Should We Abolish Punishment? With Doug Husak

Who deserves to be punished? Should the State kill killers and rape rapists?
Should we abolish the police and the prison system?

[kimmyswan]

Retributivism “feels” intuitive…especially if you believe in libertarian free-will. As a free will skeptic, I don’t believe that we can hold anyone morally responsible (in a basic desert sense) for actions/decisions that are ultimately out of their control.

[andrewwright]

Retribution is a bit of a crazy concept, the reason to punish someone should be based on the premise that by punishing them, you would increase the chance that they or someone else would not perpetrate the same or similar "crime" in future. One cannot change the past, so why bother with it other than to learn the lessons it can teach.

[uaruaidri]

While I don't think that punishment should be abolished, I doubt you could call the hard labour we force upon sophist workshys corrupting our very language punishment. It's closer to a realignment with the natural world.

[efilblaise]

I would take the abolish punishment approach. Cause I think free will plays an important part in the equation. Even if we take the idea that this person killed the other person so we have to do something about it the presumption in that is that this person had free will to do this and he cannot change his behavior in the future. To me it seems not right to punish that person. But the question than becomes what to do now with the person. Cause in the same way the people who are for punishment can say that if you do nothing than he might kill someone else again. For that I think we should remove them from the society. But I don't define that as punishment. I would say that the people who would remove the murderer from their society are exercising their right to not live in a society where there is a murderer i.e a person who can inflict harm on them. The best example for this would be the way that Norway treats it's offenders. They also have one of the best system cause they have one of the lowest Recidivism rates. One can argue that it is also a kind of punishment but I think we should not use that word anymore. cause the word has alot of psychological effect on the offender.