I'm under no illusion that a lot of people in prison have committed heinous crimes, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated like a human being. Their punishment is their loss of freedom. They still have a need for recreation like everyone else, and chess if anything can be a helpful tool in hopefully improving their mental state.
I think the American prison system does very little to improve the chances that these people can become better citizens and psychologically depriving them of stimulation I can only imagine stands in the way of achieving that.
Like it or not, this is not reality. Reality is that they aren't treated like human beings, are deprived recreation, are unsafe, are mistreated by staff, etc.
Saying that loss of freedom is their punishment is viewing it in the most idealistic way, disconnected from the reality of it. Being in the prison system is far worse than lack of freedom.
That's why prison reform is so important.
Or maybe that is kinda the point of prison? I’m all for nonviolent offenders to go into rehabilitation etc etc... but for the violent... prison is supposed to be shit, or am I missing something?
Public safety - Keep someone deemed a threat to society away from the public until they have served their time, or are otherwise deemed safe.
Deterrence to others - Show to other citizens that committing a particular crime has punishment, so they will not do the same.
Punishment of the offender - Actions have consequences.
Reform - As much as possible, set prisoners up for success if they are eventually to be let out. There is a lot more to this, but I'll leave it there.
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Note how "revenge" and "sadism" are not in that list. How does it benefit society, or the prisoners, to remove certain social, educational or entertainment activities? Do you think someone planning to murder or rape someone will be deterred by knowing they won't have chess? Do you think it helps or hurts a prisoner's mental health by taking away such simple things?
I don't have many answers, but more people need to see prison for what it should do for society and the incarcerated, rather than wishing for prisoners to get sexually assaulted (for example).
It's people like you who are so blinded by your hunger for revenge to actually consider solutions that would decrease our recidivism rates.
No it is not. Revenge is not justice. Human society has come a long way from Hammurabi; we got rid of "eye for an eye" centuries ago. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" is what is wrong here.
If I steal $2k the punishment is usually still give $2k back and then all fees then even some punitive damages...
If I kill your brother, is it proper justice for you to kill my brother?
Many crimes are irreversible; and revenge only serves to make the victimized feel better but ultimately does not restore balance. Justifying revenge quickly leads you down to inhumane punishments - after all who's to say the victim was given their fill of revenge? This is why there has always been a philosophical line between justice and revenge.
Yes.
The whole point of a criminal justice system is to reduce crime. That definitionally means focusing on making sure prison doors ain't revolving. Whether that crime reduction meets some individual's arbitrary standards of retribution is entirely secondary to that fundamental primary objective; revenge for the sake of revenge is not justice, but rather the precise opposite.
I think the justice system is just what the people think it should be... not some unarguable objective goal.
Having said that... people value revenge. If we automatically released all killers because we had a drug or 10 day program that would 100% prevent reoffence, I don’t think people would call that justice. Right or wrong, I think in most people’s eyes justice demands some level of revenge if not to a specific person, then to society at large.
It's also possible to believe that revenge against a criminal isn't positive for anyone on its own. There should be consequences to crime, especially egregious ones like murder, but that doesn't mean that the victims are better off and it doesn't mean we should sadistically torture people who almost always have wiring issues that made them prone to committing terrible acts. It's essentially saying that we believe that criminals are hopeless for reform, which can be true, but often times it's not true.
And you know this how? Further, you know that this classification applies to the author how?
God forbid we put some effort into rehabilitation to prevent recidivism instead of just retribution for the sake of retribution. The guy's serving a 33 year long sentence. That's 33 years isolated from society, and 33 years of lag behind said society, resulting in a lifelong disadvantage even without considering employers being wholly unwilling to hire people with criminal backgrounds. That's punishment enough; if you believe otherwise, then the American prison system is clearly failing to do its job.
As I linked in response to your other comment asking a similar question, though, other countries have demonstrated quite a bit of success with the approach, Norway as one example having a low recidivism rate even among violent offenders. The Norwegian socioeconomic safety nets certainly help, too; crime in general is a function of both mental health and economic standing, so public policies aimed at addressing both of those things will naturally lead to both fewer incarcerations and fewer reincarcerations.
Check out: 35 Myths of Human Intelligence by Russell T Warne. A great overview.
A McDonald's hamburger is one of the most studied forms of food in gastronomy. That doesn't necessarily make it worthwhile to eat :)
See also: Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which describes at length why things like IQ and craniometry are fundamentally flawed due to their fallacious and unscientific insistence on reification and ranking - neither of which have been adequately proven to be applicable to something as complicated as human intelligence.
See also the very existence of the Flynn effect, and the fact that IQ is defined such that 100 is always the average IQ - making the comparison of IQs across time periods meaningless, since 100 IQ in 1900's America means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's America which means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's Norway which means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's Nigeria.