Burglary/punishment spillover thread

What does stringing them up by the balls actually achieve? Or, more realistically, 15 years for nicking a DVD player? When they get out they'll be more embittered and * up than before, and even more unemployable, and thus just as likely to go out on the rob again. Plus, your tax is paying for them to be locked up doing nothing when they could be retrained and be the guy that serves you a pint, or sits beside you at work. There ARE success stories, people do go through a crime streak and come out of it as thoroughly decent people.

Don't write people off cos you're all * off about having your telly nicked. Them taking your telly isn't equivalent to you taking 15 years of their life - that's not a fair trade. In that scenario, you are taking far more from them than they ever tried to take from you - you're becoming the bad guy. They can give you your stuff back, you cannae give them years of their life back.

Basically, just because something unfair has been done to you doesn't give you the right to do something vastly more unfair back to that person. They repay the debt and if their behaviour needs to be reformed then it should be - but we don't stick the knife in out of badness. Cos that's all harsh punishments are: cruelty.

 

Have someone burgle your Grandparents 5 times, culminating in them actually chapping the door and assaulting your Grandad as he tries to stop them robbing the house in broad daylight and tell me you wouldn't sring them up by the * balls!

Like i said, i'm probably not the cat you want to be asking for objective opinions on this subject.

 

Hi, Chooxen. Nice to see you here. On the whole I agree with your general drift, but I think it is important to recognise that with some crimes (including burglary) the victim loses far more than the perpetrator gains. An example would be my grandad's watch, which was worth far more to me than it ever could be to them. A more extreme example would be Sean Daleer's grandparents, I can only imagine how horrendous that experience must have been and it's hard to see how that could realistically be compensated.

 

You're right, you can't be objective in that circumstance, I couldn't either. I get aggro over someone lookin at me funny nevermind bein burgled. But that's why the courts should basically ignore what the victims wants to happen to the offender. They're the last people whose opinions should be taken into account because they're the least objective. So saying 'aye but my granny was burgled' is basically telling people to ignore your opinion But aye you get that.

 

I'm not sure we can take sentimental value into account when sentencing. It's like having a quid nicked off you, then protesting "that was my lucky pound, I demand a thousand in compensation as that's what it's worth to me!" It's ludicrous, you can't do that. The watch was worth however much it was worth in pounds sterling.

Justice should be cold. No sentiment, no anger, no hatred, just pure logic. Otherwise it becomes vengeance.

 

Auge um auge, zahn um zahn

 

Ja und so wird die ganze Welt blind und zahnlos, oder?

 

An eye for an eye pays a debt. An eye for a tooth creates a new debt in the debtor's favour. In essence, that's what I'm arguing against. Disproportional punishment.

 

trennen die Spreu vom Weizen

 

Why not?

It's not really though, is it? You give a ridiculous example for what is actually quite a sensible point: if you are arguing that justice should be about paying back what you have taken (and I think there is some merit in this), then it is reasonable to argue that what should be compensated is what the victim has lost.

Not to the victim it wasn't, who else are you trying to compensate?

I'm not talking about anger and vengeance. I don't wish any harm on the person who took my grandad's watch, I'm saying something quite different: if you wish them to pay back the "debt" they owe me instead of sentencing with a punitive aim, then the market value of the watch will not achieve that aim, not by a long way.

 

OK, I'll bite. How is that remotely relevant?

 

:smiley-laughing002: Fair do's

Just as well i have a record myself, because if I got jury duty for a burglar...

 

Random Review, just to deal with your post overall, I don't think sentimentality is any better or worse than anger or hatred because it is has the effect of clouding objective justice. It needs to be entirely rational otherwise it's little better than repaying perceived slights or repaying imagined rather than actual value.

That latter point is significant to the examples given. If your grandfather's watch is actually worth a tenner but to you it is worth 1000 pounds, it is still worth a tenner in the marketplace regardless of how you feel. The burglar therefore stole an item worth ten pounds from you - he can't sell it for much than that and neither could you. That is how much you are owed. Your own personal valuation is irrelevant. As I said before, you can't ask the victim how much the offender should repay, the victim is not an objective party. What usually happens is they start screaming about hanging being too good and all this nonsense. The watch example is no different - you've no more right to demand an excessive sentence than anyone else.

 

Who do you think you are? Atticus Finch?!!!

 

Well first of all do you see me screaming about hanging being too good?

Secondly I just do not agree that the watch is worth its market value to me, you may be right that sentimentality clouds the issue too much; but in that case your scheme is unworkable because in no way would I be repaid by the market value of the watch.

If I might take the much more extreme example of Sean Daleer's grandparents to make this clear (hopefully this is not taking too great a liberty, Sean), how would returning the goods or their market value in any way pay his grandparents back for what they went through?

 

It wouldn't repay them personally for their physical or emotional injuries, no. The only way that could be achieved totally fairly was if Sean's grandparents (I'm sorry for using you as an example Sean) were allowed to assault the offender.

That can't happen though. We've agreed as a society that that is too barbaric. So he serves a jail sentence proportional to the distress or injury caused. Essentially the suffering the offender caused is repaid with suffering of his own by the loss of his freedom. Now, this doesn't achieve anything whatsoever but it does fit it with our notion of fairness. It is an eye for an eye in the most punitive sense.

I don't disagree with that. I disagreed firstly that that person is morally at fault and should receive an overly harsh sentence. Likewise, I disagree in the second case that the victim should determine how much the offender needs to repay - that can't happen because they can't be objective. They'll value the debt incurred too highly every time because they have a stake in it.

Like I said, the law must be cold and calculating. Inhuman almost. Not so as to rid it of compassion, but to rid it of vengeance.

 

I like a lot of what you're saying here, I just think you're glossing over a few important points that I've tried to bring out in this thread. I also feel quite ambivalent about the idea of the law needing to be cold and calculating, though I agree it needs to be purged of vengeance. I just wonder (and I do mean wonder- I haven't formed an opinion yet) whether the cure might be worse than the disease.

I think you have the germ of a really interesting way of looking at these things, though.

 

The law should certainly be devoid of vengance but that is not to say that crimes shouldn't be tried on a case to case basis.

Stealing the last tenner from a poor family trying to feed their family is surely a worse crime than someone stealing a tenner from a multi-national corporation?