Actor Mark Wahlberg seeks a pardon for 1988 assaults

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Hype
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Re: Actor Mark Wahlberg seeks a pardon for 1988 assaults

#26 Post by Hype » Mon Dec 08, 2014 3:05 pm

Part of the problem is that we have multiple ideas about the purpose of incarceration as a method of justice.

The penitentiary model comes from Victorian era Christianity: you are put in conditions that encourage you to "repent". In practice it turns out this is just brutal.
There's the moral education model: the purpose of prisons is to allow the state to basically re-educate offenders into a proper place in the moral community. That explains why incarcerated criminals can obtain education, books, etc.
Then there's the retributive model: the purpose of jail is to punish the criminal, because there's something good about this. Ultimately this goes back to Babylon (and probably all the way back to the first humans), but it's also a distinctly religious model (because our legal systems were developed mostly by people who were raised in a tradition that took its cues from Babylon in the first place).

There are newer models, involving making sure we treat underlying causes like mental illness, and there are also pushes to make sure we don't dehumanize criminals (or victims). You can see this in the way prisons in Scandinavia are starting to go.

But you could see how on SOME of these models, but not all of them, a person who has "done their time", literally, no longer has any debt to the state or society, and regains full status (of course, a criminal record in practice prevents this).

I don't know what the correct model is, but I do think it's unlikely to be one that just thinks it's right to punish wrongdoing,, especially when there is no likelihood of recidivism.

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Essence_Smith
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Re: Actor Mark Wahlberg seeks a pardon for 1988 assaults

#27 Post by Essence_Smith » Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:11 am


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