Prisons!

[Grames]

Generally, people who harm others were harmed themselves. Remediate their damage and you prevent future crimes.

"Remediate their damage" is a meaningless phrase because neither the damage nor the remediation refers to anything definite and objective. Rehabilitation fails. What use is all the empirical evidence and academic theory about crime if the result is an inability to face facts? It is also determinist and so incompatible with volition. The way to prevent future crimes is to imprison criminals, anything else is wishful thinking.

[Cherring109]

The proper role of a government is to protect the citizens against force and fraud (which we know is a type of force).

In this context (I mean in that hypothetical nation) you could not have "community service" because their is no "community" (in the traditional collectivist sense) to serve except the private property of others. What would you do- allow private citizens throw a raffle or bid at a auction for criminal labor. That stinks of slippery slope. I just do not trust human institutions that much.

What crimes are we talking about though- it seems to me that in the context of "objectivist utopia" (I know the problem there; just humor for it this instance) that any crime serious enough to warrant separation from polite society ;instead of just monetary re imbersment; wouldn't happen that much.

Whats left---murder, rape? If there is absolutely no doubt that the defendant is guilty then take them out the next week, secure them to a wall or pole and put a bullet through their head. ONLY when it is so obvious that they are real culprit (like cases for Kyle Ferguson who shot all those people; or the unibomber guy.)

That leaves us with another class of the accused- those who have been convicted of minor felonies or violent crimes...then prisons may be a proper method to deal with them ( I am using the terms "jail" and "prison" synonymously here. Same thing on a different scale)

OK, somebody is going to have to pay for them. Fact is that governments treasury department will just have to figure that in the budgets for the police.

I think that most people on this post are thinking of huge modern prisons. Well---why do we have to have huge modern prisons? Why not a whole bunch of small jails with small populations that are based on the same models of the old west? We cant assume jail breaks or break ins. That would be assumption of crime on everyone. No running water, no electricity, camper trailer style toilet facilities, cheap toilet paper..etc

To value living in a civilization means that one ought all that is necessary for the it's keeping and NOTHING more. I think that if the proper role of government is the protect us from force and fraud that automatically gives the moral right to ALL means to these ends. The moral is the practical by the way!

[Cherring109]

No running water, no electricity, camper trailer style toilet facilities, cheap toilet paper..etc

I forgot beans and cornbread, yeeeha!

Edited November 25, 2010 by Cherring109

[Myrtok]

Did Mrs. Rand ever write anything about the responsibility of caring for a prisoner? I've done some searches on the net and can't seem to find anything. It seems obvious to me that if we, through our government, take a man by force and put him in a prison, we then take on the responsibility for feeding him since we have forcibly put him in a situation where he can not feed himself. However, this would also seem to be a debt that every individual under that government owes to the prisoner, by virtue of the prisoner's wrongdoing. Such a collective responsibility to an individual is such a departure from the normal ethics of Objectivism, that I can't imagine Mrs. Rand wouldn't have been asked to explain it at some point.

The only alternative is to ask for volunteers to feed the prisoner, but if no volunteers step up, then we are left with the options of letting the prisoner go free or letting him starve to death, effectively turning his punishment into a death sentence.

[cliveandrews]

Prisons should be like work camps where inmates do factory work for subsistence wages. Attack someone with a tool, get shot in the head on the spot.

Edited December 18, 2010 by cliveandrews

[Grames]

Did Mrs. Rand ever write anything about the responsibility of caring for a prisoner?

Prisons are part of the cost of running the government. In the book Letters of Ayn Rand, in the section "Letters to a Philosopher" about page 558 she gets into justice vs. mercy and how to figure punishments that fit the crime. Here she invokes the principle that prisoners have rights. I'll quote two paragraphs from the middle of that passage:

Therefore, "psychiatric therapy" does not belong—on principle—among the alternatives that you list. And more: it is an enormously dangerous suggestion. A. Psychiatry is far from the stage of an exact science; in our present state of knowledge, it is not even a science—it is only in that preliminary, material-gathering stage from which a science will come. B. The law, which has the power to impose its decisions by force, cannot be guided by unproved, uncertain, controversial hypotheses or guesses—and the criminal cannot be treated as a guinea pig (I am saying this in defense of the criminal's rights). C. Since the prevention of crime is a psychological issue, since it involves a man's mind (his premises, values, choices, decisions), it would be monstrously evil to place a man's mind into the power of the law, to let the law prescribe and force upon him any course of treatment involving or affecting his mind. If "the prevention of crime" were accepted as the province and purpose of the law, it would permit and necessitate the most unspeakable atrocities: not merely psychological "brainwashing," but physical mutilations as well, such as electric shock therapy, prefrontal lobotomies and anything else that neurologists might discover. No moral premise—except total altruistic collectivism—could ever justify that sort of horror.

Observe that it is I, the unforgiving egoist, who am more considerate of the criminals (of their rights) than the alleged humanitarians who advocate psychiatric treatments out of an alleged compassion for criminals. A penal code has to treat men as adult, responsible human beings; it can deal only with their actions and with such motives as can be objectively demonstrated (such as intent vs. accident); it cannot assume jurisdiction over men's minds, brains, souls, values and moral premises—it cannot assume the right to change these by forcible means.

[Myrtok]

Prisons are part of the cost of running the government. In the book Letters of Ayn Rand, in the section "Letters to a Philosopher" about page 558 she gets into justice vs. mercy and how to figure punishments that fit the crime. Here she invokes the principle that prisoners have rights. I'll quote two paragraphs from the middle of that passage:

Yes, prisons are obviously part of the cost of running the government. I also understand (and agree with) Rand's argument that prisoners have rights, despite the fact that we take away or limit some of those rights when we put them in prison. Unless a prisoner has received a death sentence, the most basic right, the right to live, would still be held by the prisoner. It follows that some person or group of persons must then owe the prisoner either food, or the means to attain his own food. Who owes him that? "The government" is not a specific enough answer in an objectivist forum, since the government, from an objectivist viewpoint, would not necessarily own any means of providing him with food or the ability to attain food.

[Grames]

The government can own property just like a business can. Prisoners should work to make the prison as self-sufficient as possible but not be a profit center for the government.

[Oooze81]

I personally like the idea of "prison labour". I even agree with the leasing to private corporations, for labour purposes. For those who have violated someone's rights, they have no rights themselves.

On another note I disagree with the death penalty. Someone is useless dead, but alive...

[CapitalistSwine]

I am curious about something. Apparently Norway has the most "humanitarian" prisons in the world, and they have a much lower prisoner rate, and recurrent crime (they commit crime again after they get out) rate, and they get legitimate jobs much sooner.

[Leonid]

Here is unorthodox solution to the " prisoner's dilemma". In the ancient Israel there were no imprisonment as a measure of legal punishment. It was only a death sentence for the murder and some other transgressions, or fines, some of them quite heavy and restoration payments for the damage. What happened to the criminal who cannot pay? He had been sold as a slave usually for seven years and had to work to pay for his keeping. The money from the sale went to his victim. Can we maybe adopt such a system with all needed modifications and adjustments for the 21 century's legal system?

Edited July 31, 2011 by Leonid

[Dante]

Here is unorthodox solution to the " prisoner's dilemma". In the ancient Israel there were no imprisonment as a measure of legal punishment. It was only a death sentence for the murder and some other transgressions, or fines, some of them quite heavy and restoration payments for the damage. What happened to the criminal who cannot pay? He had been sold as a slave usually for seven years and had to work to pay for his keeping. The money from the sale went to his victim. Can we maybe adopt such a system with all needed modifications and adjustments for the 21 century's legal system?

Sounds to me like a pretty terrible system that is obviously geared towards the wealthy in society. This is the fundamental problem with having fines as the punishment for major transgressions; a billionaire could commit rape or manslaughter on Monday, cut a check on Tuesday, and be walking the streets scot free on Wednesday. This results in de facto inequality before the law. Fines should only be used to punish minor infractions, and major transgressions punished with prison time.