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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

In government class we were assigned to create fake bills and one that popped up was the Eye for an Eye bill
in this bill people would be punished for the severity and catagory of their crime
for example if someone was charged with drunk driving then they would get a revoked license and (if repeated) a revoke on their ability to buy alcohol
i was just wondering on how many people would agree with this form of punishment instead of the current form that is in place in your country

[Imperial Guardsman]

>manslaughter
>hit and run
>grand theft
>grand tresspass
>the most despicable crime
>civil disobedience
>anything involving weapons
No.

[martinuzz]

There's an old saying that goes

"an eye for an eye, everyone blind"

[kaijyuu]

I only agree with punishments so long as they act as effective deterrents and/or prevent future crimes.

Your example would be fine by me as it acts to prevent the person from driving impaired again.


I would not be okay with a law that punished poking out someone's eye by poking out the offender's eye. I might be okay with steps to stop the offender from poking people in the future though, depending on how reasonable the prevention methods are.

[Criptfeind]

That saying is stupid, it would just leave everyone with a single eye. Obviously.

Anyway, I wouldn't be adverse to punishments that are made to make the crime harder to do in the future, like as you say suspending a drivers license for drunk driving. But making it a thing across the board is a bad idea, basically for the reasons Imperial Guardsman said.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I would not be okay with a law that punished poking out someone's eye by poking out the offender's eye. I might be okay with steps to stop the offender from poking people though, depending on how reasonable the prevention methods are.

Crime: Eye Poking

Judge Verdict: Remove fingers and toes

[nenjin]

I would not be okay with a law that punished poking out someone's eye by poking out the offender's eye. I might be okay with steps to stop the offender from poking people though, depending on how reasonable the prevention methods are.

Crime: Eye Poking

Judge Verdict: Remove fingers and toes

Suddenly the penalty for rape seems apropos.

[GlyphGryph]

Crime: Eye Poking

Judge Verdict: Remove fingers and toes

Come, let us be civilized and recognize people can, eventually, learn from their crimes.

We will hold on to those fingers and toes for a sufficient period to believe the offender has done so, and then we can just pop them back on with some surgery, everyone learns a valuable lesson and we've moved as a society from the horrible practice of keeping a large chunk of our population in prison. Everyone wins! Progress!

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

in my personal opinion some crimes should be solved this way, mainly basic crimes such as the one in the example
but high crimes such as rape, accidental man slaughter, etc.
should be managed in the same way they are now

[Nirur Torir]

From my basic understanding, there are three basic schools of thought for "justice:" Retaliation, rehabilitation, or preventing recurrences. Revoking a drivers license for a DUI falls under preventing recurrences. Eye for an eye is retaliation. I am rather against retaliatory "justice."

[LordBucket]

i was just wondering on how many people would agree with this form of
punishment instead of the current form that is in place in your country

It's a difficult issue, but I lean towards thinking that the "punishment" model is not ideal when dealing with intelligent creatures. If your dog pees on the carpet and you smack his nose, he quickly learns to not pee on the carpet. But humans beings are not dogs and punishment doesn't affect behavior in the same way. For example, imagine someone steals food because they're hungry. And imagine that you then put them in prison for a year where they associate with career criminals. Would it come as any surprise if they become a career criminals themselves?

What if instead you feed them?

But how well received would it be if you propose helping criminals instead of punishing them? Man beats and rapes a woman so instead of punishing him you find a woman who likes rough sex and domination games and introduce them. Give him what he wants, and you reduce his incentive to go and take it from the unwilling. Am I seriously proposing that as a specific remedy? No...but consider it a prompt for thought.

I think that unlike dogs, probably a lot of human criminals have reasons for what they do. It's very easy to see that the guy starving to death who steals from the local bakery might prefer to not steal, and given a means to get what he wants without taking it by force, he might choose it. What if the murderer could be given simulated games to play? What if the rapist could be paired with women who want to be dominated? What if the child molester could be given sufficiently lifelike dolls?

Consider it a thought experiment.

how many people would agree with this form of punishment instead of the current form

It seems impractical to implement except in a very few specific cases. Someone who murdered, can be murdered. But what do you do about theft? Arson? Embezzling? Impersonating a police officer? Fraud? Identify theft? Very few crimes have simple eyes that can be taken.

[Jelle]

A punishment is only effective if its severity is equal to or outweighs the benefits of the crime comitted, so as to make comitting said crime to be unappealing and thereby preventing it. A punishment being productive to somehow righting the wrong is an added bonus. Better to prevent then to mend after all.

Balancing those two things can be complex and there are many factors in play. Eye for an eye punishment comes close enough but is crude. It is in no way productive for anyone involved and does not factor in the nature of the victim and the criminal. It can also be considered cruel when it mirrors a particularly cruel crime.

There's an old saying that goes

"an eye for an eye, everyone blind"

That's a silly saying. Clearly eye for an eye would leave twice as many people one eyed as there would be crimes involving the loss of an eye for the victim.

[LordBucket]

From my basic understanding, there are three basic schools of thought for "justice:" Retaliation, rehabilitation, or preventing recurrences.

I think we're just not very good at the second two. Barring Clockwork Orange, how do you rehabilitate a criminal? Retaliation is the only one of the three we know how to do well.

Although I suppose execution does serve as a means to prevent recurrence.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

There's another reason why our punishments tend to be just fines, jail time, and execution. If your punishments are all of exactly the same type, you can compare punishments and determine which are more lenient or harsher automatically. Say you're comparing theft and rape, clearly the rape should have a higher penalty. If your penalty is in jail time, it's easy to figure out how much jail time to assign to each crime. But if the punishments are different, you need to figure out how bad each punishment is in relation to each other and THEN figure out how much of each to assign. Which means you get it wrong more often.

I think the revocation of driving or drinking privileges is not "Eye for an Eye" justice. Someone who offends the community by stealing gets locked up in jail, preventing him from stealing. A doctor who is negligent can lose his license to practice medicine. EfaE punishment for these crimes would be declaring that the victims can steal from the thief without penalty, or that the patient can cut open the doctor and sew him back up with an instrument still inside him.

If you violate hunting regulations, you shouldn't get to hunt for a while. Unlawful use of a firearm should result in revoking your right to have guns for a while. If you keep at it, or violate the punishment by hunting / owning a gun anyway, you could have the penalty extended forever plus some other penalty. We already do this exact thing with drunk driving (license revoked), or when parents abuse their children (kids taken away and put into government care).

This kind of "let the punishment fit the crime" is appropriate not only to punish the offender but to try to stop him from continuing to commit the same offense.

One thing I think is important about jail time is that, for the most part, a year of jail time is an equally bad punishment regardless of who receives it. Some people may be "soft" and suffer more, and others may be "hardened" with experience in jail. To make the incarceration a significant hardship for hardened criminals, and also to punish repeat offenders, we increase the jail time for people who have already done a bunch of jail time.

I think fines should be the same way, equal hardship no matter who you are, but the problem there is that everyone has a different amount of money. If someone has very little income / wealth / whatever, and gets a speeding ticket, they should have to pay the normal amount - but if a rich guy gets a speeding ticket, he should have to pay extra. I want a rich guy to suffer just as much as a poor guy suffers when he does something wrong. I don't know how you would do this. Maybe a point system for any offense that is tied to the criminal's tax returns, incidentally forcing an automatic audit which could screw him completely if he's being dishonest there too?

In general I think fines and jail time can be effective deterrents and punishments if applied correctly. Just recently a few guys got caught doing insider trading, made about 6 mil among them, and are looking at huge fines and 20 years apiece. Whereas the fat cats at the top of the schemes that destroyed the world economy recently have gotten punishments varying from nothing to symbolic.

It's the same disparity between a guy who robs a 7-11 and grabs $20 and the store owner shoots him - and is justified in doing so - while a banker who stole $20 million gets virtually no punishment. Shouldn't we be allowed to shoot the banker a million times? Let him heal up in between, you know, just so he doesn't die on the 10,000th bullet. Sometimes you crave that medieval punishment, you thirst for that diabolical and poetically just punishment. But for any crime you've got to put yourself in the position of the accused - possibly wrongly accused - and imagine it's you sitting in that chair.

The criminal justice system sometimes gets it wrong. It's hard to rescind an execution. But you can return a fine, or somehow compensate someone for unlawful jail time served.

And if the punishment were so inhumane you wouldn't go down without a fight. Like when lesser crimes have a death penalty, you have nothing to lose. You would see more shootouts with police to escape an assault charge, more high-speed chases to get out of a drug possession charge, more hit-and-run to get out of a reckless driving charge. If you knew the punishment would be putting out your eyes, wouldn't you fight to the death? Whose throat would you not tear out to save your own life? If you would be executed just for punching a hated aristocrat, wouldn't you just try to kill him instead?

It is the measured and restrained application of punishment that is the hallmark of a civilized society, and its success in that endeavor is bound to its success in the struggle against tyranny and anarchy.

EDIT: Just thought about this - what about the guy who has no eyes? Can he go around poking people's eyes out with impunity, knowing no punishment can be effectively levied against him? What about the completely destitute man who steals? He has nothing to steal back, and no fine can be administered. You'd need a second layer of punishments for people for whom the standard EfaE punishment was invalid.

[Frumple]

From my basic understanding, there are three basic schools of thought for "justice:" Retaliation, rehabilitation, or preventing recurrences. Revoking a drivers license for a DUI falls under preventing recurrences. Eye for an eye is retaliation. I am rather against retaliatory "justice."

Throw "reparation" in there, too. T'me, the ideal system is one combining reparation, rehabilitation, and preventing recurrence (though note the last is largely a matter of the second, in the majority of cases).

In the case of accidental eye loss, the one inflicting it covers medical fees -- either explicitly through civil fines, or incidentally through a universal health care system the one causing the harm pays in to.

For something like a DUI wreck, the one inflicting the harm would cover any medical or property damage -- either out of pocket, or through the government covering it and the one that did the deed performing community service until the debt is paid back -- then go through rehabilitation and likely temporary or permanent license loss. Potentially blacklisted from purchasing alcohol, as well.

The trend would continue upwards. Rape, covering cost of therapy/medical one way or another -- and likely further fines to cover loss of productivity, quality of life, etc. -- extensive rehabilitation, likely means of preventing recurrence afterwards (surveillance, relocation, etc.).

Murder would be about the only potential exception, since there's not really a way to meaningfully offset the harm done by such. It would likely entail imprisonment and remaining lifetime being spent on some form of useful community service.

Overall, the way I've come to see it is sort of transactional. A crime (ideally, when the designation isn't being abused) is something that draws from the overall account you could label "Societal Good". The base purpose of justice is to offset that transaction so the net effect on the societal good account is zero, and hopefully (in an absolutely ideal scenario) adjust the situation such that the ultimate results is a net gain. A criminal is still a member of society, and their well being part of the societal good -- a sub-account, if you will. Punishment is a withdrawal from their particular account. If it is not offset by something -- an improvement in behavior, some form of physical reparation, etc. -- then all you have accomplished is to make the overall account shrink further. There has been no gain, and the net loss is made even greater. The goal is to balance harm -- shift resources from the one who has caused it to those who were harmed -- and adjust the asset (the criminal, or the overall situation) such that it brings a net gain to the overall good in the future.

A punishment is only effective if its severity is equal to or outweighs the benefits of the crime comitted, so as to make comitting said crime to be unappealing and thereby preventing it.

I'd disagree here, to an extent. Part of the problem of retributive justice -- making sure the punishment exceeds the benefit of the crime -- is that it doesn't work in many situations. Executing or imprisoning someone who commits a crime of passion does little to nothing insofar as preventing further crime of that nature. Killing off or imprisoning the criminally insane does little to nothing insofar as preventing further crime from such individuals. For a great many crimes and a great many criminals, severity of punishment is literally irrelevant -- it has no bearing on their decision making. For many (most, to my understanding) others, it's still not a very good deterrent -- societal pressures are more effective by a huge margin. Punishment as a deterrent just isn't very good at what it sets out to do.