I’d say “justice” is a heuristics; better than nothing, but not the best possible option.
For instance, most people would probably rather punish a criminal than reform him.
This could be connected with their beliefs about probability of successfully reforming the criminal. I guess the probability strongly depends on the type of crime and type of treatment, and even is not the same for all classes of criminals (e.g. sociopaths vs. people in relative rare situation that overwhelmed them). They may fear that with a good lawyer, “reform, don’t punish” is simply a “get out of jail free” card.
To improve this situation, it would help to make the statistics of reform successes widely known. But I would expect that in some situations, they are just not available. This is partially an availability heuristics on my part, and partially my model saying that many good intentions fail in real life.
Also, what about unique crimes? For example, an old person murders their only child, and they do not want to have any other child, ever. Most likely, they will never do the same crime again. How specifically would you reform them? How would you measure the success of reforming them? If we are reasonably sure they never do the same thing again, even without a treatment, then… should we just shrug and let them go?
The important part of the punishment is the precommitment to punish. If a crime already happened, causing e.g. pain to the criminal does not undo the past. But if the crime is yet in the future, precommiting to cause pain to the criminal influences the criminal’s outcome matrix. Will precommitment to reforming have similar effects? (“Don’t shoot him, or… I will explain you why shooting people is wrong, and then you will feel bad about it!”)
I’d say “justice” is a heuristics; better than nothing, but not the best possible option.
This could be connected with their beliefs about probability of successfully reforming the criminal. I guess the probability strongly depends on the type of crime and type of treatment, and even is not the same for all classes of criminals (e.g. sociopaths vs. people in relative rare situation that overwhelmed them). They may fear that with a good lawyer, “reform, don’t punish” is simply a “get out of jail free” card.
To improve this situation, it would help to make the statistics of reform successes widely known. But I would expect that in some situations, they are just not available. This is partially an availability heuristics on my part, and partially my model saying that many good intentions fail in real life.
Also, what about unique crimes? For example, an old person murders their only child, and they do not want to have any other child, ever. Most likely, they will never do the same crime again. How specifically would you reform them? How would you measure the success of reforming them? If we are reasonably sure they never do the same thing again, even without a treatment, then… should we just shrug and let them go?
The important part of the punishment is the precommitment to punish. If a crime already happened, causing e.g. pain to the criminal does not undo the past. But if the crime is yet in the future, precommiting to cause pain to the criminal influences the criminal’s outcome matrix. Will precommitment to reforming have similar effects? (“Don’t shoot him, or… I will explain you why shooting people is wrong, and then you will feel bad about it!”)