Can There Be Justice Without Prisons?

Ekklesian

Ekklesian

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Going off on a tangent from this thread.

Pretend that you had the power to unilaterally restructure the justice system of a nation. Should one emulate the Hebrew model? A prison sentence is nowhere prescribed for any offense. A slavery term is prescribed, however, for some debts.

But for violent crimes, violence was the remedy. Death for murder, rape, and kidnapping. Maming for the intentional infliction of non-lethal injuries, beatings for various misdemeanors, fines and restitution for petty theft, and so on.

You might be surprised to learn that incarceration as a penalty is a relatively new development, based on the progressive ideas of correction and rehabilitation. I think we're all agreed that it has been a colossal failure.

So, if you had the power to unilaterally restructure the justice system of a nation, what would it look like?
 
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If we would go to the Old Testament Hebrew model for justice you would have a significant reduction in crime.
By the same token if the US government would get out of the healthcare business like Medicare and Medicaid sky high health costs would drop faster than dropping a brick out of jet at 30000 ft.
 
Ekklesian said:
You might be surprised to learn that incarceration as a penalty is a relatively new development, based on the progressive ideas of correction and rehabilitation. I think we're all agreed that it has been a colossal failure.
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Is it a failure per se, or because the underlying theory of punishment is faulty? One of Lewis's most influential essays is "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," in which he argues that penalties imposed for the purpose of rehabilitation or deterrent are morally wrong because they treat the convict as a means to an end rather than a moral being in his own right. By contrast, a retributive theory of justice would punish criminals because they deserve it and give them the punishment they deserve, because they are made in the image of God and therefore ought to have known better.

We still live in a society that treats criminality like a pathology rather than moral failure.

As for the issue of prisons, while it's true that the Law did not prescribe incarceration as a penalty, I wonder whether part of the reason for that was that the Law was given to a nomadic society. You can't have prisons when you live in tents. But prisons were already known to the Israelites (see Gen. 39:20ff), and when they established permanent settlements, they had them too (see 1 Kings 22:27).
 
Ransom said:
Is it a failure per se, or because the underlying theory of punishment is faulty? One of Lewis's most influential essays is "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," in which he argues that penalties imposed for the purpose of rehabilitation or deterrent are morally wrong because they treat the convict as a means to an end rather than a moral being in his own right. By contrast, a retributive theory of justice would punish criminals because they deserve it and give them the punishment they deserve, because they are made in the image of God and therefore ought to have known better.

We still live in a society that treats criminality like a pathology rather than moral failure.

As for the issue of prisons, while it's true that the Law did not prescribe incarceration as a penalty, I wonder whether part of the reason for that was that the Law was given to a nomadic society. You can't have prisons when you live in tents. But prisons were already known to the Israelites (see Gen. 39:20ff), and when they established permanent settlements, they had them too (see 1 Kings 22:27).
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I believe there were debtor prisons in the ancient world.
 
But do you want to waste a perfectly good bullet? How about a rope and a public hanging.
 
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