General Crimes Thread

Korean true crime fan murdered stranger 'out of curiosity'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67517532

That was some psychopathic curiosity, there. Oy.

(As well as another reminder that murder is not a reliable method to get rid of witnesses)

Derek Chauvin the former police officer convicted in the death of George Floyd, was stabbed in prison on and seriously injured.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-police-officer-convicted-death-george-floyd-is-stabbed-prison-ap-2023-11-25/

What are people's thoughts about the justice system, and how crimes are punished? Do you guys think a punitive system is actually effective?

While there's evidence that a rehabilitative approach is the better one, it's a tough sell. It's hard to convince taxpayers that they should pay to help convicts better their lives.

On another note, one thing that definitely makes the issue worse is the whole privatization of prisons. The way they work actively encourages the prisons to hold as many prisoners as possible for as long as possible. Naturally this means they have even less incentive to rehabilitate prisoners.

Everybody deserves a second chance, but for crimes like rape and murder, the punitive aspect should definitely not be overlooked.

In the USA at least, we have yet to move on from the "tough on crime" mentality that sprang up in the Seventies.

Really depends of context.

If you are in a place where people are highly educated, have a fairly good life prospect without having to resort to crime and the crime is against property or minor harm to people, yeah it does.

If you live in a crime ridden shithole, where most people lack or have poor basic education, life prospects are rather shit, the people grow into an environment that encourages violence, hustling, scamming and all sorts of nastiness as part of your daily life, a place where organized crime such as criminal factions controlling slums. Then no.

I've had to deal with people who wouldn't give two shits about being arrested because they new they wouldn't be in for long and career criminals that treated correction facilities as a "get rent and food for free" vouchers.

But then, I'd also wager that it doesn't matter, if they are going to get harsh or light sentences, if they aren't going to actually do the time for the crime. So having a legal system that makes sure that a conviction is guaranteed for criminals, also works wonders.

Well, you can't have deterrence without applying some kind of punishment. The problem is that people often emphasize the "punishment" part while forgetting the "applying" part. As is well established, the certainty of punishment matters more than its severity.

You can also couple the punishments aspect with correcting someone's behaviours.

I think the common problems are that visceral reactions are not a way to make effective policy and that effective law enforcement is expensive. The example I usually cite: In Switzerland it took ~6 months to catch Thomas N. (the murderer of Rupperswil), who was just on the cusp of another crime. Had it taken a year (taking a typical figure for DNA backlogs) we could be up to three or more massacres.

Okay but does punishment actually deter crime? Do we want it to be that way? I certainly don't like the idea of a society where law only functions because people are threatened with severe corporal punishment for even the most minor infringement

Harsh punishments tend to have very little effect on crime numbers. What does have a great deal of effect is the likelihood of getting caught, even if the punishment is relatively minor.

Punishment is a tool, like war in politics, you are more successful if you can fix your problems subtly without it, but if you are left with no other choice but to use it, you do it.

A successful system for deterring crimes will try to fix the societal and economic roots that produce new criminals and rehabilitate those who could be saved.

If successful, you will, by default, use less and less brute force and direct punishment, reserving them only for those irredeemable cases that can't be reasoned with.

............

The question can be reformulated to: is a gun pointed to my head, effective in making me do what you want in the short term?

Answer: Yes it is, but only in the short term, and I will be looking for the first chance to escape or attack the one holding the gun.

But for punishment to be effective, it needs to be guaranteed to happen, and unescapable.

...........

It depends on who you ask, but for me, no, I don't want it to be that way. I want to live in a society where people are moral, friendly, helpful and polite to each other, not out of fear, or social hypocrisy, but because they actually freely choose to be good.

Sadly, I have yet to find such a place.

people are threatened with severe corporal punishment for even the most minor infringement are we talking about an actual place?

Closest is Singapore and even that's rather exaggerated.

I'd add Malaysia and Brunei too.

Or if we are permitted to talk history, you have the Islamic Shariha when minor infringements like drinking alcohol or not going to prayer can lead to physical punishment. 

Also by coincidence, I am now reading The Book of Lord Shang that enthusiastically calls for a system when All Crimes Are Equal, and when your entire family can be punished if you commit treason (which came to bite Shang himself later when he was convicted of treason)

I see it in practice the Brazilian criminal justice system.

Not it is incredibly slow, it is also extremely lax with first offenders even if they commit something like murder and manslaughter.

The Brazilian murder conviction rate is 5%, which means that 95% of the murders either failed to be trialed or failed to result in a conviction. Excluding the legit self defense cases, which ironically fall into that 5%, there is a high chance of a murder go unpunished.

The same goes for theft, robbery and crimes like scamming, which most don't even get reported, let along result in a prosecution.

So, for the average career criminal. Even if he did a repeated offense with heinous crimes where he has to do 60% of his time in jail up to a max of 30 years, it can still result in a relatively short prison time.

But the chances of never doing time for the crime are much higher. Hence, there is every incentive to do crimes, specially if they are non-violent, there the chances of being arrested or prosecuted are lower and even then, the chances of the crime being paid in liberty are also high.

Three college students of Palestinian descent were walking in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday when a man shot them with a handgun.

No one died, but there were injuries.

The suspect was arrested; he is Jason J. Eaton, 48, his motives are unknown, and he pleaded not guilty to the three attempted murder charges.

Link 1: https://www.reuters.com/world/three-palestinian-students-attending-us-colleges-shot-injured-vermont-2023-11-26/

Link 2: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67548649

The Economist: Brazil’s biggest drug gang has gone global

The First Capital Command is now a mafia with links throughout Europe

Football matches are tense affairs in Brazil. That is doubly true when they take place in prisons. In August 1993 a game in a São Paulo jail ended in horrific fashion. Eight inmates attacked their opponents, killing at least two. Covered in blood, they proclaimed the birth of a new gang: the First Capital Command (PCC). Thirty years later the PCC is Latin America’s biggest gang, with estimates suggesting it has 40,000 lifetime members and another 60,000 “contractors”. That would make it one of the world’s largest crime groups. And on November 6th a leaked report by Portugal’s security services claimed the group has 1,000 associates in Lisbon, the capital. The PCC is going global.

A short article on the PCC gaining global reach on drug trade from South America, Europe via Portugal, Nigeria and in South Africa to supply China and Asia.

I really, really, REALLY hate these fucks.

Edited by AngelusNox on Nov 29th 2023 at 9:50:58 AM

DW has a documentary talking about the rise of gang violence in Sweden.

AFAIK, the Swedish military got called in to assist, but also AFAIK, it's limited.

Drug lords go on killing spree to hunt down corrupt officers who stole shipment in Mexico’s Tijuana

That might just be me, but why the heck would you ever try stealing from the cartels?

For the same reason as every other criminal - because they think they won't be caught.

I know not everything is black, white or even grey but are there any objectively evil crimes?

There are the common ones nearly every single society considers particularly amoral. The most obvious is murder. Rape is another. There is also the harming of children and elders. All of those are nearly universal crimes in some context or another.

You'll have to start by establishing what you mean by "objectively evil".

Natural law implies the existence of natural crimes, which I think is the only kind of crime that could be defined objectively but I couldn't tell you how to commit one.