I’ve often encouraged people to give someone a more charitable interpretation. But I haven’t had to ask someone not to deliberately search out the least-charitable interpretation… until now.
The idea that people would be unhappy with the lack of punishment strikes me as implausible speculation.
If you’d said, “most people”, I wouldn’t agree, but I could imagine you were thinking it through carefully. But it’s “implausible” that people want revenge on criminals? No. I find that implausible.
That sentence leaped out as me as the crucial error that plunged the article into confusion.
So when I say P, it’s speculation; but when you say not(P), it’s definite?
I suspect that we are talking past each other because of a cross-cultural confusion. There are hidden assumptions here that we do not share. I’m going to try and step back a bit and to bring my subconscious assumptions to the surface.
I accept Robin Hanson’s notion of Homo Hypocritus: Man the sly rule bender. Indeed I push on a little further.
Mr. A takes advantage of Mr. B with a little sly rule bending. Later Mr. B gets his own back with a little sly rule bending of his own. Later still Mr. A tries it on again, but Mr. B knows how the trick is done and resists, becoming Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener. I see Man The Sly Rule Bender and and Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener as two sides of the same coin, action and reaction.
To see how this plays out in real life consider the case of Abdelbaset_al-Megrahi. His imprisonment, after being convicted of the Lockerbie Bombing, was causing political difficulties with Libya. It would be expedient to release him, but how could it be justified? Since he had protstate cancer it was possible to declare that he only had 3 months to live and to release him on compassionate grounds according to existing rules.
He is still alive eighteen months later, so round one to the Man The Sly Rule Breaker. How can Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener push back? He could try insisting on accountability, with some kind of sanction being taken against doctors who turn out to be excessively pessimistic about the prognosis of candidates for compassionate release.
Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener loses round two; there is no accountability for these kinds of decisions. Why does Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener usually lose? A glib answer is that when we have power we turn into Man The Sly Rule Breaker because we are in a position to abuse discretion. When we lose power we turn into Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener because we object to those who have displaced us abusing the power of discretion that they have won from us. Perhaps, but I would rather say that I just don’t know and leave that as a thread to pull on another time.
Finally, Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener falls back on opposing release on compassionate grounds altogether. He loses round one when doesn’t believe that the prisoner is close to death. He loses round two when the prisoner lives on and no-one is called to account. So he falls back to fight a rear-guard on the grounds that compassionate release is immoral because it undermines the sanctity of punishment or something, blah blah. It is not about compassion, it is about rule bending.
I see “rehabilitation” as a tool for rule bending. The white kid with the rich father gets rehabilitated and the black kid with no father doesn’t. “Rehabilitation” is about connections and prejudice. The question of whether the offender will commit more crimes in the future doesn’t come in to it.
It is entirely natural that “Most people would be upset if prisoners could go in on Friday, and emerge, rehabilitated, on Sunday.” because they hate the idea of the white kid with the rich father having immunity, being sent to prison on Friday, declared “rehabilitated” on Sunday, and back to stealing on Monday. They would love to be able to say: we don’t believe in this so called rehabilitation. However Man The Sly Rule Bender usually wins this fight. The losers turn into Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener. They cannot get honesty before the event about whether the rehabilitation is genuine, they cannot get accountability after the event when it turns out that the rehabilitation was not genuine, so they find themselves backed into a corner where they must fight on the grounds punishment is necessary to uphold the moral order beyond mere future conduct, blah, blah.
The big weakness I can see in my position is that I need to claim that the battle between Man The Sly Rule Bender and Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is a subconscious battle. On the conscious level no-one is admitting that the rehabilitation doesn’t work. The rehabilitator is in denial because his job depends on rehabilitation actually working. Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is in denial because he has already lost two political battles and is making his last stand. I’m skating on thin ice here.
I hope I have managed at this attempt to explain why I find
Most people would be upset if prisoners could go in on Friday, and emerge, rehabilitated, on Sunday.
so problematic. I read it and think that I am reading a subtle piece of two-level psychology. On the subconscious level Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is recognising that he has lost the political fight for honesty about the fact that rehabilitation does not work. So the conscious mind is being briefed to just accept that it does work and fight on, on high-faluting moral ground that a cruel punishment lets the criminal treat it a penance and thus regain his personnel dignity or something like that, the usual tosh.
So I read on and find myself a stranger in a strange land.
I’ve often encouraged people to give someone a more charitable interpretation. But I haven’t had to ask someone not to deliberately search out the least-charitable interpretation… until now.
If you’d said, “most people”, I wouldn’t agree, but I could imagine you were thinking it through carefully. But it’s “implausible” that people want revenge on criminals? No. I find that implausible.
So when I say P, it’s speculation; but when you say not(P), it’s definite?
I suspect that we are talking past each other because of a cross-cultural confusion. There are hidden assumptions here that we do not share. I’m going to try and step back a bit and to bring my subconscious assumptions to the surface.
I accept Robin Hanson’s notion of Homo Hypocritus: Man the sly rule bender. Indeed I push on a little further.
Mr. A takes advantage of Mr. B with a little sly rule bending. Later Mr. B gets his own back with a little sly rule bending of his own. Later still Mr. A tries it on again, but Mr. B knows how the trick is done and resists, becoming Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener. I see Man The Sly Rule Bender and and Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener as two sides of the same coin, action and reaction.
To see how this plays out in real life consider the case of Abdelbaset_al-Megrahi. His imprisonment, after being convicted of the Lockerbie Bombing, was causing political difficulties with Libya. It would be expedient to release him, but how could it be justified? Since he had protstate cancer it was possible to declare that he only had 3 months to live and to release him on compassionate grounds according to existing rules.
He is still alive eighteen months later, so round one to the Man The Sly Rule Breaker. How can Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener push back? He could try insisting on accountability, with some kind of sanction being taken against doctors who turn out to be excessively pessimistic about the prognosis of candidates for compassionate release.
Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener loses round two; there is no accountability for these kinds of decisions. Why does Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener usually lose? A glib answer is that when we have power we turn into Man The Sly Rule Breaker because we are in a position to abuse discretion. When we lose power we turn into Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener because we object to those who have displaced us abusing the power of discretion that they have won from us. Perhaps, but I would rather say that I just don’t know and leave that as a thread to pull on another time.
Finally, Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener falls back on opposing release on compassionate grounds altogether. He loses round one when doesn’t believe that the prisoner is close to death. He loses round two when the prisoner lives on and no-one is called to account. So he falls back to fight a rear-guard on the grounds that compassionate release is immoral because it undermines the sanctity of punishment or something, blah blah. It is not about compassion, it is about rule bending.
I see “rehabilitation” as a tool for rule bending. The white kid with the rich father gets rehabilitated and the black kid with no father doesn’t. “Rehabilitation” is about connections and prejudice. The question of whether the offender will commit more crimes in the future doesn’t come in to it.
It is entirely natural that “Most people would be upset if prisoners could go in on Friday, and emerge, rehabilitated, on Sunday.” because they hate the idea of the white kid with the rich father having immunity, being sent to prison on Friday, declared “rehabilitated” on Sunday, and back to stealing on Monday. They would love to be able to say: we don’t believe in this so called rehabilitation. However Man The Sly Rule Bender usually wins this fight. The losers turn into Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener. They cannot get honesty before the event about whether the rehabilitation is genuine, they cannot get accountability after the event when it turns out that the rehabilitation was not genuine, so they find themselves backed into a corner where they must fight on the grounds punishment is necessary to uphold the moral order beyond mere future conduct, blah, blah.
The big weakness I can see in my position is that I need to claim that the battle between Man The Sly Rule Bender and Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is a subconscious battle. On the conscious level no-one is admitting that the rehabilitation doesn’t work. The rehabilitator is in denial because his job depends on rehabilitation actually working. Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is in denial because he has already lost two political battles and is making his last stand. I’m skating on thin ice here.
I hope I have managed at this attempt to explain why I find
so problematic. I read it and think that I am reading a subtle piece of two-level psychology. On the subconscious level Man The Stubborn Rule Stiffener is recognising that he has lost the political fight for honesty about the fact that rehabilitation does not work. So the conscious mind is being briefed to just accept that it does work and fight on, on high-faluting moral ground that a cruel punishment lets the criminal treat it a penance and thus regain his personnel dignity or something like that, the usual tosh.
So I read on and find myself a stranger in a strange land.