YAY our law at work.

[Rodion Romanovich]

"And in the places that go for tolerance, when the offender is mentally disturbed or has limited self-control and needs treatment, the man is often released with no consequences at all even in cases where it's obvious he will commit new offenses."

In all fairness, it's usually the case that the judge is placed in the very difficult position of choosing between two highly undesirable outcomes:
- Offender is mentally disturbed and may reoffend;
- The chronically underfunded mental health system does not have room in secure facilities to hold him while he is treated;
- If he is sent to prison (which is a decidedly nasty place) he is extremely likely to commit some act of violence and his disorder will get worse in that environment;
- If he is released into the community (it would be exceptional if they were literally set free; they are generally subject to numerous conditions) he may abscond and/or reoffend, but the chances of him improving are better.

But unfortunately some people simply have a dysfunctional personality which renders them incapable of respecting others and society's rules in general, and makes them predisposed to violence.

Such a situation should never be allowed to arise. If it does, it's a sign that that society is too poor to function properly and is probably in great need of sorting out its internal corruption, lowering the salaries of the very much overpaid politicians, and requesting foreign monetary aid.

If despite this the economical problems can't be solved, the judge has a dilemma. In such a situation, all human beings must however be considered of equal worth as a precondition, or at the very least - the criminal should be considered of no higher value than any other citizen. If there's a very great risk he will commit many repeated offenses (and he HAS already committed one by the time he comes to the judge!), locking him up is the only option. Him getting worse mentally ill in prison can be solved by simply moving around prisoners a bit so that certain isolated prisons or wards are devoted to sexual criminals and others to other criminals. Additionally, he can be released on probation, with an electronic device around the leg to check his position and make sure its possible to stop him if he tries to commit any new crime. If he is then caught just before he begins doing it, he can very much justifiably be put back in prison without having to hurt another victim.

[Fragony]

Such a situation should never be allowed to arise. If it does, it's a sign that that society is too poor to function properly and is probably in great need of sorting out its internal corruption, lowering the salaries of the very much overpaid politicians, and requesting foreign monetary aid.

Money can become the problem when there is just too much to spend, our idealists are perfectionists, but no such thing as perfection. This guy will be treated by psycholigists with academic tunnelvision, it has to be explained from their discipline, we pay them to do that. They will do what they can. After that he will be declared fit for society, and problems in the neightbourhood that will arise will be explained by sociologists with the same curse, and we pay them as well. Everything gets solved but the problem and a lot of money changes hands, but some people just cannot be helped simple as that.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Money can become the problem when there is just too much to spend, our idealists are perfectionists, but no such thing as perfection. This guy will be treated by psycholigists with academic tunnelvision, it has to be explained from their discipline, we pay them to do that. They will do what they can. After that he will be declared fit for society, and problems in the neightbourhood that will arise will be explained by sociologists with the same curse, and we pay them as well. Everything gets solved but the problem and a lot of money changes hands, but some people just cannot be helped simple as that.

The rehabilitation of criminals is a subject which is so full of prejudice, taboo, and other things that I doubt it has ever been very scientific or academic. Most of the research results aren't papers exploring the causes of crime, but most of them rather seem to be presentations of "a new treatment form", later to be proven absolutely useless, where a lot of the points in the treatment form seem to be taken out of the blue or by a doubtful reference to another similar, useless paper, rather than supported by scientific methods. Another problem is that all measurable quantities are very loosely correlated to all quantities that are philosophically believed to be the most interesting ones to measure.

If we are to reason about the causes of crime - which I personally think are much more interesting both for the sake of improving the legal system and the treatment of criminals - I'd say I think that all crimes probably have one or more of the following causes:
- extreme burden of real threats causing accumulated fear, frustration and panic. These threats may be the same as what the criminal strikes against, (example: a poor man may commit theft), but they may also be something else than what the criminal strikes against (example: a young criminal who has problems getting any job/future at all, may strike not in the form of a robbery or theft, but by a random act of violence against a randomly chosen innocent person)
- perceived (imagined) threats. The criminal imagines a non-existing threat and feels a need to strike against it. May be caused by the former point. Naturally, there are also situations lying in between this and the former point. A threat may have probability 0.8 of turning into a real, dangerous situation, for example, or the probability may be hard to estimate, and to be sure, the person chooses a higher probability estimate.
- calculation. The criminal sees that the expected utility of committing a crime is higher than not committing it, based on his judgement of what utility is, and that the solved-crime rates and sentences are low. This may be reinforced by an irrational feeling of invincibility, and/or a risk-taking personality, and/or greed. Greed is interesting - it can be both a sexual-status seeking procedure, or a desire for greater margins against threats in a seemingly very unstable society

The most sensible way of eliminating the first of these causes would seem to be, in society, to remove as many as possible of all real threats that a large enough minority of the population considers to be unethical, unjustified and highly stressful. One example is that there's no guarantee that the next elected government will not remove all social security in a way such that the poorest will starve, or war will cause blockade of food supply. One example of how it can be solved: make it part of the constitution that certain types of social security - in particular enough money for food supply - should be provided always, and make sure the country is self-supporting in terms of food, even if this costs more money than importing food. This was just an example and shouldn't be taken too literally. But indeed there is reason to worry about food supply: cheating with quality, addition of dangerous chemicals, increasing prices, no VAT reduction for food compared to other products, future environmental problems are likely to reduce harvests and causes a massive immigration of hungry people, and it's known that a new economical crisis similar to the 1930ies depression could cause massive starvation even in places such as Europe and America. I see no argument why society shouldn't always strive to do its best to eliminate all risks of such threats that it can. A good argument for eliminating all such threats is the sheer amount and scale of the massive world problems we have today, and that all continuation of crime costs society a huge amount of money, which causes more crime, which causes more loss of money etc etc. Political, mathematical, economical and historical research could take us very far in this field, especially as a lot of these threats/risks could be removed rather easily and without any cost.

As for the second point, it remains an open question how many criminals actually belong to this group, and where you should draw the line in terms of probability (how likely is it that the threat has bad consequences) and magnitude of the threat (what consequences it could have, at worst). Personally I believe there's always some degree of imagination involved, but one shouldn't underestimate the magnitude of the real threats that may cause accumulated stress, frustration and irrationality, which trigger an increased tendency to act on imagined threats.

The most sensible way of treating the third type seems quite obvious too: to demonstrate principles by an effective police force, a high solved-crimes rate, and no redeeming circumstances when persons are found guilty of a crime caused merely by cold calculation. I'm convinced that almost all sexual crimes belong to this group, which is why, I assume, most people (correctly) have much less understanding and sympathy for sexual criminals than for any other forms of criminals.

The first point should mostly be applied before crime is committed. It will have little importance to rehabilitation other than by possible giving the criminals time with economical and labor market advisors or similar rather than time with psychiatrists if point one seemed the major cause (but if such advisors as needed, the society system is too complex, and/or the information about it given in schools and publicly available folders too little, so the better solution is to improve THAT). The third point is for example solved by improving the capabilities of drawing a sharp line between calculation-based crime, improving the police, and maintaining a well-functioning system over a few years. The second point is really the only one where any form of psychology could be of any use. As mentioned: I'm not sure that more than a very small number of criminals actually belong to this group so the effects of applying such measures after crime, as a means of rehabilitation to avoid repetition, are probably limited. The greatest potential in crime reduction IMO lies in pre-work under the first point.

[Fragony]

The third kind is the only ones we have, in a country such as the netherlands crime is a choice, no common goods problems, here you are poor when you have to skip a trip. They do what they do because they can, because nobody will stop them because their perfectionist self will not accept imperfection and will look for ways to blame it on society. Sexual offenders, and especially this sort, the kiddie-rapist, are the worst type of scum, they consider their needs to be more important then anything else, such nihilism can't be treated.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I disagree that there's only criminals of the third type, especially when it comes to a lot of violence and economically related crime. Crime rates were much lower in the 50ies and 60ies in most European countries, where social security was generally better, society cared more for the individual, and there were very few parts of the major cities that could rightly be denoted ghettos. There was also a much smaller feeling of not being good enough to be respected for who you are at that time. The main changes since then is decreasing functionality of the social security, and the increase of the demands on all human beings. After all, if you're expected to work a lot of unpaid overtime etc to keep almost any job, wouldn't you be disappointed if you still get a shitty salary and disgusting working conditions, and have to live in a ghetto, and can't get any partner to live with because you're ashamed of your low status and know you can't afford lawyers to defend you if you ever got into a fight with someone, so that you're essentially a less worth and less safe alternative to choose, for anyone who would consider marrying you? Our right to basic respect for who we are, safety and freedom was removed by society the moment they claimed all the land in the country, and claimed a right to tax any piece of land or house you have in it, and forbids you to just go and find a free spot in the nearest forest to grow your own food and/or hunt your own animals for food. Thus, society must provide this for us. Any infringements society imposes to our safety and right to be respected and have a right to defend ourselves (on equal terms with the opponent) against unprovoked attacks against us, or deal with conflicts caused by misunderstandings, are unjustified and it should be every politician and citizen's greatest struggle to fight and eliminate such regulations and emergent properties that exist in the society system.

Sex performed in odd ways against the will of the partner, however, is someting you can't claim society is immoral if it takes away from you, because it hasn't taken it away from you - that "right" doesn't exist. I also think most sexual criminals are aware of this. Therefore, I think the most effective way of decreasing the amounts of pedophilia, rape, necrophilia, group rape and so on, is to consequently put proven offenders into jail. The demonstration that such crimes don't pay off is the only way to solve them.

As for the theft and type 1 crime, the solving of the problems causing segregation, poverty, and formation of ghettos, is the only way to solve their type of crime - usually theft, robbery, and violence. Nothing implies that harsher sentences decreases the crime rate among such groups, in fact, most statistics imply it increases the crime rate among them.

I'm sad to see that very few make this important distinction, as both extreme systems (over-tolerance against all crime types, vs over-harshness against all crime types) we have today increases crime rates to much higher levels than what is necessary, when in reality we could live in a much more friendly and safe society form (as proven by the 50ies and 60ies [with a few traces left of it even in the 70ies and 80ies]).

[IrishArmenian]

Absolutely terrible! Disgusting! I agree with Doc, it sounds like the guy does want a bit of help or realized what a monster he is.
And to think I thought this would be another Frag -bashing-other-cultures thread! Shame.