Why should people *suffer* for their crimes

[MannyGoldstein]

Lord knows I'm not the most clued-in person on the planet, but I've never understood this concept.

Almost always, people do heinous things because they're defective widgets. Something doesn't work inside of them the way it works for most people. Keeping them where they can't do more harm is a good idea. Torture - no matter what highfalutin name we give it - does nothing but destroy our own souls.

I can understand the instinct of "I want that @#$%er to pay!!!", I sometimes feel it myself. But I pray that we can all let the better angels of our natures to flood our souls and to move on with the least pain for all humankind.

[MuseRider]

1. Good question.

I wish we could find out so we could stop it.

[gollygee]

2. This might be the first post of yours I've ever agreed with

We might need them locked away to keep society safe, but they still have inherent value as human beings, and they should be treated like human beings. There's something not working in them that makes them unsafe, so protect us, but don't make them suffer. That doesn't do any good, and it just makes the world a worse place.

[Telcontar]

7. What is the inherent value of a human?

[treestar]

9. +1

It only serves the persons causing the suffering. It does not make the person executed, etc. any better or sorrier. And if that suffering is what makes the people feel better, it's not so noble.

[woo me with science]

15. +10000 The rhetoric is also used manipulatively to increase power of governments over people.

We are propagandized that it's okay for governments to do all manner of unconscionable things, as long as their targets are "bad" enough. Our hatred is stoked to make us emotional rather than rational and thoughtful about the powers we are permitting government to seize.

We are propagandized to accept mass surveillance using arguments about the need for protection from terrorists or child molesters. Any vicious practice adopted by our prison system can and will be rationalized by referencing the most horrible crime of someone imprisoned in that system. We lose the concept of national standards for how our government treats human beings. It is the *exact* same, manipulative, emotional argument used by the Bush regime to justify the tortures by our government that Democrats were uniformly against before Obama become president.

Recently, our government revoked Social Security benefits for Nazi war criminals, and people cheered. Never mind that the action was a chilling precedent for punishing people outside of the limits of our judicial system. Whose Social Security benefits will be revoked next? And for what crime? I suspect child molesters will be the first tried, but make no mistake that it won't stop there. There is financial incentive to start using criminal history as a justification for stealing the Social Security fund.

We are manipulated like puppets. We are deliberately marinated in the language of hatred and vengeance rather than thoughtful discussion about the type of society we would like to create based on our own actions and values.

Prison is profitable now. So is war. So is punishing the poor, who are routinely smeared in our media as parasites rather than human beings. It is useful to the One Percent to keep us focused on fomenting the rage and vengeance rather than creating a society that teaches and models compassion for one another.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Because it's the Christian way of doing things. It's not we're going blow him up with AA guns.

We're civilized.

[FLPanhandle]

4. So how do you respond to the folks that think even prison is torture

and "Keeping them where they can't do more harm" is making them suffer.

[treestar]

11. That's just unreasonable

About Tsarnaev, there were some people arguing that solitary as done in the Supermax is torture.

But if they're going to move the goalposts to imprisonment as torture, they can justly be asked what the heck else we are supposed to do. I guess we could say we have to torture them with imprisonment to protect ourselves.

[FLPanhandle]

12. Heck, some are already complaining that even Life without Parole is too cruel.

I wouldn't be surprised to see an argument around here that he should go to a halfway house with psychological counseling so we, as a nation, don't "destroy our souls" - whatever that means.

[MineralMan]

5. Broken people who harm others need to be removed from

society until they're not broken any longer. If that doesn't happen, keep them removed.

Do they suffer by being removed from society and losing their freedom? Perhaps. Not my problem. They made other people suffer, so they're broken, as you say. Isolate them from the general society. Treat them humanely, but keep them from doing further harm. How are we to know which people are broken? Once they demonstrate that by harming others, away with them!

I'm opposed to killing people. Period. I'm not opposed to removing broken people who harm others from society. I favor that.

[hrmjustin]

6. if you kill someone you should be punished.

Not death of course but you should be punished because you took a life away.

[AZ Progressive]

8. A deterrent mainly

Setting an example to make others think twice.

Other than that, making someone suffer is often a poor payback for whatever harm they initially caused. The best thing is to keep things from happening in the first place.

[woo me with science]

10. Thank you. We marinate in propaganda justifying and celebrating cruelty.

We are deliberately marinated in corporate propaganda that teaches cruelty, judgment, greed, and hopelessness. We need not just policy changes, but a fundamental change in our national values and priorities. It really is about choosing as a nation to love human beings over money.

Thank you again.

[ann---]

14. Agree

America should be ashamed that it still has such a love
affair with the death penalty and wanting people to die.
It is very very sad.