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griffin tucker

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eradicate punishment from the law system. instead, teach.

we as a species should learn to teach right from wrong instead of simply casting away our own species into seclusion, and hoping the problem will go away.

popular law and politics dictates that we should make examples of people who commit a crime to show other people that an action shouldn't be done through means of fear.

in my opinion, fear does not work for the long-run, especially in modern times where upon the public doubts governmental law and even politicians/law-makers themselves.

i propose that methods should be developed that involve mandatory psychologists and sociologists to attend court cases with follow-ups on individuals who are jailed, periodically with the intention to develop reports on as many elements as possible that led up to the crime itself.

with privacy kept in mind, reports could then be made publicly available and delivered to current law-makers/politicians to change or remove elements of a recipe for popular crime.

in cases where societal elements themselves are part of the recipe for a crime, and can be changed or removed, politicians and law-makers have the power to do so via means of education.

to do so through schools is a start, but humans don't ever stop learning throughout their lives, so other ways of educating people who have committed a crime _and_ the public (potential crime-committers) should be made available to change or remove elements of society that lead to a crime and eventually remove the crime itself.

EDIT: as Christophe Cop first mentioned, removing some people from society is necessary. while these people can still learn, i still think that they don't need to be punished in order to do so. for further information to back up my belief please see this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Positive_and_negative_reinforcement

Topics: courts and cases ethics evolutionary psychology law laws moral psychology sociology
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Closing Statement from griffin tucker

i closed this idea early, simply because the amount and quality of feedback has led me to want to re-write the idea.

while many people demand justice by way of punishment, i believe the idea of punishment is not the best way to solve a re-occurring problem, but instead increases the likelihood of it happening again.

positive reinforcement simply works better than punishment in any case, but due to the current model of western society, there are certain restraints that mean there are more immediate demands at hand that require attention. so, other methods including punishment are used instead of positive reinforcement.

i believe social policy needs to be changed as a result.

according to the model of 'systematic evidence-based preventative social policy' (i think it needs a new name) it is what is proven to be working better than existing methods by means of already existing objective evidence.

in other words, if it works, and it's proven, the idea will be started. but this is not democracy.

currently, law-makers work on the assumption that if they don't get enough votes at the next election, they will lose their power to make laws - and since the easiest way to keep their power is to do whatever the majority says, this is what they have a tendancy to do.

law-makers react to popular opinion, but is popular opinion necessarily more correct or incorrect than evidence-based social policy? i don't know, myself.


thank-you all for your contributions.

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    Anca Tiurean 10+

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    Oct 9 2011: i would say that punishment doesn't have to have a point to have a point. From the point of view of the "receiver" it's just some effect he experiences in response to his actions. Now from the "giver's" perspective punishment is thought to be a tool of control - in a way it is similar to positive reinforcement, by which for instance we tell the man: "do this and this" and when he does what we want, we give him a bit of what he wants. When you addressed the problem by saying "eradicate punishment" - i thought it is an extreme and perhaps little necessary measure. Your later contributions to the idea tell me that in fact your focus was on teaching people. Much of the teaching process is based on positive and negative reinforcement (we call it operational learning) which turns out to be effective at the level of behavior, but ineffective at emotional and intrinsic motivational levels. I thinks we would agree if I say that the best teaching for offenders would be rather similar to personal tutoring and personal development group activities, such as problem based learning, debates, hands-on group projects and so on. Although in prison, they are part of a specific society in which they can practice transferable skills. For many of them this will turn prison into a boarding school. For some, it might be a taken opportunity to manipulate everyone into thinking they're ok to get out sooner so they can steal and kill and rape, as they've been missing it. My point is, apart from teaching them, they need to want to be taught, they have to need to learn, and nothing makes us feel the need for learning more than problems and obstacles happening to us.

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