10 thoughts on “Utilitarian Review 4/27/13”

1. The “the temptation to waterboard George Bush” link points to Suat’s “Opera as Drama as Comics” piece.

   Noah, your article on quitting is excellent and a subject that should be examined more often.

2. Damn it. Now fixed; thank you.

3. It’s three weeks old now, but I enjoyed the hell out of this post by David Bordwell on the parallels between fan and professional critical discourses, using that recent film about weirdo readings of The Shining. Should be of interest to a lot of HU readers and contributors, if you haven’t seen it already.

4. ————————
   Noah Berlatsky says:

   …The whole reason pot smokers shouldn’t be in jail is because they’re not hurting anyone. And George Bush isn’t hurting anyone either, now. Again, I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, and one of the things the hearts of like-minded citizens bleed about is our nation’s execrable, bloated, inhumane prison system. I can 100 percent support putting away people who are an ongoing threat…punishing people just to punish them seems pretty futile to me.

   There are other reasons to hold people accountable for their crimes besides simple incapacitation, of course. Deterrence is probably the main one…
   ————————–

   Following that vein, elsewhere ( https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/04/utilitarian-review-42013/ ) we read:

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   Ormur says:

   I must say I do prefer the society that say, locks up Andreas Behring Brevik in a tasteful and well equipped cell forever after a fair trial to one that say, invades a bunch of countries and locks hundreds of people up without a trial after torturing them.

   I’m more worried about what a society practicing drawing and quartering would stand for than pointlessly avenging horrible tragedies.
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   So, if some frothingly jealous “ex” murders his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend, it would be “pretty futile”; a “pointless avenging.” Because the murderer is no longer an “ongoing threat.”

   And suppose it could be proven that punishing criminals is utterly useless as a “deterrent.” (Indeed, it was found that pickpockets gleefully took advantage of the distraction of old-time public hangings to ply their trade among the rubberneckers.)

   Would you then argue that we shouldn’t bother punishing thieves, rapists, murderers? That it would be “futile,” “pointless”?

   What message does that give to those who have been robbed, raped, whose loved ones have been murdered? No doubt they’d be condemned for their unseemly “bloodlust,” unwillingness to forgive…

   (Why, Mansonite Charles “Tex” Watson converted to Christianity in prison, and at the time said others had better forgive him, or they’d be “un-Christian.” http://truthontatelabianca.com/threads/charles-tex-watson-says-we-all-must-forgive-him.4042/ )

5. ——————————
   Noah Berlatsky says:

   This is why, now, as ever, the best approach to abortion is to make it, wherever possible, unnecessary—by making contraception easily available, providing sex education, and improving social services so that raising children is not such an economic burden…
   —————————–

   It doesn’t help matters that the Religious Right is opposed to all that; that the Catholic Church — long the most fervent anti-abortion advocate — is likewise anti-birth control.

   And, one could somewhat lessen the impact; but wouldn’t “improving social services so that raising children is not such an economic burden” mean that everyone, including those uninterested in breeding, pay through the nose to keep everybody else’s kids in fashionable clothing, stacks of toys, buy them a cool new car when they graduate high school, put them through college?

   Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose; Margaret Sanger brilliantly argues against “The Pope’s Position on Birth Control,” Jan. 27, 1932: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=303569.xml

   http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/catholic-church-vatican-bishops-birth-control

6. Actually, people who commit domestic violence seem like they would very much be ongoing threats to do the same thing to someone else.

7. Yes, that’s a good point. But wouldn’t that hold true of most criminals?

   (Definitely leaving out here the hapless folks caught smoking pot and other victims of unjust laws, like those penalizing homosexual behavior…)

   Rather than their crimes being a one-time “mistake,” aren’t they the natural end-result of their particular frame of mind, attitude? A lack of concern for the rights and lives of others; a blithe belief that they’re so brilliant, they’ll Get Away With It?

   In response to a Matt Taibbi “Rolling Stone” article on the cruelty of “three strikes” law, one chap wrote, “I really want to agree…yet I can’t help but view these criminals as the stupidest people ever. If you have two felonies on your record and you know one more strike lands you in jail for life, why risk your freedom for [stealing] a pair of socks?”

   Because they’re criminals, that’s why; aside from some vile, sneaky cunning that passes for intelligence, overwhelmingly a pack of amoral morons.

   Re the sorry phenomenon of recidivism:

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   -Among nearly 300,000 prisoners released in 15 states in 1994, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years. A study of prisoners released in 1983 estimated 62.5%.

   -Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 states in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

   -These offenders had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.

   -Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).

   – Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide.
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   http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17

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   The number of inmates returning to state prisons within three years of release has remained steady for more than a decade, a strong indicator that prison systems are failing to deter criminals from re-offending, a new study has concluded.

   In one of the most comprehensive reports of its kind, the Pew Center on the States found that slightly more than four in 10 offenders return to prison within three years, a collective rate that has remained largely unchanged in years, despite huge increases in prison spending that now costs states $52 billion annually.

   National recidivism, or return, rates are holding steady even as state officials have launched programs to help prisoners re-enter society and as the recent financial crisis has forced states to cut their budgets and re-evaluate the types of offenders who should return to prison.
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   http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-04-12-Prison-recidivism-rates-hold-steady.htm

   Just to show the U.S. has no monopoly on failure here, this UK story reports:

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   Reoffending rates top 70% in some prisons, figures reveal

   Reoffending is higher among criminals who are locked up than do community sentences – with 74% of ex-inmates at one prison convicted again within a year

   …prisoners starting a community punishment under probation supervision have a reoffending rate 7 points below those discharged from short-term prison sentences of 12 months or less – 46% compared with 53%.

   The statistics underline the long-term ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system at diverting persistent offenders from a life of crime. Of those given a community punishment or sent to prison, 74% are convicted of another crime within nine years.

   In a survey of 1,435 prisoners, 68% named a job as the most important factor in preventing them going back to a life of crime after leaving prison, while for 60% it was having somewhere to live.

   The analysis also reveals that the number of serious further offences, including murder, rape and grievous bodily harm, committed by former prisoners within a year of their release reached 592 in 2008/09.
   —————————-
   http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/04/jail-less-effective-community-service

   Note how even the more gentle “community service” alternative only yields 7% better results.

   And of course, these statistics fail to take into account all the ex-cons who commit crimes and don’t get caught.

   No doubt the predictable reaction will be, “well then, let’s abolish all the prisons!” (Sheesh…)

   Personally, I’d rather have massive amounts of funding given to combatting the poverty and deprived childhood conditions that lead to creating that “criminal frame of mind”…

   As that British story goes on to report,

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   The MoJ figures show that reconviction rates were higher for prisoners who had at one time been excluded from school or taken into care, were homeless or jobless before being sent to prison, or had witnessed violence in their childhood home.

   Reoffending rates were also higher for those from criminal families – those in which an immediate relative has been convicted of a crime other than a motoring offence.
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8. Well, it’s probably true in a lot of cases…but not really in George Bush’s, was the point of the essay. He can’t invade other countries anymore, no matter how much he might like to.

9. I link to a couple articles on retribution as a theory of punishment toward the bottom of a very long thread on Kristian’s recent V for Vendetta essay.

   Obviously, preventing crime is a potentially valid approach to preventing recidivism, but because prevention fails, punishment should be far more effective than it is in this country. Chuck Colson and Jack Eckerd wrote a book in the eighties called Why America Doesn’t Work. The thrust of the book was about a declining work ethic, but because both authors were involved in prison reform, they also looked at recidivism as it relates to labor. They found that in countries where prisoners must work, sentences were far shorter and recidivism was far lower than in the U.S. I know correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but I think it does in this case. Here’s what I think happens: As convicts become inured to the discomfort of honest labor, crime as a source of income and incarceration as a source of room and board become comparatively much less attractive options. Of course, this assumes that there are jobs on the outside, so external prevention work (like growing the economy) is still necessary, even if the theory is correct.

   With no evidence to cite, I think the maintenance of law and order inside the prison is another essential ingredient. Prisons where violence (including rape) is common and where the criminal gangs control what happens on the inside (as was recently revealed to be the case in a Baltimore detention center) increase crime outside prison, in my opinion. They inculcate in convicts the idea that brutality and bribery are the paths to success. This is the opposite of rehabilitation.

10. “Because prevention fails” should read “because prevention sometimes fails.” Sorry about the implied negativity.

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