early for good behaviour.

So as well as redefining what a life sentance actually means, we should also be looking at whether the punishment fits the crime. Taking a life is about the most permenant thing you can do. We have to respect human life as sacred (I mean sacred as in something to be cherished above all, rather than in a religious sense). Taking it is a crime against ourselves.

However, if we say that we then move into the sticky area of euthanasia, something I am not fundamentally opposed to. Certainly if we're going to practise euthanasia on our pets we should be willing to practise it on ourselves, given good enough reason.

MaW wrote: "People who deliberately kill [...] in cold blood surely don't deserve to be released early for good behaviour."

Well, like I asked before, why was it that we put them in prison?

+ to punish them for killing people?
+ to tell other citizens they will go to prison if they kill.
+ to protect the public - the ones that haven't yet been killed?
+ to treat - and hopefully cure - them of the need to kill?

Depending on the answers to these questions, we might reach a different answer to your original question: Should people who kill in cold blood be released early for good behaviour?

If the point of prison is punishment, then a clear demonstration of remorse *might* justify an early release. If the point is deterrence, then we need potential killers to see those in prison serving their full time. In the case of protecting the public, we could contemplate early release if we felt that the public was no longer at risk. If prison is for treatment, we can certainly release prisoners early if we could confirm that a cure has been affected.

So: what is prison for?

Pattern-chaser

If the prison system worked the way it was intended to, it would be an institutuin to rehabilitate people into society and a means to prevent crime. It was supposed to be like medicine, you don't want it, but it will help you.
Putting sick animals to sleep is sometimes the humane thing to do. It should be the same for humans. If I was beyond a cure and in pain, I would want someone to let me die.
Killing for food and self defence is acceptible, although I would like to avoid them. Killing my Lady's ex-boyfriend is a service to humanity and should be encouraged. If you ever met him, you would agree. Trust me.

If the prison system worked the way it was intended to, it would be an institutuin to rehabilitate people into society and a means to prevent crime. It was supposed to be like medicine, you don't want it, but it will help you.
Putting sick animals to sleep is sometimes the humane thing to do. It should be the same for humans. If I was beyond a cure and in pain, I would want someone to let me die.
Killing for food and self defence is acceptible, although I would like to avoid them. Killing my Lady's ex-boyfriend is a service to humanity and should be encouraged. If you ever met him, you would agree. Trust me.

Sorry about the double message, my computer had a small problem, I didn't think it went through.

*shrug* any prison length over about five years has about the same deterrence value - I'd hate to be in for five, and the amount of extra hatred to be in for twenty is about zero.

At least in the last fifteen years I'd be addicted to heroin, so at least some of the time would pass nicely.

And the rest of it would be horrible.

The way I see it, there are three options:
- use prison to rehabilitate, re-educate and persuade people that crime is not the way. This might not discourage first-time offenders but would probably reduce repeat offending, which I believe is the majority of crime
- use prison to terrify. Make it such a terrible, horrible place that anyone who even thinks of stepping over the line shudders and turns away again. The problem is, to make it like that you have to start treating people really, really, really badly. And how does that stand up with upholding human rights? Not very well.
- use prison to seperate. For this, you're effectively creating a secure, very expensive ghetto for people who don't conform to the rules of the rest of society. This doesn't help, and you end up with a bomb waiting to explode.