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

funk_green, what a dreadful experience for you.

I can understand anyone wanting retribution when they or a loved one has been violated in any way. But I don't believe meeting violence with violence is the best way. Reports of victims' feelings in high profile cases indicate that generally they want justice - they want the perpetrator caught & brought to trial, to acknowledge their crime.
So effective policing & judicial processes are important for the well being of victims, though I doubt that will actually deter any would be criminals.

Where convicted criminals have managed to commit suicide (& possibly also where a death sentence has been implemented) victims have sometimes felt cheated. They feel that they are serving a life sentence because of the crime committed & want the criminal to suffer in a similar way.

one thing I am funny about is crimes against children. now i'm not talking about one kid stealing another's lunch money - i'm talking about abuse against kids. That stuff scars pure innocence for life. Those scars will have a ripple effect throughout their life, whether they don't love their kids enough, or smother them with too much love, or if they head for the extremes of continuing the cycles of abuse.

If I were king for a day...I'd say off with their heads! The abusers....not the kids. But here the punishment, even if not death, should be so harsh as to be a freakin' loud warning to everyone.

Don't touch the children!!!

Teasswill... I'm not into retribution, even though it sometimes may appear so, and sometimes I have thought about it. But we, and I can only speak from a South African's presepective here, ....we need to deter people from crimes. We have to make the consequence so bad that no one will want to do it.

My assialants have risked the rest of their lives for so little. And they almost got my life in the process. What they got away with was half an old stereo, a kettle, some remote controls, a cell phone, some cigarettes. They did their best to destroy our CD collection by scattering CD's through the garden on their way out.

They wanted guns, which I don't have. That's what they were screaming at us when they woke us up with torches in our faces. "Give us your guns! Where are your f***ing guns!"

I've always maintained, if you're going to commit a crime, then make sure the pay-off is worth it. They have risked the rest of their lives for nothing.

<>

Makes sense to me - very mixed emotions. How else could you be expected to feel?

Me? I'd want them beaten to a pulp, to within an inch of their sorry lives.

Of course that wouldn't solve or help anything, so then I would probably reconsider what I wanted.

In the end I'd no doubt end up emotionally confused for quite a long time. Normal. All things considered. And I guess I'd have to wait for enough time to wash over me so that I felt cleansed of my anger and was able to carry on.

Be happy that you *can* still kiss your girlfriend. I think that is something you can hold onto when times are dark.

az

funk, my comments on retribution weren't aimed at you, just general points.

My eye was caught by something else you said:


There was an item in our local paper today about a youngster who committed crimes in order to get a roof over his head & a decent meal.

all of which is surely the basis for the argument that the best action against crime is to remove the conditions that foster it. OK, fair enough, there are some people who for what ever reason will always end up going against the accepted rules of whatever society they are in.

But if you have nothing, and look forward to nothing, if your daily life is in an environment with very few resources but a lot of people, surrounded by pressure to consume, you will compete for those resources, for the things that society tells you you need to be accepted. No one wants to feel ignored by the world and their peers.

And, hell, maybe you end up with the death penalty, or having a hand chopped off, or being castrated or whatever, but the detection rates are never 100%, so there is always a chance you can get away with it.

Punishment will never deter crime entirely, it cannot, because society can never be sure of 100% getting the right person. And, because 100% getting the right person doesn;t happen, there is also the opposite that, of those collared for a crime, less than 100% were guilty.

And people know it. They know that police forces will always be more suspicious of those from the target area. So you have a two pronged attack, where a) you may just get away with it, and b) you'll probably be collared for something anyway, so if you're oging to do the time, why not do the crime. And if you do get away with it, well, that's a bonus.

I also feel that the current (UK anyway) concentration on letting the police force sort it out is beneficial to the criminals. YOu know that there is a pretty good chance that if you attack someone they will give you what they want.

Firstly, the press has demonised you, so people are afraid of you. Secondly, if the person does have a go, the press have demonised the law, so you may be doubtful as to your rights. Jo BLoggs doesn;t want a criminal record, and has heard all the scare stories about people being convicted for attacking an attacker. So they may just give you the money.phone/whatever to have done with it. Heck, that's what insurance and the police are there for.

Then there's all the social workers and carers to say it wasn't your fault, it was your upbringing (which it probably was, but that doesn;t stop you using it to get off).

On the other hand, I know of 1 case (in th UK) where a bloke whose sister had been raped beat the cr*p out of the rapist (who had got of on various technicalities). He was arrested. On remand (or whatever it was) for a few weeks till the case came up. The judge heard the case, guy was found guilty, the judge sentenced him to 1 day more than the time he had spent on remand. 1 night in the cells and out again.

But it ain;t simple. And wherever people are involved, mistakes happen.
Also, people are individuals. There are as many reasons as there are criminals. Ideally, there would be as many ways of dealing with crime as there are criminals, but of necessity, law enforcement, and prevention, is a very broad brush. So it will always fail a certain percentage.

Equally, social policies, such as education and welfare and so forth, are broad brushes, and will just not reach some people.

This is all a little close to home.

The daughter of someone I love very much was killed by her 23 year old lover 5 days after her birthday. She was just 15.

This morning he said to me that he still had not come to terms with it. My response, which may sound callous, was that he never would. The best he could hope for was to come to terms with the fact that he would never come to terms with it.

I thank a god I do not believe in daily that her murderer commited suicide himself, because her father does have some sense of closure. I cannot imagine the additional pain he would be feeling if her killer were alive and free.

But ...

... But I am also grateful that the option of participating in the killing of her murderer is not available to him. There is a distinction between execution and judicial murder. Judicial murder is still murder, and the fact that executions are done in cold blood is important.

There is a difference between revenge and justice. There is a difference between vigilantism and the due judicial processes. These differences have already been discussed in this thread.

We delegate the difficult stuff, the life and death decisions, to those who can take them dispassionately - without passion - with compassion perhaps. With cool heads, and in the interests of society as a whole, not in the interests of personal revenge. This is why it is right that doctors and not families should take clinical decisions, and this is why it is right that judges and not families should take judicial decisions, and this is why it is right that executioners and not families should mete out punishments.

The harm that has been done spreads out in the world in circles; participating in the execution increases the power of that harm in the world. Blood is on the hands of those who participate with passion in the execution of others. To murder someone is to damage oneself.

I have said that I am grateful to the god I do not believe in that the murderer of the girl is dead. The path to healing for her family is hard enough. The path to healing would be infinitely harder if they then participated in the murder, however judicial, of her killer.

I respect the MacCartney sisters for their rejection of the IRA's offer to shoot their brother's killers for the same reason. They have the wisdom and the maturity not to damage themselves further by demanding justice and not revenge.

This is hard to type.

As I said - it is a little bit too close to home.

Twice Shy

Well said. Very well said.

Not taken personally at all Teasswill. This is probably the first time I've been able to discuss this in an open forum without all the anger that usually surrounds this topic. So many people here in SA have been victims of crime and have never had any formal type of justice. Emotions can run deep.

People who know me still get angry when discussing it. Then it's just plain hard to be objective.

What I'm hoping for is considered suggestion as to realistic and plausible solutions. How do you deter crime, especially with such high unemployment?

I’m not going to quote all your good points, Ictoan, but I agree with much of what you said. People = mistakes. We are not perfect, so our society won’t be perfect. Perfection is also very much a matter of opinion. So whose opinion do we choose?

TwiceShy has added some more personal experience into this loop, and my heart goes out to you and your friend. And you’re right – I agree that it would be harder to heal if there was an execution.

So I guess we have 2 points for consideration:
1. Deterrents
2. Punishments

I like the Middle Eastern methods of dismemberment. I personally think that’s great deterrent and great punishment. For rapists especially, having their tackle chopped off means they can never rape again, although this wouldn’t mean that they could not still attack and do vicious things with even a cucumber, to gain that feeling of power and control.

South Africa has horribly high incidence of rape. At times, as many as 80% of the girls I’ve met have been raped or abused at some point. Girls from all sorts of backgrounds. We’ve also had numerous reports of baby-rape. 12 months…18 months old. I don’t even know what to think or say about that. I hang my head in shame…that this happens in my country. The details are simply too dreadful to discuss.

So I personally vote for dismemberment instead of death. For rapists…they should chop the tackle and a hand, so it’s visible to others. For other serious crimes, they should chop a hand, and for really dreadful atrocities they should take both hands or a hand and a leg.

We teach our children to stay away from strangers. Wouldn’t that be easier for them if the strangers had missing hands? Of course this assumes that the stranger has been caught and processed previously. But it’s a start.

I did hear something a while ago that there is a low incidence where castration doesn't completely remove the urge. I dunno how true that is.

One other option that has been used in the past, but that I haven't heard of being used aywhere at the moment although it probably is, is branding.

One of the problems with disfigurement is that there are those who are disfigured through accident or no fault of their own.
Also, would such obvious indications of criminal activity lead to increased vigilante activity, with the attendant risk of innocent accident victims being attacked?

yip. you're right. what if ol' uncle marty loses a hand down at the mill, and your kids always suspect something else. Or a store refuses to serve him 'cos "they don't want his kind around here!"

I thought of branding too. That would certaily deter me from even considering a bank robbery or whatever. Branded for life with annual check-ins at the local cop-shop to ensure you haven't modified or removed it.

That could work, though I would still include dismemberment as a punishment. Someone who's been raped lives with that forever...so why should the perpetrator not be 'permanently punished' even if he's served his jail sentence?

But then we have the problem of vigilantes, although they would face the same punishment if they were caught.

I've always likde the concept of Australia - a penal island where people get dumped to take care of themselves, but at at no cost to any country. How about Antartica?

So the deterrent is now the punishment, with varying degrees.
Level 1 - branding only, and possibly a spanking with a wooden paddle.
Level 2 - branding and hand removal
Level 3 - branding and multiple dismemberment

All of these would come with jail time.

Does anyone think this would stem the tide of crime?

"Does anyone think this would stem the tide of crime?"

No.

Violence breeds violence. Injustice breeds injustice.

The people who have really changed the world - not just changed regimes but changed the world - are people like the Buddha, like Mahatma Ghandi, who have changed the way that people behave.

There is a chinese proverb which I cannot remember which says that if you want to change the world you must start with the kingdom, if you want to change the kingdom you must start with the city, if you want to change the city you must start with the neighbourhood, if you want to change the neighbourhood you must start with the family, if you want to change the family you must start with the person, and if you want to change the person, you must start with the heart.

The original is pithier.

There is also a biblical saying: 'he who lives by the sword dies by the sword'.

So, no. What you are proposing is reactive. It is a response to the evils of the world which will propogate more evil.

The challenge for each of us is to deal with the anger and the pain within our selves, and to transform our anger and our pain, and thereby to transform our selves and the world around us.

No-one said it was easy. And no-one said it was fair.

Twice Shy

<>

Indeed!

Of course it's reactive, but if you recall, I asked earlier for suggestions as to how to curb the crime. So many people are so keen to criticise, condemn, and complain, but so few actually give alternatives. I'm looking for alternatives.

Let me mention some things:
- 40% unemployment (about 18 million people);
- 80% of women I've personally met have been raped or abused;
- Rape of infants where the child is left alive but her legs have literally been ripped apart by the violent act;
- hi-jackings where the parent is ripped out of the vehicle but the child left in the back as the hi-jackers make off – imagine the trauma for both parent and child;
- rock throwing from bridges at passing cars – the first case that comes to mind involves a husband and wife driving up to Johannesburg for a vacation. The rock crashed right through the windscreen and decapitated the wife in the passenger seat, leaving only the lower jaw;
- rock piles built on highways for motorists to hit late at night. Injured motorists are then pulled from the vehicles and robbed, raped and killed;
- 80 year old couples being attacked in their homes, and raped, abused, tortured, killed
- muti killings (muti is an African word for medicine, and apart from including plants and herbs, it can also be a child’s testicles, ears, tongue, left arm, etc) – sometimes the kids are left alive to live with the disfigurement, other times they die from trauma

We have multiple daily reports are rape, violent robbery, murder, hi-jackings. Clearly there is a major problem. So what’s your solution?

4 kids broke into my home and almost killed me. My girlfriend became so terrified and angry that after 1 year I suggested she move to the coast to live with her parents - get away from Johannesburg, try and find some peace again.
These kids got away with it, so now they have the bravado that would come with that ‘win’. What will they do next time? And these were not street kids desperate for a meal. The kids left some clothing items behind when I chased them out. These were expensive designer labels. You could see these kids were from the suburbs, which makes it more of a form of entertainment for them, rather than a necessity.

So how do you deter them?

Life is not fair or easy before you add into crime into the equation. But this violent crime we live with is fostering not only racism over here, but pure hatred for any criminal. There have been reports of lynchings in townships where criminals have been caught in the act.

I've seen so the so-called experts on TV interviews or in the papers who say "when a criminal enters your home or hi-jacks your car at gunpoint...be submissive. do what they say"

1. If I had been submissive during my ordeal, my girlfriend would have been raped. No doubts about that. No one here argues with that.
2. 95% of these 'experts' admit to never having been in such dreadful situations. They have no experience.
3. Criminals also watch TV and read papers. They know what the general public are being told to do.

You have no idea how you’ll react in a situation until it happens. Or how you’ll feel afterwards. So, once again, I ask for suggestions.

You ask tough questions, Funk Green. Very tough questions.

Societies do not change quickly. The Levitical curse "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the fifth generation" is not really a curse at all. It is merely an observation. There is no quick remedy for SA's woes. No quick cure.

There are two approaches, one which holds a society together but at considerable cost, the other of which takes generations to have its effect, but the effect is lasting.

The first is absolute control; a police state with informers, disappearences, torture, a controlled press, the whole apparatus of totalitarianism. It works. It imposes peace - of a kind. However it does not cure the violence in the society, it merely masks or suppresses it: the peacefulness is the peacefulness of repression. Look at the Balkans - peaceful during communist rule but places of bloody civil war and genocide before and since. Look at Iraq. Look, indeed, at South Africa.

The second is education and opportunity, but it takes the biblical five generations to have an impact, so maybe a hundred years or so. Maybe more. But only education and opportunity freely available for all create an equitable soiety, and although there are still crimes in equitable societies, there are fewer of them, and they are less extreme. Education really is the key. If you really engage with the social problems in England in the early part of the 19th C, then you realise that we have, in fact, come an enormously long way through the provision of education and opportunity for - well - most, though not all.

I am sorry I cannot give an easy answer, but there isn't one, and I don't tell that kind of comforting lie as you know from my first post in this thread.

You asked a question: whether the response to acts of crime should be deterrance or punishment. I find it interesting that you do not suggest a third - reform.

It would take more compassion than I can muster to calmly accept the idea that the murderer of my friend's daughter should, as part of his punishment, be given educational and psychological opportunities so that he could grow and change and - reform, leave prison, get a professional job, drive a BMW, and not be marked like Cain for life. I can see the rationale, but this time it's personal.

However that is the nub of my previous point really. It shouldn't *be* personal.

If we look at our objectives for the penal system at the highest level, surely they should start with reducing recidivism, reducing the numbers of repeat offenders? Then we come to practical things like cost, and societal things like the baying blood-lust of the lynch mob who demand that the criminal pays for his crime.

But if we accept that reducing recidivism, and thereby reducing the overall amount of crime, is the primary objective of the penal system, the questions which you ask arise, Funk Green: *How* do we do that?

And my response is this: would you prefer to live in a totalitarian state where all freedoms were tightly controlled, and where it was virtually impossible to commit that sort of crime; or would you prefer to live in a more anarchic society, but one which was curing itself of the sorts of crimes you describe, albeit curing itself on a timescale of one or two hundred years?

It is a genuine question. I suspect I would feel safer raising children in the police state than in the anarchic one, though I know that the anarchic one has more moral virtue in it. Like I said, no easy answers. No nice ones, either.

Twice Shy

I agree with many of the postings particularly Woodpigeon and 2 legs.

I am against capital punishment,even if the perpertrators are guilty beyond doubt. As understandable as it can be to want to seek revenge, I don't think we should allow the victims to deal out the punishment because it will be difficult if not impossible for them to be objective. Some years ago I was burgled, and despite my beliefs, at the time I could have willing flogged or hung the offenders (not that they were ever caught). If we follow this route we are sinking to the same depths.
I guess those taking part in the public flogging and execution may have gained some sense of relief in acting out their entirely understandable anger. However, I'm not convinced it will help them or society in the long term, but validate such behaviour.

Thank you Twice Shy. I’m only asking tough questions ‘cos all the easy one have been taken. Perhaps we are finally getting somewhere. This is an important discussion for me personally as it ties in with some of my future plans.

You mention reform... I have not discussed that because I see it as a separate issue for discussion although indeed integral with this one of deterrent and punishment.

Totalitarianism as a deterrent? There is value in that when the situation is as bad as it is over here. We already live in our own prisons in that we have bars on all windows and doors, alarm systems, electric fences on top of walls, barbed wire on top of walls, security gates inside the houses which separate the sleeping quarters from the general living quarters.

Although the 5 generations approach is a better way to go, I feel you have to consider the victims that will suffer as a result of that approach. For all intent and purpose, the long road in this case will be far better for society as a whole, but it will have more casualties initially. This is much like a war – the country may win but will sustain losses. The country may be ecstatic with its triumph, but the losses…the victims…they will probably have a different view. But here the victims although sustaining physical damage will have mental trauma which many people simply cannot cope with. Emotional scars can be devastating and far reaching.

I must clarify, especially to Lakie that I don’t believe victims should meter out the punishment. That has never been my argument. But I do feel crimes against society should be punished in some way or another.

Clearly the solution lies between both methods of societal change, although with modern technology, I feel that we have a better chance of installing a not-so-police police state. Surveillance cameras on our streets could give the police a great advantage. It seems to have worked in parts of London and even in central Johannesburg. Cameras allow the police to monitor larger areas. I will have privacy in my home, but the roads are public and should be watched. Police can be pro-active instead of reactive. It’s usually quite obvious when people are up to no good.

I don’t have kids, and right now I would feel not comfortable bringing them into this world that I live in. I agree with your last statement about bringing kids up in a police state. That would make me more comfortable.

Why I said earlier that this discussion is important to me is that I designed a prison with reform systems which would have a fair chance at tremendous positive impact. Apart from a learning environment and other typical requirements, the system I’ve been working on removes the archetypal prison feel and provides a responsibility based tier system. The prisoners will determine their own environment, living conditions and opportunities. Of course…it’s quite expensive to do all of this – initial cost estimates are around R 200 million to build, so I must complete a number of my smaller projects first.

What’s the opinion on branding criminals? Other than the chance that they may get lynched, which will in itself hopefully work as a deterrent.

Interestingly, many criminals brand themselves with swallow tattoos or gang motifs etc. so I doubt if it could be seen as an effective deterrant. It's a bit like being told not to have sex by your parents. It has some effect in warning off those who have never done it, but it's not so effective for those who have already done it. Same with criminals - once you have been branded, it's less of a deterrant the next time, and may be seen in some circles as a badge of honour.

This discussion has been very cool-headed and enlightening. One of the things that strikes me is that this extreme form of punishment (ie. Iran) has been practiced for millenia. You had crucifictions, public hangings, disembowellings, beheadings, the lot. It's not right to say that this form of punishment results in the breakdown of society, so we must be careful to challenge slippery slope arguments. I still think however that rough justice does contribute to domestic violence. When my grandparents were in school, life was all about kickings and beatings. Violence was much more acceptable everywhere. Now, in some places, it is not, and where it is not seen as acceptable it becomes something shameful and less likely to be practiced.

Also, another thing that has been striking me is our treatment of the likes of Marc Dutroux etc. Few of us would have too many pangs of sadness if we found out that he had been found swinging in his cell one morning. I doubt either if too many people mourned the passing of Harold Shipman, Terry McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahlmer, and we wouldn't particularly be wailing to heaven if we heard that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi had been shot dead and died in agony. These people were (and are) all multiple murderers of the worst kind, and we sort of expect them to die horribly given what they have done to other people. But then, loads of people die horribly every day, and most of them didn't do a thing wrong to any other person. They were just unfortunate enough to contract cancer or Parkinsons or whatever. The equating of how someone lives with how they die is an enormous fallacy, and it gives rise to all sorts of nonsense ideas of biblical justice etc.

I do wonder though that if it can be proved that an individual has done all these things and that they are unreformable (and I for one don't think you can reform everybody), and that they pose an ongoing risk of further depravities, should they get a lethal injection for the protection of society at large and be done with it?

"But then, loads of people die horribly every day, and most of them didn't do a thing wrong to any other person. They were just unfortunate enough to contract cancer or Parkinsons or whatever"

Indeed. I heard a shocking report on our local BBC radio station here, a few weeks ago which relayed the following information;

90%(there or there abouts- i'm afraid i forget the exact percentage but it was in the 90's) of people in the UK will die a slow and painful death.

Very few of us will actually be 'fortunate' enough to die in our sleep, or to have an accident that kills us instantly. Most of us will die of illnesses like cancer, heart disease, car accidents, drowning, and other painful accidents, and it will mostly happen in a hospital or out of doors, not as we like to think, our own homes, surrounded by loved ones.

When you think about it that does make sense, but most people tend to (probably for the sake of their sanity) assume that they and their loved ones will have a peaceful death. In reality the odds are against that happening.

Certainly anyone I know who has died, has done so, well, in an unpleasant manner, though I suppose it's hard to tell in the case of Altzheimers. Not really sure if my grandfather was aware he was alive, let alone, dying towards the end.

The report, by the way was broadcast to highlight Britain's woefully inadequit record in terminal care quality, compared to other places in Europe. The UK apparentaly, is not the best place to die in...

Anyway