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« on: March 20, 2014, 04:57:51 pm »
There's another reason why our punishments tend to be just fines, jail time, and execution. If your punishments are all of exactly the same type, you can compare punishments and determine which are more lenient or harsher automatically. Say you're comparing theft and rape, clearly the rape should have a higher penalty. If your penalty is in jail time, it's easy to figure out how much jail time to assign to each crime. But if the punishments are different, you need to figure out how bad each punishment is in relation to each other and THEN figure out how much of each to assign. Which means you get it wrong more often.
I think the revocation of driving or drinking privileges is not "Eye for an Eye" justice. Someone who offends the community by stealing gets locked up in jail, preventing him from stealing. A doctor who is negligent can lose his license to practice medicine. EfaE punishment for these crimes would be declaring that the victims can steal from the thief without penalty, or that the patient can cut open the doctor and sew him back up with an instrument still inside him.
If you violate hunting regulations, you shouldn't get to hunt for a while. Unlawful use of a firearm should result in revoking your right to have guns for a while. If you keep at it, or violate the punishment by hunting / owning a gun anyway, you could have the penalty extended forever plus some other penalty. We already do this exact thing with drunk driving (license revoked), or when parents abuse their children (kids taken away and put into government care).
This kind of "let the punishment fit the crime" is appropriate not only to punish the offender but to try to stop him from continuing to commit the same offense.
One thing I think is important about jail time is that, for the most part, a year of jail time is an equally bad punishment regardless of who receives it. Some people may be "soft" and suffer more, and others may be "hardened" with experience in jail. To make the incarceration a significant hardship for hardened criminals, and also to punish repeat offenders, we increase the jail time for people who have already done a bunch of jail time.
I think fines should be the same way, equal hardship no matter who you are, but the problem there is that everyone has a different amount of money. If someone has very little income / wealth / whatever, and gets a speeding ticket, they should have to pay the normal amount - but if a rich guy gets a speeding ticket, he should have to pay extra. I want a rich guy to suffer just as much as a poor guy suffers when he does something wrong. I don't know how you would do this. Maybe a point system for any offense that is tied to the criminal's tax returns, incidentally forcing an automatic audit which could screw him completely if he's being dishonest there too?
In general I think fines and jail time can be effective deterrents and punishments if applied correctly. Just recently a few guys got caught doing insider trading, made about 6 mil among them, and are looking at huge fines and 20 years apiece. Whereas the fat cats at the top of the schemes that destroyed the world economy recently have gotten punishments varying from nothing to symbolic.
It's the same disparity between a guy who robs a 7-11 and grabs $20 and the store owner shoots him - and is justified in doing so - while a banker who stole $20 million gets virtually no punishment. Shouldn't we be allowed to shoot the banker a million times? Let him heal up in between, you know, just so he doesn't die on the 10,000th bullet. Sometimes you crave that medieval punishment, you thirst for that diabolical and poetically just punishment. But for any crime you've got to put yourself in the position of the accused - possibly wrongly accused - and imagine it's you sitting in that chair.
The criminal justice system sometimes gets it wrong. It's hard to rescind an execution. But you can return a fine, or somehow compensate someone for unlawful jail time served.
And if the punishment were so inhumane you wouldn't go down without a fight. Like when lesser crimes have a death penalty, you have nothing to lose. You would see more shootouts with police to escape an assault charge, more high-speed chases to get out of a drug possession charge, more hit-and-run to get out of a reckless driving charge. If you knew the punishment would be putting out your eyes, wouldn't you fight to the death? Whose throat would you not tear out to save your own life? If you would be executed just for punching a hated aristocrat, wouldn't you just try to kill him instead?
It is the measured and restrained application of punishment that is the hallmark of a civilized society, and its success in that endeavor is bound to its success in the struggle against tyranny and anarchy.
EDIT: Just thought about this - what about the guy who has no eyes? Can he go around poking people's eyes out with impunity, knowing no punishment can be effectively levied against him? What about the completely destitute man who steals? He has nothing to steal back, and no fine can be administered. You'd need a second layer of punishments for people for whom the standard EfaE punishment was invalid.
