London Riots - OR - What's your favourite thing about Hitler?

[Nickel]

I like it!  

It was just for you, wham. :

Also, killing is natural.

I never spend money for weapons, nor did I ever kill anybody. So either I'm violating my nature and should recieve a treatment or nature doesn't play a fucking role in people's thoughts.

As a side note, trying to explain all human behavior as motivated by fear (and hence claiming that fear is the only way to instill desired behavior), apart from being depressing, is as reductive and simplistic as Freud explaining everything with sex, or classical economists with the maximization of profit.

I don't think it's reductive and simplistic to explain human behavior as motivated by the structure of the society they live in, which â€" in our case â€" bases on the maximization of profit. See HERE.

[RickJ]

I never spend money for weapons, nor did I ever kill anybody. So either I'm violating my nature and should recieve a treatment or nature doesn't play a fucking role in people's thoughts.

Increator didn't say that murder was natural which is what you are implying.   I'll bet you did eat yesterday and everyday before that and so directly caused countless organisms to be killed so that you could consume them.  Further I'll bet you regularly consume more than (1200 calories/day) what you require to survive.   Either you are in denial or just don't care about the killings you commission, which in the latter case would make you a psychopath and a glutton at that...  

I don't think it's reductive and simplistic to explain human behavior as motivated by the structure of the society they live in...

I think it's just plain wrong; people are motivated by their emotions and their desire to maintain and improve their well being.   The historical meaning of emotion is "to set in motion".  In the context of a person's  mental states, it's what initiates behavior.   The only affect one's culture and societal structure may have is to color one's perception of "well being".

Here is a link to what appears to be part of a psychology text book that explains this and backs it up with studies and actual data rather than just espousing psychobabble.  The  first three paragraphs give a pretty good explanation of how behavior is initiated.  It's also an interesting read for anyone wanting to implement NPC AI in a game.   

http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/Topics/Psychophysiology/CacioppoText/Ch.22.pdf

The recent riots can be understood in these terms.  The participants were motivated by the opportunity to enhance their "well being" by

1.  Experiencing pleasure
2.  Acquiring material goods
3.  Increasing political power (albeit temporarily)

and because of the lack of fear of the consequences.   The lack of fear is due to the relatively mild punishment for such behavior and low likelyhood of any one individual being held accountable ("they can't arrest us all" mindset).  So some here advocate a more severe punishment for such activity so as to put more of the participants' "well being" at risk.

Although the ultimate punishment is not appropriate it is sensible to discuss the appropriate consequences of rioting, looting, etc ought to be.  It is also foolish and naive to believe that fear of consequences and their severity do not motivate or disincentivize  people.   

[WHAM]

Fun facts from a Finnish daily newspaper:
http://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/2011090114299305_uu.shtml

There is a poll on that page:
"Kitkevätkö kovemmat rangaistukset rikollisuutta?" = "Would tougher punishments help weed out crime?"

Answers at the moment of posting (with almost 4000 responses): 95% say "yes"

The don't talk about shooting criminals, but the message is clear: tougher response to crime is wanted by the majority of those who responded.

[Ali]

Yes, but if you ask the same people "Is crime on the rise?" or "Are you more afraid of crime?" they inevitably answer yes, whether or not crime is on the rise.

Even leaving aside the fact that the readership of one newspaper is not a balanced cross-section of society, those polls don't give you anything approaching facts.

[WHAM]

Some translated quotes from the article I linked to (it's now 7200 people, and still 95%). I've listed a short description of the crime, followed by the punishment the person got in real life and then my belief on what the just punishment would be.

"Man intentionally lit night-guest on fire for loud snoring. Victim suffered extensive burns, spent 7 weeks in hospital and required several skin transplants."
Real life sentence:  After a long trial, 360 â,¬ of fines, no prison time (hey, the accused was poor!)
WHAM's sentence: Hard labour for 5 years, then released into society with supervision (electronic collar)

"Eight months old baby's skull was fractured when man assaulted the mother"
Real life sentence: 8 months on conditional discharge (basically 8 month supervision but no time in actual prison), fines
WHAM's sentence: Hard labour for 5 years, then released into society with supervision (electronic collar)

"Police officer raped a 16 year old girl in an alley in the middle of the night"
Real life sentence:  2 years and 6 months in prison, lost his job
WHAM's sentence: Shot in the nuts, then the head

"Multiple rapes, torture, assaults and threats on multiple victims"
Real life sentence: 1 year and 8 months in prison + 40 hours of community service
WHAM's sentence: Shot in the nuts, then the head

Now do tell me you actually think these people got what they deserved? That these people did not deserve harsher punishments? Imagine yourself as the victim in any of these cases, and tell me with a straight face that the above mentioned punishments are adequate and justified, and just try to look in a mirror after that.

[Ali]

They may not have suffered as much as their victims, but to me their suffering seems irrelevant. The impulse to inflict pain is one I try to resist, and I think a society should resist.

The question is not 'were they punished harshly enough'. It's 'how do we prevent these crimes being committed in the future?'

And no amount of nut-shooting will achieve that.

[WHAM]

They may not have suffered as much as their victims, but to me their suffering seems irrelevant. The impulse to inflict pain is one I try to resist, and I think a society should resist.

The question is not 'were they punished harshly enough'. It's 'how do we prevent these crimes being committed in the future?'

And no amount of nut-shooting will achieve that.

Yeah, the nut shooting is just a symbolic gesture. It's the one bullet to the head that ensures these people do not become repeat offenders.

[Ali]

At least we agree that nut-shooting alone is not a remedy for all society's ills.

[InCreator]

But we should also agree that some nuts should be shot.

Say, that someone comes to rape you. Will you perform nut/head shooting combo or preach about society's ills and how you're trying to avoid causing pain/violence while he's tearing you a new one?

If former, then why? Is violent act against you somehow more important than - say, your neighbor? So you're okay if neighbor gets raped and criminal 2 years of soft punishment for this. But not if victim is you?
Would you instantly dump hippie principles for ego and survival instinct? If you answered "yes", team WHAM wins the debate. YAY!

If latter, do you need a doctor?

[Khris]

I just wanted to throw out that more severe punishment doesn't lower crime rates:

(3) Correlations: Severity Effects. In the Farrington studies just mentioned, the statistical associations between severity of punishment and crime rates were much weaker. Such negative correlations between sentence severity and crime rates as were found to exist generally were not sufficient to achieve statistical significance. These patterns, which are consistent with those found in earlier studies, provide little support for an hypothesis of marginal deterrence with respect to severity of punishment. One of these studies, Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), provides calculations that compare the English and America (as well as Swedish) trends. The absence of a finding in that study of strong correlations for severity is notable -- because U.S. penalty levels have been substantially higher than English levels during the periods studied.

Source: http://members.multimania.co.uk/lawnet/SENTENCE.PDF

So the solution isn't more severe punishment, it's effective prevention.

[Ali]

But we should also agree that some nuts should be shot.

Say, that someone comes to rape you. Will you perform nut/head shooting combo or preach about society's ills and how you're trying to avoid causing pain/violence while he's tearing you a new one?

If former, then why? Is violent act against you somehow more important than - say, your neighbor? So you're okay if neighbor gets raped and criminal 2 years of soft punishment for this. But not if victim is you?
Would you instantly dump hippie principles for ego and survival instinct? If you answered "yes", team WHAM wins the debate. YAY!

If latter, do you need a doctor?

Sorry, I'm taking a firmly anti-nut-shooting stance.

Of course, if someone hurt me or someone I care about I would use force to try to stop them. Of course, I would want to hurt them and I don't know if I would be able to forgive them the way a few victims of crime can.

However, when not overcome by pain and anger, I can see that society ought to prevent the kind of violent punishments which turn victims into torturers and killers.

So I don't think Team Nut-Shoot does win the debate.

[TomatoesInTheHead]

Say, that someone comes to rape you. Will you [...]

Is violent act against you somehow more important than - say, your neighbor? [...]

Your argumentation feels like:

1) What would your decision be in a situation where you're emotionally charged and act/view things highly irrational and subjective?
2) Now be rational and objective again, and therefore generalize that decision to all similar incidents to treat every case equally.
3) There, you have a perfectly rational judgement!

This doesn't feel like a valid argumentation to me.



Also I want to say I like and advocate the Titanic magazine cover mentioned before, it's good satire to me. As long as there are people who demand all rioters to be shot (and as we see, there are quite some), it is a very valid point, and everyone who finds the humor sick (Titanic has published several letters of people complaining about the cover on their website) should direct their anger towards those who really mean it, not to those who caricature the views of parts of the society and media.

[WHAM]

@ Khris: Nowhere in the world is there a system with harsh enough punishments, thus the research is invalid. They are researching based on existing data, whereas I am promoting the activation of a thus-far fictional system of which there is no data to research or correlate.

If you do research to see if people act differently based on the threat of punisment where the levels of punishment are, what, "10 years in jail" versus "20 years in jail". In either of these cases, where long prison sentences are handed out, the result to the person is the same: loss of social life, job and lessened quality of life. It does NOT matter how LONG the prison sentence is. But when you make them decide on actually living or dying, I believe the results would differ greatly. However, to research this is impossible due to the ridiculous rules known as "human rights" and the entitlement of even the worst scum of humanity to them.

@ TomatosInTheHead: All crime should not be viewed solely from the perspective of the victim, this is true. However, a human being should not have the right to destroy another human being's life, and if human A shows the ability to do so, what is there to stop them from repeating the offense? Human A of this example could, in his lifetime, destroy dozens or hundreds of lives directly and indirectly, but if the eliminated human A after the first offense, would there not be many lives saved with a minimal cost when compared to the alternative?

What I am saying is: no we should not think like the victim does, but should instead pre-emptively respond to any potential for future victims decisively and effectively in order to protect our society as a whole.

[Calin Leafshade]

By the way, if someone did something to me I would not want them to be killed on my behalf.

[WHAM]

By the way, if someone did something to me I would not want them to be killed on my behalf.

Good for you. I'd want him dead for harming you, so he cannot harm anyone else. Say, you might not want him dead for harming you, but how about if, after harming you he went on and raped your daughter/wife/girlfriend/mother and "harmed" your family and friends.

Oh well, the main thing is that NOBODY WAS KILLED, eh?

[InCreator]

I realised that by justifying violence, paradoxally - I might aswell be either Team Calin or Team WHAM and say same stuff about killing being natural and violence as ages-proven way to settle human conflicts so we'd should just accept (and reduce as much as possible) but definitely not deny it.

One side justifies being a dick (from criminals' standpoint - because what else can back-patting for serious crime be?!) and other being a dick... back (on the side of law - vengeance mode).

And yet still, I don't see how promoting being unlawful (by not taking harsh nut-shootin action) would decrease it or decrease better than well, nut shooting.

[Khris]

Sorry to have to say this WHAM, but your view to me is too simplistic and naive.

If I take your viewpoint one step further, why not introduce capital punishment for misdemeanors? If that lowers the crime rate even further, which is what you insinuate, why stop at rape? Let's chop off the hands of thieves and cut out the tongues of liars, while we're at it.

Here's another interesting example:
Some researchers compared two African schools, one employed fairly European methods while the second used draconian punishments. Students were tested for cheating, and both groups were equally likely to cheat, it just took the second group much longer until they started.
The interesting thing though is that the kids were asked if they cheated afterwards, and most of the "European" group in general quickly admitted to having cheated while the other students, even pretty young ones, turned out to be really skilled liars.
So I find it questionable if that's a good basis for building a community.

I know exactly where you're coming from but my views have changed quite a bit during the last few years, particularly because I have listened to the opinions of people who actually know what they're talking about (as opposed to "random guys on a forum" unrelated to the topic).

And calling human rights "ridiculous rules" is ridiculous itself. I'm absolutely convinced that people who hold views like yours are severely lacking in the "put yourself in another person's shoes" department.

According to you, the West Memphis Three would've gotten a nut shot and a head shot in 1994. Imagine being one of them.

[Calin Leafshade]

The 'Alford Plea' used in the case of the West Memphis Three is also a point against capital punishment.

Alford (after whom the plea is named) was essentially denied a fair trial because he was afraid of receiving the death sentence if he lost. If he pleaded guilty then he would only receive a life sentence but if it went to open trial he could be killed. So an 'Alford Plea' is essentially saying "I didn't do it but i'm too scared to make my case"

[WHAM]

I think the experiment Khris talks about is the same one mentioned earlier in the thread. My viewpoint still stands though, you cannot compare the results of these tests to the system I propose, as they are inherently different.

And how is the Alford Plea a point against capital punishment?
A man is accused or a crime, he "fears capital punishment" (likely for good reason, such as... oh, I don't know, being guily?) and chooses a life in prison instead.

So, because he was given this option, he became a lifelong straing on the limited resources of the prison system and a drain on taxpayer money. Result: society loses, convicted criminal suffers lifelong sentence in the prison system, which I think Caling himself previously described as "one so violent that it is unlikely that those who get out of there would commit a crime once more" (I might be thinking of the wrong person, and I'm too lazy to dig up the post).

[Khris]

The Alford plea is only relevant in a scenario where the defendant isn't guilty.

The point of the two studies was to show that the severity of the punishment doesn't have a negative correlation to the crime rate. What does have a negative correlation is the likelihood of getting caught and convicted.

The point of mentioning the West Memphis Three was to show that a small percentage of people ends up being wrongly convicted, and if all they get is a prison sentence, the governing body can at least make amends.
The oldest of them was on death row for 18 years, and he accepted "guilty" because that way he could finally get out of a situation he absolutely couldn't stand any longer.
If our judicial system was perfect, it would be another story. But we have to base our decisions in reality, not in would-be-land.

And more capital punishment rulings means more innocent people getting killed.

The thing is, your view is as misguided as abstinence only sex ed. Sure, in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any abortions; the thing is that abstinence only demonstrably increases the number of unwarranted pregnancies because guess what, teens have sex regardless of whether their parents approve or not.

It's the same with crime, if somebody thinks they can get away with a planned crime, they don't really care how severe the punishment is. They are probably more likely to commit a minor offense, but the number of felonies which in your system would result in execution wouldn't decrease.
This is of course the crux of this discussion, but looking at the available evidence, it seems clear to me that this is the case. There have been societies throughout history were people have been killed simply because they had the wrong sex partner. Some still exist today, death by stoning or beheading for offenses we'd regard as minor is common in Arab countries.
If these drastic measures had had a serious impact on the number of committed crimes, we would have heard it by now, don't you think?