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Comment by sneak

2 years ago

If the current functioning is it doing "the best it can", the whole thing should be burnt to the ground.

> A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable

surely you don't actually believe that? I don't think the result of this is just 0 false positives. The result of that is a lot more crime, and a lot more injustice.

  • I think you (as is very common) vastly overestimate the effect of the threat of incarceration on crime.

    • Forget the threat. Serial muggers/armed robbers/thugs need to be off the street. This "nobody should be in prison" rhetoric is painfully naïve. Wait till you've had elderly/defenseless parents or friends violently mugged and beaten, you'll change your tune.

    • I think incarceration is very bad at deterring future crimes, but it very good at delaying them. Someone in jail for 10 years is at the very least not going to commit a crime for 10 years. There is some merit to that until we have a better system.

to be replaced with what? i'm all for making changes that are an improvement, but just burning it to the ground for the sake of it with no end game is not an improvement

  • At this point, I would not be surprised if having two judges per case, randomly selected from the community, from parents who have successfully had at least three children leave the nest while still remaining on speaking terms, was a more reliable method of justice.

  • A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the current criminal justice systems in most of the global west (and especially of course the United States).

    • Interesting and unusual perspective - we have the one person in this thread who supports wildly expanding the death penalty.

      Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."

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If you burnt to the ground everything doing the best it can probably 75% of the public and every instution would spontaneously combust.