Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 August 31

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August 31

Harsher punishment for lack of remorse?

Is there any empirical evidence that punnishing people more harshly when they lack signs of remorse deters crime more than punishing them the same whether they appear remorseful or not? EllenCT (talk) 20:38, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

It may just be intended to keep society away from the more psychopathic for longer. I don't know if it is constitutional to check if they're faking with an fMRI test. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Presumably you're referring to Functional magnetic resonance imaging? And how reliable are such things? As to deterrence, there could be surveys indicating whether people refrain from crimes merely because they fear being caught and punished. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:20, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

More reliable than a guy trying to read their poker face probably. Even professional poker players don't bother with that stuff when playing professionals. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

And yes, undoubtedly deterrence is a thing but the question is whether there is evidence the remorse mitigation deters anyone who knows they won't have remorse. Probably it has (any sources out there?) but it's less likely to happen if the offender is a psychopath. Okay the surgeon isn't going to have sex with you just because you're hot but if he had to be alone for long enough for some reason and thought the possibility of a camera was paranoid and didn't have anything to do for a few minutes then he'd rub one out. On the boob or some other easy to clean place probably. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Plenty of non-psychos are unapologetic, too. Just need to believe in an end justifying the means. Or consider some crime victimless or silly. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:32, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Well they probably assume the guy who's remorseful is less likely to do it again. They can't let you be the judge of victimless or justified. Sometimes the means is mass shooting Mexicans or Jews and they obviously can't just set them free sooner just cause they thought it was justified by a vast worldwide conspiracy of 15 million Jews to genocide the billion whites. Sometimes the means is beating up your daughter's domestic abuser (and the state does in fact go easy on you if you do that, no need for remorse required). Sometimes the unharmed victim is the 12 year old girl. Sometimes the law isn't good and the only way to avoid that is to try to get the law charged by legal methods or smoke the weed and don't get caught. This is why I don't smoke weed. That and I'm not going to spend money to go to a legal state just to see what it's like. I would've totally not told anyone if any woman wanted to have sex with me when I was 14 though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Remorseless people are certainly more likely to reoffend (if the same situation allows it). You don't let remorseless mass murderers out, psycho or not. But remorseless petty thieves, druggies, hooligans and hookers get out every day and do it again; some are sociopaths, most have obvious mundane problems. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:41, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Of course, when it's petty mundane problems are more likely. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

The serious shit is mostly based in the sane world, too. Greed, lust, jealousy, pride, envy...all boring and brutal. I just meant the petty criminals routinely get turned loose for recapture, while the rapists, murderers, druglords, kidnappers and bank robbers tend to stay in prison for at least a dog's age. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:35, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, removal from society is one aspect of the criminal justice system that works, to a reasonable degree. That is, the worst criminals do tend to be locked up for most of their lives, which makes it difficult to victimize the general public from there. SinisterLefty (talk) 02:48, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I suspect it's not about imposing harsher penalties per se. It's not as if the judge would make the sentence even harsher than it might otherwise have been, where no remorse has been shown. It's about being more lenient where the person does show remorse. Relatively speaking, this might amount to the same thing in actuality, but the stress is on being more lenient, not on being harsher. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Aye, a mitigating factor, not an aggravating factor. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:33, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

To get such evidence, you'd need a study where one group of people were sentenced in a system where lighter sentences are given to those who plead guilty, and the comparison group were sentenced in a system where equal sentences were doled out regardless of the plea (does such a system exist in any jurisdiction?). Reoffending rates between the two groups (or crime rates in general between the two systems) would then be compared.

But wouldn't such a study be unethical? It would require the law to treat people unequally for the sake of the experiment. Anyway, I couldn't find any study like that, though perhaps other volunteers here might find something yet.

I can provide references that remorse *does* affect chances of reoffending and sentence length *isn't* clearly related to chances of reoffending. The recidivism article offers a couple of more factors: things that deter reoffending include educational opportunities in prison and job opportunities after release. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:53, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

• I don't have any specific response to the question, but I would suggest that the premise isn't correct. In the criminal justice system, there are three/four different competing justifications for imposing criminal penalties. There is retributive justice, which seeks to impose a penalty in order to punish wrongdoing—in practice the purpose of traditional justice is to satisfy the victim and his relatives that the state has done justice, so they don't seek vigilante justice and start large feuds. Deterrence is another rationale, typically based on classical philosophy, which suggests that people will only be stopped from doing wrong if they believe the penalty is greater than the benefit. Modern philosophy provides incapacitation and rehabilitation as justifications; incapacitation separates a wrongdoer from society so that he cannot continue to do wrong and harm others, while rehabilitation seeks to make a wrongdoer a functional, contributing member of society through education. These are all at work in the crafting and application of modern-day criminal law, and they are all considered valid. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 21:13, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

• One other argument deals with the concept that "they will have to live with the guilt of what they did for the rest of their lives". So, living with remorse is part of the punishment. But, if they have no remorse, then that portion of the punishment is absent, so needs to be replaced by a more concrete form of punishment. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm. OP asks for "Any empirical evidence that punishing people more harshly when they lack signs of remorse deters crime more than punishing them the same whether they appear remorseful or not?" If you kill those who show no remorse you deter that group more effectively from committing crime in the future than the remorsefull ones. Poveglia (talk) 02:50, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

• In the Florida case of Macan v. State the defendant, a nurse accused of stealing morphine, maintained her innocence throughout the trial. She was found guilty, and the judge gave her a harsher sentence because she did not admit guilt and show remorse. On appeal, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal ruled that it is a violation of due process -- specifically the Fifth Amendment ("No person [...] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself") -- to give her a stiffer sentence for maintaining her innocence. The conviction was upheld but the sentencing was vacated, and Macan was sent back to court to be resentenced by a different judge.

• As for studies regarding remorse, there was a 2014 paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law titled So You're Sorry? The Role of Remorse in Criminal Law[1] The paper is somewhat helpful, but, as is the case with most Wikipedia pages, the real gold is in the references. I looked at a few of them and found them to be a big help in understanding this topic. I put the rest on my reading list. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:48, 4 September 2019 (UTC)