As I was trotting around the pastures with the dog, I listened to the latest edition of the Philosophers' Zone - an interview with Gregg Caruso, whom I liked a great deal. I decided that I would write about it and took this photo of a lock with no gate to illustrate it. Then I couldn't remember exactly what I wanted to say.
Part of it was that Caruso questions how free agents are to act well or act badly. If genes and upbringing, life events and so on are the causal factors that determine personality and thus decision making, then we are not self created and do not have any real 'free will'. So, if the universe is constructed in such a way that Alma receives these genes and this environment, how can she be 'responsible' for opting to steal a car rather than work for a soup kitchen?
Caruso thus sees no place for retributive justice, but he does see instrumental value in incarceration (to protect society) and perhaps some punishment - if they can be empirically shown to be effective.
He cited various illuminating facts - there are far more people with mental illnesses in American prisons than in American psychiatric hospitals; a large proportion of those who commit crimes were abused as children and saw extreme violence as children; money spent on education and counseling is paid back double (at least) in savings on countering recidivism; the death penalty has been shown not to act as a deterrent.
But here's the thing: societies want people to be punished. Even if it doesn't work, does more harm than good and is expensive.
How depressing.
I can, however, understand how those who had harsh backgrounds but did not break any laws might feel that those who 'failed' to obey the laws 'deserve' punishment. They, especially if they remain at a low or only moderate level of economic security could feel that a failure to punish the bad guys is, effectively, a failure to acknowledge the good guys.
Of course, if one has not been praised or rewarded for being law abiding it doesn't logically follow that others should be punished for not being law abiding. Yet I can cognitively get a handle on the resultant emotional frustration: I suffered and still suffer, but obeyed the law; they may have suffered, but broke the law, and therefore should suffer more than me.
This, Casuso suggested, arises from the 'Just World' fallacy: that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. There are various problems with this. One is that justice (like morality) is not built into the fabric of the universe. Another is that those who believe such a fallacy can come to believe that when something bad happens to someone, they must have deserved it. Hence, victim blaming.
It is interesting that I do have a bias that leads me to think that those who suffer bad health 'haven't taken enough care of themselves'. I suffer from a 'Just Health' fallacy. Of course, in plenty of cases, this is true: good food, good activity and working out how to handle stress do help to protect people from various illnesses. But in many other cases, people are just unlucky: through genes, environment or a mixture of the two. And as with choices about whether or not to obey the law, choices about diet and exercise are also in part dependent on personality (which is shaped by genes and environments). Those who make poor health choices, just like those who break the law, really are as bound by determinism.
One thing about criminality, it seems to me that if you prove to someone that they are bad - by treating them in such and such a way - then they will come to believe it and any chances of reformation are lessened. People have to believe that they are free to change, because that is what makes them free to change. And maybe they can't do that from inside.
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