Don't Kill or Cage Them...Banish Them!

Re: Don't Kill or Cage Them...Banish Them!

Robert Gentel wrote:

dlowan wrote:

I don't know that it is inevitable, but bear in mind that the people you are positing being put somewhere are known for not playing nicely together.

I would by no means think it especially likely that they would settle down to harmonious life together, or scatter peacefully.

a. That's still a stretch away from certain death. In any case, they are already being placed together in small cells with traditional incarceration.

Quote:
You are, I suppose, imagining plenty of food etc? I am imagining what I think is a far more realistic scenario of amateur farmers having lots of crop failures and food being scarce.

b. I certainly imagine some crop failure, mostly to do with laziness and not ineptitude. I also see it as a consequence of shunning society by breaking the social contract with society.

Quote:
Yes, they are kept in close quarters in prison, and I think that prisons are a good argument for trying to think of something else, but they don't kill each other a lot in prison because there is some imposition of outside order

c. Said imposition of outside order consists primarily of denying them most of their freedoms and still doesn't prevent atrocity.

Quote:
as well as the presence of groups who will avenge an attack on one of theirs (and protection of vulnerable prisoners by powerful ones, in return for sex.)

d. This can exist anywhere, the lack of imposition of outside order is the only relevant distinction.

Quote:
Remember, these are not even an ordinary prison population (who tend to be pretty goddam brutal to each other anyway) but the most violent offenders. That being said, some of the nicest criminals I have worked with are murderers, but I am unsure if one off murderers would be in your scenario?

It would be for death penalty cases (to make this part simple).

Quote:
Looking at what happens when prisons, or parts of prisons, get taken over by prisoners for a while is likely the closest in vivo experiment with your scenario,

e. I don't think it's anything remotely similar. Prison riots tend to have, as their primary motivation, elements of their incarceration.

Quote:
I would think the best hope would be the formation of some sort of gang culture, where there was organised brutality, mixed in with the kind of emotional bonding one sees in gangs in the US.....with the added problem of sexual predation to manage. Adding food hardship to this would be a pretty toxic mix, I think.

f. I would think that putting death penalty cases (even from the whole world at ten times the current population) in an area the size of Australia would result in a lot of solitude.

Quote:

I am positing people being added to the population because I do not see it likely that crime would stop because of your islands, and there would be a continuing supply of newly sentenced people to be marooned.

Sounded like you were talking of increasing numbers being sent (as in a greater flow).

Quote:

I am not saying a more cheerful society could not form, but I really think you are being rather optimistic about the likely actions of your posited islanders.

g. What likely actions have I talked about?

In any case, we already put dangerous people together. I think putting them together in much less proximity is a more humane thing to do even if they do kill themselves at a greater rate. In some places blacks are far more likely to die in jail than out of jail but they still prefer out of jail.

h. The key to me is that society would not be killing the individuals. I think this is a better solution for the inmates themselves than life in jail or the death penalty even in your worst case scenarios.

i. Incidentally, what if it was a choice between life in prison and banishment? What qualm would you find with it then? And how many do you think would pick life in prison?

Sorry about all the little letters....I find it less onerous than my version of farting around inserting responses.

a. Part of our difference may be that, psychologically, I find it hard to factor in a real death penalty, since this hasn't occurred in Australia since the 60's. Yes..people would likely choose some chance of life rather than death.

b. You are imagining inconveniences to the food supply...I am imagining a life of the harshness it had in early settlement times in Australia and the US, without the presence of people who know how to farm, and with the presence of people with little or no empathy, no impulse control, and few normal constraints upon their behaviour. Just growing food is very difficult, you know...as is living off the land with no weapons and no knowhow.

c. Agreed, there is atrocity in prison. I doubt it reaches the level of the atrocity I am imagining....(this depends a bit on how atrocious the prison system is, doesn't it? Here, a lot of long-termers wind up at Cadell, a prison farm, where they have separate rooms and quite a pleasant life-style. However, I suppose their docility is quite dependent upon the fact that there is almost never a true life-sentence here....so, with a handful of exceptions, they know if they behave, they will eventually be released)...where death by most of the means used to execute in the US might well seem preferable.

d. Indeed....it seems we have somewhat differing ideas of how much the imposition of some outside order affects things.

e. I don't know....I agreed there were differing circumstances...but from what prisoners who have lived through this sort of thing have told me, life organises itself pretty fast into heavies rule, and do whatever they want, depending on the "no squealing" rule to stop others from disclosing the rapes etc. they have suffered. Riots are certainly pretty extreme, especially when alcohol fuelled, but I think you are way too sweeping in dismissing the likely similarity to dynamics on your island. Just as a for instance, prisoners generally decide it's not a really good idea to kill anyone during a riot, as they know the authorities will take control back at some point.

f. You keep assuming that people will scatter. Some might....but, humans tend to be a herd creature and crave society. Also, to produce enough food to live on at pre-industrial revolution technology (even IF you know what you are doing) you tend to need a lot of labour. My hunch would be, if they survived, that they would form warring gangs.....

As I said, that might be quite a satisfying life, as I understand from what (little) I have read of the sociology of gangs, that members find them quite sustaining. But...I'd not like to be someone seen as a weak member, or there when the conflicts happened.

Also, even if they survived, I imagine it would soon be a miserable life (do they have any medical supplies?) as one became ill, or old, or injured.

g. The actions you appear to me to have talked about are organised and reasonably successful farming, people scattering and hence lessening the chance of lots of violence, and a general assumption that a lot of the people will act in a fairly rational and reasoned manner..(eg farm, have rules and sanctions).....

"In some places blacks are far more likely to die in jail than out of jail but they still prefer out of jail. " Did you mean blacks are far LESS likely to die in prison?

Yes....I agree that not being in prison is greatly desired by almost all prisoners. Are we especially considering their preferences in your scenario? I think not having people incarcerated if at all possible is a good.

but

h. I am not at all convinced that putting them somewhere where violence, starvation, untreated disease will kill them, for some, more slowly, is a lot better for society than killing them. I just think, as I said, that it simply removes the act even further from those in whose name it is done than the current situation in the USA does.

That being said, I know that my thinking is informed by knowing there are other options...eg the death penalty is unknown here....most prisoners will be released, and do not face life in prison, most western countries are not doing what the US does in killing people or making them stay in prison forever....(though a rather obscene political scenario is playing out here of would-be governments competing about how draconian their treatment of criminals will be, so it may get a lot worse.)

I may be unable to really imagine the horror of the situation of many US prisoners, and, given that my beliefs about how your scenario would play out in real life are much gloomier than yours, I may not be balancing glooms with full knowledge of the prison/execution part of the gloom.

"Incidentally, what if it was a choice between life in prison and banishment? What qualm would you find with it then? And how many do you think would pick life in prison?"

My qualms lessen dramatically if there is a choice.

Personally, for instance, I would likely pick life in prison...as long as I had books. Being marooned with a bunch of dangerous criminals would seem to me a fate far worse than life in prison. I know from life in prison (as much as anyone who hasn't been incarcerated CAN know), and I know that people can make a sort of life in there. What I have seen of unchecked rule by prison heavies scares the living bejesus out of me...and I include the women here.

But I am imagining prisons I know.....the prisons you are thinking of may be a lot worse.

I think the average male heavy I can imagine would very likely choose banishment. They would be a lot younger than me, too, which would make the great outdoors even more desirable. It might well be a damn fine choice if the scenario as you see it plays out...at least until they get ill or seriously injured. It would certainly be a lot more exciting.

I don't know about the vulnerable ones. They are, in my experience, as terrified as I of unfettered rule by heavies. What they are already experiencing is usually awful enough.

The in-betweens? I would imagine they would go.

BTW, I haven't tried to figure out how New Zealand would go yet.

0 Replies

farmerman wrote:

Inessence youd just have another prison, only with a much larger perimeter to guard.

This is the most cogent objection to this idiocy. You'd spend more resources and money attempting to guard against the depredations of escaped inmates, or you'd need, literally, an army to patrol the perimeter--and even that would be scant guarantee.

Both what is now the United States and what is now Australia were used as penal colonies, essentially dumps for the unwanted population of England. The number and character of capital crimes in the 17th and 18th centuries was astonishing, and people could be condemned to death, commuted to transportation, for what was essentially petty theft. In the reign of Henry VIII, what might be called "grand larceny" in the modern world was set at 13 shillings. that was still in effect more than two and half centuries later, which meant that a desperate and ignorant young man or woman could make a single, tragic mistake and end up transported for seven years, fourteen years or life.

That is all germane because of the point i wish to make about this brainless proposal. In what became the United States, the transported convicts had some prospect of making a go of it when they received their tickets of leave. They were little different from indentured servants, the principle difference being that indentured servants were promised (if not always given) a certain monetary or property reward upon the completion of their contract. Convicts were often offered sufficient funds or goods to make a start for themselves as an incentive to provide useful labor. This system was actually fairly effective. It has been reasonably estimated that in the case of Maryland, 35% of the population were ticket-of-leave men and women or their direct descendants, at the time of the Revolution.

But these were usually petty criminals--murders and rapist did not get their sentences commuted to transportation, they simply got hung. Some few (far fewer than too many historians would like to claim) could have been described as "political prisoners," such as Luddites or Chartists. Most of those transported for their political views were transported after the American Revolution, and were sent to Australia. A great many of those were United Irishmen and their political descendants, but all in all they made a very small portion of the transported population.

The people who got transported and made a go of it either had skills they could employ after they got their tickets of leave, or they were young enough that their transportation effectively became a casual apprenticeship, and many young boys and girls would have had no such opportunity in England, Ireland or Wales. For example, the ancestors of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson were both transported convicts, the great grandfather a skilled but failed building contractor who was convicted of theft, and the great grandmother a sempstress who was also transported for theft. They both had useful skills to offer their employers after they arrived in Maryland, and skills to employ after they got their tickets of leave. On the frontiers, where most ticket of leave men and women ended settling after getting their releases, the level of survival was hardly significantly below the level of "affluence," and a former convict could make good with no more effort than was required of any other pioneer. Jackson's ancestors became wealthy and influential in western Virginia in their own lifetimes.

But Australia was somewhat different. Escape there offered little opportunity other than starvation in the bush, if the the aborigines did not get you, and they usually had sufficient provocation to seek revenge. Precious few actually made it anything like civilization, and those who did were usually quickly apprehended (perhaps as few as a dozen in the entire history of transportation to Australia), or ended up in communities such as the nearly piratical communities of whalers and sealers in the Bass Strait (once again, no more, certainly than a couple of dozen in the entire history of transportation to Australia).

But despite having almost no hope to make it to what a European would considered a civilized place, despite the very real threat of starvation, and the scarcely less proximate threat of death at the hands of the aborigines--and despite the certainty of extremely cruel physical punishment (often hundreds of lashes--300 was not at all uncommon) and the lengthening of the sentence, convicts attempted escape from the very beginning, and continued to attempt escape right up to the end of transportation, even knowing the odds against them. Some few (again, the numbers were small, but the romantic portrayal has been large) became bush rangers.

What this suggests for this ill-conceived and poorly considered proposal is a host of problems above and beyond the point that FM acutely makes about the enormous cost of patrolling the bounds. Most of those transported to North America and Australia were not hardened criminals, and some few were not criminals at all in our modern estimation (political prisoners we would call them). Many, perhaps even most, had some reasonable expectation of making a good life after they had served their terms. Many others, however, attempted escape, and that would be another huge cost such a silly plan would entail. This proposal is not to create any kind of situation in which those condemned could reasonably expect to support themselves, and the likely consequence would be simply to produce new depths of depravity in their lives. Most of those who survived would have become the toughest of the tough, and it would be those types that law enforcement would have to contend with.

Western Maryland or Virginia in the 18th century was sufficiently remote that even if some few escaped, no one really cared. Australia was literally the end of the world in the terms of 1788 when the First Fleet landed. But this idiotic proposal wants to put them in a county in Georgia. Yeah right, that's a real bright idea. Just making a shot in the dark, i'd say in the first ten years the state would spend five or six times what they previous had just to beat the bounds of their own little Botany Bay, or see their state overrun by criminals having escaped with laughable ease.

RG's suggestion of using islands is hardly more plausible. People have escaped from islands, as well, but the costs would astronomical on islands, too. Just whose islands does one propose to give them? And if they were put on islands that no one now wants to live on, how would it differ from just taking them out to shoot them?

0 Replies

Id agree with deb too. The vast majority of criminals are not rural types with agrarian skills. ALSO,, just a minor annoyance, would this proposal get in the way of the eighth amendment? or is the author of this brilliant idea counting on an even more right wing USSC?

Another reason to vote against MCCAin.

0 Replies

"f. You keep assuming that people will scatter. Some might....but, humans tend to be a herd creature and crave society. Also, to produce enough food to live on at pre-industrial revolution technology (even IF you know what you are doing) you tend to need a lot of labour. My hunch would be, if they survived, that they would form warring gangs....."

Just clicked....you're probably assuming they are deposited in scattered groups?

0 Replies

Re: Don't Kill or Cage Them...Banish Them!

dlowan wrote:

a. Part of our difference may be that, psychologically, I find it hard to factor in a real death penalty, since this hasn't occurred in Australia since the 60's. Yes..people would likely choose some chance of life rather than death.

They may also choose it over incarceration.

Quote:

b. You are imagining inconveniences to the food supply...I am imagining a life of the harshness it had in early settlement times in Australia and the US, without the presence of people who know how to farm, and with the presence of people with little or no empathy, no impulse control, and few normal constraints upon their behaviour. Just growing food is very difficult, you know...as is living off the land with no weapons and no knowhow.

I imagine significant enough difficulty. Like I said, not too different from the many pre-industrial hardships one was faced with too survive.

Quote:

e. I don't know....I agreed there were differing circumstances...but from what prisoners who have lived through this sort of thing have told me, life organises itself pretty fast into heavies rule, and do whatever they want, depending on the "no squealing" rule to stop others from disclosing the rapes etc. they have suffered. Riots are certainly pretty extreme, especially when alcohol fuelled, but I think you are way too sweeping in dismissing the likely similarity to dynamics on your island. Just as a for instance, prisoners generally decide it's not a really good idea to kill anyone during a riot, as they know the authorities will take control back at some point.

Only non-lifers have motivation to act this way. In many other cases they kill as many of their enemies as they can while they can. In any case, society already puts their inmates at this risk and provides very little real protection to incarcerated individuals.

Quote:

f. You keep assuming that people will scatter. Some might....but, humans tend to be a herd creature and crave society.

Having the option to elect solitude or the society is their prerogative. Whatever the consequences of each is the responsibility of the individual.

The key to me is that when incarcerating for life, I think the only legitimate reason is merely to separate the individual from the society whose social contract he is unwilling to uphold. I don't see value in the punishment of incarceration and thusly don't really care too much if conditions are much better or worse.

My own guess is that they would be happier but have lower life expectancies. But that all really depends on what social contract they are able to enforce. Given that these would be people who would not accept the larger societies social contract I don't see it as a particularly strong dilemma if they are unable to create a better one amongst themselves.

Quote:

Also, to produce enough food to live on at pre-industrial revolution technology (even IF you know what you are doing) you tend to need a lot of labour. My hunch would be, if they survived, that they would form warring gangs.....

Yeah, life's a bitch when you don't get the benefits of the society. Said benefits come within a social contract that these individuals would have broken so whatever they inflict on themselves in their freedom isn't that important an ethical question to me.

As long as they are given a decent enough chance for survival and you aren't handing down an inevitable death penalty your society is not responsible for what those who reject it do.

Quote:

As I said, that might be quite a satisfying life, as I understand from what (little) I have read of the sociology of gangs, that members find them quite sustaining. But...I'd not like to be someone seen as a weak member, or there when the conflicts happened.

Then by all means afford yourself the protection that your society's social contract affords you in this regard. In my scenario they wouldn't be there without taking multiple lives anyway, so I'm not that sympathetic to the consequences of their rejection of the social contract now that the society is not inflicting those consequences directly.

Quote:

Also, even if they survived, I imagine it would soon be a miserable life (do they have any medical supplies?) as one became ill, or old, or injured.

Medical support is a societal benefit that their society will need to figure out how to provide. It was part of the social contract they rejected.

So I would accept medical supplies being given to them in their "starter package" but no subsequent medical attention from the outside world.

Quote:

g. The actions you appear to me to have talked about are organised and reasonably successful farming, people scattering and hence lessening the chance of lots of violence, and a general assumption that a lot of the people will act in a fairly rational and reasoned manner..(eg farm, have rules and sanctions).....

I never mentioned organized farming. I don't think I also mentioned any expectations of them acting reasonably. They certainly didn't do so in their last society with things like this very scenario as a punishment so I expect many of them will not suddenly do so on their island. But that's their problem and more importantly their responsibility now.

Quote:

"In some places blacks are far more likely to die in jail than out of jail but they still prefer out of jail. " Did you mean blacks are far LESS likely to die in prison?

Actually nearly all prison inmates are less likely to die in US prison than in the general US population. With certain demographics like young male blacks it's more pronounced because of their death rates outside of prison being so high.

Quote:

h. I am not at all convinced that putting them somewhere where violence, starvation, untreated disease will kill them, for some, more slowly, is a lot better for society than killing them. I just think, as I said, that it simply removes the act even further from those in whose name it is done than the current situation in the USA does.

That's a good thing to me. Directly killing your citizens is, to me, morally unacceptable. The only possible justification is to keep them from further harming society.

The punitive factor to me is unwarranted if your society has already decided to abandon the individual. If the individual has no further place in your society except to be punished then releasing the individual, even to a situation with worse survival odds, is more ethical to me than to spend society's resources caring for an individual while depriving them of their freedom or killing them directly.

It may be less suffering to die directly but that is a choice that they have with freedom anyway. There's no need for the blood to be on the hands of the society.

Quote:

That being said, I know that my thinking is informed by knowing there are other options...eg the death penalty is unknown here....most prisoners will be released, and do not face life in prison, most western countries are not doing what the US does in killing people or making them stay in prison forever....(though a rather obscene political scenario is playing out here of would-be governments competing about how draconian their treatment of criminals will be, so it may get a lot worse.)

Still, there must be some people that you simply can't afford to allow back into society.

Quote:

I may be unable to really imagine the horror of the situation of many US prisoners, and, given that my beliefs about how your scenario would play out in real life are much gloomier than yours, I may not be balancing glooms with full knowledge of the prison/execution part of the gloom.

I think the real difference is that I don't really care about the gloom, I care about who's responsible and how it's inflicted. Societies used to have a lot more gloom. The improvements were societal and not individual and accepting the social contract is what affords you the better quality of life.

Given that these individuals would have made repeated decisions to harm the quality of life of others in their society the predicable consequence of harm to their own quality of life isn't a big ethical concern to me.

Quote:

"Incidentally, what if it was a choice between life in prison and banishment? What qualm would you find with it then? And how many do you think would pick life in prison?"

My qualms lessen dramatically if there is a choice.

But there already is a choice: kill a bunch of people or don't kill a bunch of people.

Quote:

Personally, for instance, I would likely pick life in prison...as long as I had books.

If you killed a bunch of people I don't think society should be giving you anything. Why should you get to live for free off society at many times the cost of a law abiding citizen and furthermore get free books?

Quote:

Being marooned with a bunch of dangerous criminals would seem to me a fate far worse than life in prison. I know from life in prison (as much as anyone who hasn't been incarcerated CAN know), and I know that people can make a sort of life in there. What I have seen of unchecked rule by prison heavies scares the living bejesus out of me...and I include the women here.

But I am imagining prisons I know.....the prisons you are thinking of may be a lot worse.

Indeed. Prison life is only like that when you spend much more money per capita on the prisoners than you do on the law abiding citizens. When, as in many places, you spend about what the average person contributes to the society it is a horrible place with overcrowding and just as much potential for violence as there would be with no control.

Why should society spend several times the average citizen's production to the society on making incarceration more palatable?

Quote:

I don't know about the vulnerable ones. They are, in my experience, as terrified as I of unfettered rule by heavies. What they are already experiencing is usually awful enough.

I imagine the same, and if they elect to take actions that remove them from society and the protections of the social contract they broke I'm not that concerned about how awful their experience is so much as who is responsible for it.

Quote:

BTW, I haven't tried to figure out how New Zealand would go yet.

Just to confuse you further where would you put transgendered people?

0 Replies

farmerman wrote:

ALSO,, just a minor annoyance, would this proposal get in the way of the eighth amendment? or is the author of this brilliant idea counting on an even more right wing USSC?

Do you really think that current laws are relevant arguments in an ethical debate about what the laws should be?

Quote:

Another reason to vote against MCCAin.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to vote for or against McCain without making up outlandish ones.

0 Replies

What this nonsense would most immediately fall afoul of is the eighth amendment, as FM points out. But there are several other things which went unconsidered into this proposal. If you want to set up your penal colony county, you're going to have to condemn the entire county under public domain, and they pay the current owners fair market value. The state that did that would be in hock of a century.

Apart from that, probably half the population would murder the other half within the first year or two. That would make all the state officials who had cooperated accessories to murder before the fact.

It would make more sense, as i've already pointed out, just to march them out and shoot them right off the bat.

0 Replies

Robt Gentel

Quote:

Do you really think that current laws are relevant arguments in an ethical debate about what the laws should be

Well, yeeaaahhh. Do you propose that e do away with all or just a few of the Bill of Rights? Your thinking is a bit muddled.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

farmerman wrote:
Inessence youd just have another prison, only with a much larger perimeter to guard.

This is the most cogent objection to this idiocy. You'd spend more resources and money attempting to guard against the depredations of escaped inmates, or you'd need, literally, an army to patrol the perimeter--and even that would be scant guarantee.

The majority of the cost of guarding a prison involves guarding the prisoners from themselves and regulating their day to day activities. It does not stem from merely segregating the society.

Using an island to segregate has historical precedent as you certainly know they did not spend more resources per capital on guarding prisoners than they currently spend in much smaller areas.

The increased cost has come from improved prison conditions and internal security.

Quote:

RG's suggestion of using islands is hardly more plausible. People have escaped from islands, as well, but the costs would astronomical on islands, too. Just whose islands does one propose to give them? And if they were put on islands that no one now wants to live on, how would it differ from just taking them out to shoot them?

Aside from the initial cost of allocating land (a big enough problem to make this an entirely theoretical exercise) there's no reason to believe that the costs would be any higher than they currently are (US averages $88 per prisoner per day).

The primary cost of incarceration is imposing order on their day to day activities. Keeping these people from escaping a remote island would be a very small cost and they'd likely escape to a lesser degree than they already do from prisons.

0 Replies

dlowan wrote:

Just clicked....you're probably assuming they are deposited in scattered groups?

In my scenario they can elect to be placed on the island at a central location in proximity to others or far from them. I would think the biggest danger to them would be for the supplies they arrive with and allowing them to elect to be placed in solitude would give them enough initial chances for survival to remove the ethical concerns for their subsequent survival chances in their new society.

0 Replies

Robert Gentel wrote:

The majority of the cost of guarding a prison involves guarding the prisoners from themselves and regulating their day to day activities. It does not stem from merely segregating the society.

Using an island to segregate has historical precedent as you certainly know they did not spend more resources per capital on guarding prisoners than they currently spend in much smaller areas.

The increased cost has come from improved prison conditions and internal security.

In the first place, Finn posited a "penal county," and not an island, and you would need an army to patrol the perimeter, which could be hundreds of miles in a large county, and many tens of miles even for a small one.

Island penal colonies still needed to be supported by the authorities. The fact that, for example, England spends more now per capita on the prison population than it did in 1820 is a disingenuous response, because it ignores the proportional value of money. In fact, Van Dieman's Land was a dead loss to the English government throughout the history of the penal colony in Australia, and the government looked the other way with regard to costs in New South Wales, because they were basically running a slave economy. Many free settlers and many ticket of leave men and women got really rather wealthy from getting assigned convict labor.

But the best argument against this false statement of yours is that England abandoned the penal colony system when they began to build prisons like Pentonville, which were modeled on the new American penitentiaries (which, of course, they'll never admit).

I suggest you read The Fatal Shore, Richard Hughes, some time. It will educate you a good deal about just how cost effective the "Botany Bay" experiment was.

Quote:

Aside from the initial cost of allocating land (a big enough problem to make this an entirely theoretical exercise) there's no reason to believe that the costs would be any higher than they currently are (US averages $88 per prisoner per day).

The primary cost of incarceration is imposing order on their day to day activities. Keeping these people from escaping a remote island would be a very small cost and they'd likely escape to a lesser degree than they already do from prisons.

As i pointed out with regard to a "penal county," you'd have to condemn the land under public domain provisions, and pay fair market value to the current owners. The cost would be enormous, probably out of the realm of probability.

But if you choose an island or islands which are not currently inhabited, the reason would be obvious--there were no utility of any kind in inhabiting the island. In that case, you'd either have to provide shelter, and provide continuing supplies of food and clothing, or you condemn to a slow an agonizing death any whom you land there. Otherwise, you'd find it much more economical just to shoot the sons of b*tches at the outset.

Silly idea.

0 Replies

farmerman wrote:

Well, yeeaaahhh. Do you propose that e do away with all or just a few of the Bill of Rights? Your thinking is a bit muddled.

I'm not the one trying to use what laws are in a discussion of what laws should be.

Setanta wrote:

But there are several other things which went unconsidered into this proposal. If you want to set up your penal colony county, you're going to have to condemn the entire county under public domain, and they pay the current owners fair market value. The state that did that would be in hock of a century.

There are a lot of reasons that the idea won't happen any time soon. Not the least of which is finding suitable land. But because it's possible and has been done the ethical debate interests me more than the practical one. It's certainly more practical, for example, to simply kill them all.

I argue that it's less ethical.

Quote:

Apart from that, probably half the population would murder the other half within the first year or two. That would make all the state officials who had cooperated accessories to murder before the fact.

That's a bit of a legal stretch there. Ok, much more than a bit. That does not fit the legal definition of murder anywhere in the developed world. But again, what law is isn't very relevant to a debate on what it should be.

Quote:

It would make more sense, as i've already pointed out, just to march them out and shoot them right off the bat.

I certainly think it would be more practical. But I do not think the society should be able to legally kill its citizens as punishment. Those who do will not find anything attractive about my proposal.

0 Replies

Perhaps I am misreading but this thread seems to me to be a neg-utopia proposal. A constructed fantasy without a hint of being reality actualized. Quite a futile but interesting conjecture. I would suggest North Dakota for the men and South Dakota for the women, Oklahoma for the transexuals.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

I suggest you read The Fatal Shore, Richard Hughes,

Set says this should be Robert Hughes.

0 Replies

Quote:

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 2006 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.

The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people.

Seven million would raise the population, no, TREBLE the populations of the Dakotas. (they have less than a million people each.)

Sending the transsexuals to Oklahoma would not only increase the population but raise the level of culture as well. (The International Finals Rodeo would be cancelled and replaced The World's Largest and Longest Mermaid Parade.)

When they ask all the Tulsans to evac, Eva and her hubby can come bunk with us.

Joe(oh, and the little kiddo too)Nation

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

In the first place, Finn posited a "penal county," and not an island, and you would need an army to patrol the perimeter, which could be hundreds of miles in a large county, and many tens of miles even for a small one.

That's one of many reasons that my idea is better (or further elaborated) than Finn's and why I'll defend mine and not Finn's.

Finn also didn't specify sexual segregation, allowing offspring who have committed no crime to partake in the banishment, he also didn't specify what kind of crime one would need to commit to be banished (in mine, multiple homicide).

Quote:

Island penal colonies still needed to be supported by the authorities.

I think this is a big ethical part of the debate. A large part of what I'm arguing is the converse. I don't think the society should have as much responsibility in safeguarding individuals who have rejected the social contract.

Quote:

The fact that, for example, England spends more now per capita on the prison population than it did in 1820 is a disingenuous response, because it ignores the proportional value of money.

I don't think they spent more proportionally either. But I'm not willing to dig up numbers on this unless you really want to contend this.

Quote:

In fact, Van Dieman's Land was a dead loss to the English government throughout the history of the penal colony in Australia, and the government looked the other way with regard to costs in New South Wales, because they were basically running a slave economy. Many free settlers and many ticket of leave men and women got really rather wealthy from getting assigned convict labor.

Incarceration is already a "dead loss". That doesn't say whether it was more or less though. I imagine any costs then were related to their transportation (now a negligible cost) and attempts to control them in a non-exclusive penal colony (which I do not advocate).

Quote:

But the best argument against this false statement of yours is that England abandoned the penal colony system when they began to build prisons like Pentonville, which were modeled on the new American penitentiaries (which, of course, they'll never admit).

They used penal colonies because they had problems with prison overcrowding and though it more humane than execution. That they ceased to use the penal colonies after dramatically expanding their prison systems doesn't say much about the ethics of autonomous penal colonies so much as the history of the British penal system.

Quote:

I suggest you read The Fatal Shore, Richard Hughes, some time. It will educate you a good deal about just how cost effective the "Botany Bay" experiment was.

I might well do so, but I sincerely doubt that our differences of opinion stem from different initial information so much as a mere difference of opinion as to the interpretation thereof.

Quote:

As i pointed out with regard to a "penal county," you'd have to condemn the land under public domain provisions, and pay fair market value to the current owners. The cost would be enormous, probably out of the realm of probability.

I've already agreed with this. I don't think this is practical and certainly not probable. For context, my position has developed when articulating a brand new "fantasy society" in my mind (I play lots of world builder simulations along those lines) I do, however, like to debate the ethics of it even though conceding the current impracticality.

Quote:

But if you choose an island or islands which are not currently inhabited, the reason would be obvious--there were no utility of any kind in inhabiting the island. In that case, you'd either have to provide shelter, and provide continuing supplies of food and clothing, or you condemn to a slow an agonizing death any whom you land there. Otherwise, you'd find it much more economical just to shoot the sons of b*tches at the outset.

Yup, I agree, a bullet is certainly more economical. But what do you think about the ethics of:

A social contract in which the ultimate punishment is banishment from the society through segregation in lieu of death where the banished individuals are responsible for their own provenance and do not have the indulgence of the benefits of society whose contract they reject.

Right now, we can either kill them, or incarcerate them to segregate them from society. When segregating them, they are afforded resources paid for by the society. The resources needed are largely to sustain and control them and I think giving them freedom within their own society as well as withdrawing society's responsibility to support them is fair.

It's easy to portray this as "silly", if for no other reason than the impracticality, but do you have any ethical qualms with it?

0 Replies

dyslexia and Joe Nation,

You are taking easy pot shots that aren't part of my position.

Firstly, I advocate geographic logistics (island, not the Dakotas). Secondly, I advocate this as a replacement for capital punishment.

Both are very important, both to the viability of the proposal (guarding the Dakotas is more costly than an island) and the ethics (putting small time criminals in this society is unethical).

Do you have arguments against what I actually have argued for or just arguments against distortions thereof?

0 Replies

dyslexia wrote:

Perhaps I am misreading but this thread seems to me to be a neg-utopia proposal. A constructed fantasy without a hint of being reality actualized. Quite a futile but interesting conjecture. I would suggest North Dakota for the men and South Dakota for the women, Oklahoma for the transexuals.

It's a DYStopia, silly.

ehBeth wrote:

Setanta wrote:
I suggest you read The Fatal Shore, Richard Hughes,

Set says this should be Robert Hughes.

Set has set this wrong Richard right.

0 Replies

Re: Don't Kill or Cage Them...Banish Them!

Robert Gentel wrote:

dlowan wrote:

a. Part of our difference may be that, psychologically, I find it hard to factor in a real death penalty, since this hasn't occurred in Australia since the 60's. Yes..people would likely choose some chance of life rather than death.

They may also choose it over incarceration.

Quote:
b. You are imagining inconveniences to the food supply...I am imagining a life of the harshness it had in early settlement times in Australia and the US, without the presence of people who know how to farm, and with the presence of people with little or no empathy, no impulse control, and few normal constraints upon their behaviour. Just growing food is very difficult, you know...as is living off the land with no weapons and no knowhow.

I imagine significant enough difficulty. Like I said, not too different from the many pre-industrial hardships one was faced with too survive.

Quote:
e. I don't know....I agreed there were differing circumstances...but from what prisoners who have lived through this sort of thing have told me, life organises itself pretty fast into heavies rule, and do whatever they want, depending on the "no squealing" rule to stop others from disclosing the rapes etc. they have suffered. Riots are certainly pretty extreme, especially when alcohol fuelled, but I think you are way too sweeping in dismissing the likely similarity to dynamics on your island. Just as a for instance, prisoners generally decide it's not a really good idea to kill anyone during a riot, as they know the authorities will take control back at some point.

Only non-lifers have motivation to act this way. In many other cases they kill as many of their enemies as they can while they can. In any case, society already puts their inmates at this risk and provides very little real protection to incarcerated individuals.

Quote:
f. You keep assuming that people will scatter. Some might....but, humans tend to be a herd creature and crave society.

Having the option to elect solitude or the society is their prerogative. Whatever the consequences of each is the responsibility of the individual.

The key to me is that when incarcerating for life, I think the only legitimate reason is merely to separate the individual from the society whose social contract he is unwilling to uphold. I don't see value in the punishment of incarceration and thusly don't really care too much if conditions are much better or worse.

My own guess is that they would be happier but have lower life expectancies. But that all really depends on what social contract they are able to enforce. Given that these would be people who would not accept the larger societies social contract I don't see it as a particularly strong dilemma if they are unable to create a better one amongst themselves.

Quote:
Also, to produce enough food to live on at pre-industrial revolution technology (even IF you know what you are doing) you tend to need a lot of labour. My hunch would be, if they survived, that they would form warring gangs.....

Yeah, life's a bitch when you don't get the benefits of the society. Said benefits come within a social contract that these individuals would have broken so whatever they inflict on themselves in their freedom isn't that important an ethical question to me.

As long as they are given a decent enough chance for survival and you aren't handing down an inevitable death penalty your society is not responsible for what those who reject it do.

Quote:
As I said, that might be quite a satisfying life, as I understand from what (little) I have read of the sociology of gangs, that members find them quite sustaining. But...I'd not like to be someone seen as a weak member, or there when the conflicts happened.

Then by all means afford yourself the protection that your society's social contract affords you in this regard. In my scenario they wouldn't be there without taking multiple lives anyway, so I'm not that sympathetic to the consequences of their rejection of the social contract now that the society is not inflicting those consequences directly.

Quote:
Also, even if they survived, I imagine it would soon be a miserable life (do they have any medical supplies?) as one became ill, or old, or injured.

Medical support is a societal benefit that their society will need to figure out how to provide. It was part of the social contract they rejected.

So I would accept medical supplies being given to them in their "starter package" but no subsequent medical attention from the outside world.

Quote:
g. The actions you appear to me to have talked about are organised and reasonably successful farming, people scattering and hence lessening the chance of lots of violence, and a general assumption that a lot of the people will act in a fairly rational and reasoned manner..(eg farm, have rules and sanctions).....

I never mentioned organized farming. I don't think I also mentioned any expectations of them acting reasonably. They certainly didn't do so in their last society with things like this very scenario as a punishment so I expect many of them will not suddenly do so on their island. But that's their problem and more importantly their responsibility now.

Quote:
"In some places blacks are far more likely to die in jail than out of jail but they still prefer out of jail. " Did you mean blacks are far LESS likely to die in prison?

Actually nearly all prison inmates are less likely to die in US prison than in the general US population. With certain demographics like young male blacks it's more pronounced because of their death rates outside of prison being so high.

Quote:

h. I am not at all convinced that putting them somewhere where violence, starvation, untreated disease will kill them, for some, more slowly, is a lot better for society than killing them. I just think, as I said, that it simply removes the act even further from those in whose name it is done than the current situation in the USA does.

That's a good thing to me. Directly killing your citizens is, to me, morally unacceptable. The only possible justification is to keep them from further harming society.

The punitive factor to me is unwarranted if your society has already decided to abandon the individual. If the individual has no further place in your society except to be punished then releasing the individual, even to a situation with worse survival odds, is more ethical to me than to spend society's resources caring for an individual while depriving them of their freedom or killing them directly.

It may be less suffering to die directly but that is a choice that they have with freedom anyway. There's no need for the blood to be on the hands of the society.

Quote:
That being said, I know that my thinking is informed by knowing there are other options...eg the death penalty is unknown here....most prisoners will be released, and do not face life in prison, most western countries are not doing what the US does in killing people or making them stay in prison forever....(though a rather obscene political scenario is playing out here of would-be governments competing about how draconian their treatment of criminals will be, so it may get a lot worse.)

Still, there must be some people that you simply can't afford to allow back into society.

Quote:
I may be unable to really imagine the horror of the situation of many US prisoners, and, given that my beliefs about how your scenario would play out in real life are much gloomier than yours, I may not be balancing glooms with full knowledge of the prison/execution part of the gloom.

I think the real difference is that I don't really care about the gloom, I care about who's responsible and how it's inflicted. Societies used to have a lot more gloom. The improvements were societal and not individual and accepting the social contract is what affords you the better quality of life.

Given that these individuals would have made repeated decisions to harm the quality of life of others in their society the predicable consequence of harm to their own quality of life isn't a big ethical concern to me.

Quote:
"Incidentally, what if it was a choice between life in prison and banishment? What qualm would you find with it then? And how many do you think would pick life in prison?"

My qualms lessen dramatically if there is a choice.

But there already is a choice: kill a bunch of people or don't kill a bunch of people.

Quote:
Personally, for instance, I would likely pick life in prison...as long as I had books.

If you killed a bunch of people I don't think society should be giving you anything. Why should you get to live for free off society at many times the cost of a law abiding citizen and furthermore get free books?

Quote:
Being marooned with a bunch of dangerous criminals would seem to me a fate far worse than life in prison. I know from life in prison (as much as anyone who hasn't been incarcerated CAN know), and I know that people can make a sort of life in there. What I have seen of unchecked rule by prison heavies scares the living bejesus out of me...and I include the women here.

But I am imagining prisons I know.....the prisons you are thinking of may be a lot worse.

Indeed. Prison life is only like that when you spend much more money per capita on the prisoners than you do on the law abiding citizens. When, as in many places, you spend about what the average person contributes to the society it is a horrible place with overcrowding and just as much potential for violence as there would be with no control.

Why should society spend several times the average citizen's production to the society on making incarceration more palatable?

Quote:
I don't know about the vulnerable ones. They are, in my experience, as terrified as I of unfettered rule by heavies. What they are already experiencing is usually awful enough.

I imagine the same, and if they elect to take actions that remove them from society and the protections of the social contract they broke I'm not that concerned about how awful their experience is so much as who is responsible for it.

Quote:
BTW, I haven't tried to figure out how New Zealand would go yet.

Just to confuse you further where would you put transgendered people?

Yeah, well....we have a basic utter difference in that you think that people breaking the "social contract" means all bets are off for society. I don't. I think prisoners are entitled to humane treatment.

We also have a basic difference in that I don't think it matters how how far away you put the death, it is still on society's hands. And I think, if you are gonna kill people, the less direct the less honest, and the less responsibility is taken for what society is electing to do, so I see getting the prisoners to do it themselves, or exposing people to starvation etc to be a less honest way of doing the same thing, and thus more harmful to society than even the limited honesty about it in the US today.

I think the transsexuals should go to Costa Rica.

There aren't that many of them, and they ought to be easy to contain.

0 Replies

This may have been mentioned already, but isn't this part of an old George Carlin skit?

0 Replies

Don't Kill or Cage Them...Banish Them!

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know