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Journal mercedo's Journal: If We Hate Crimes, Not the Man 19

If we hate crimes, and not the man himself, we ought to punish the man for his misconduct regardless of whether he is insanity or not. Current laws do not allow those who commit a crime to be punished if those who showed insanity.

So in some cases, if someone proves to be insane, he cannot be punishable.

Strange.

Similar cases. If those who commit the crime was minor -under twenty, they are less punishable than those whose age are over twenty.

Strange too.

We ought to punish the man who commit the crime only for his deed. No matter whether he is insane, no matter how old he is.

If we hate his crimes, responsibility ability doesn't matter, what matter is only what he did. Victim's sadness cannot be cured because the offender was mad, because offender was minor.

We ought to consider changing the criminal code.

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If We Hate Crimes, Not the Man

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  • If someone is legally declared "Insane " then it is far different from a clinical diagnoses of a mental illness.
    The person is found in the legal sense to be not responsible for their actions , basically without control over their thoughts or actions which lead to the event .
    In essence they must have had no control over it which would allow the decision , the exception is if they caused the decision themselves intentionally , I.E being drunk.
    • The problem is insanity has been used for the loophole of the crimanal code, if those who were proved to be insane, they would be free of charge, so even if they are not insane actually, if they were proved to be so they would be likely to be get away with punishment.

      Even scientifically speaking it is quite ambiguous what is insane and what is not, and it varies as times from ancient to the future. As a matter of fact, those who were regarded as incurable insanity ancient times turned to be just patients wh

      • I agree that it is often abused in the criminal court , the rules regarding it need changing.
        Those who are deemed to have that level of problem really still need to be kept in a secure environment as protection for us and them though , but prison is not the answer .
        They don't need punishment they need treatment , if they generally are ill and can be cured(and are not just evil bastards) then I am fairly sure that their conscience will dole out punishment .

        Scientifically speaking insanity can not be defined
        • I believe your idea forms still majority of society and in current law those who are insane cannot be punishable.

          But I just wonder, suppose two people commited killing a man, one is diagnosed necrophilia, and having sadistic inclination. If those were regarded as symptom normal person can have, the man would be convicted guilty of murder.

          The other was diagnosed autistic and a holder of multiple characters, probably schizophenic, then the one was free of charge because these are symptoms insane people have

          • Necrophilia and sadism would not classify you as legally insane ,schizophrenia as it manifests in 99% of cases would not get you classified legally insane.
            The defence of "The voices told me to do it" does not work , you still had the choice and made it.
            The correct defence would be "The voices must have done whatever it is that's supposed to have happened , I don't know" (obviously a bit more realistic) .

            You need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were not responsible for your actions that led to t
  • by Chacham ( 981 ) *
    Another factor is the purpose of punishment. Is it to punish, or is it to prevent further similar acts. I do not think we have the right to the former, yet the latter can be abused and removes the severity. In truth, both views are needed.

    The question is, do we decide the punishment according to the law and then allow it to be tempered with situational factors, or do we prevent it from happening again, and then temper it with punishment.

    I think that explains a great deal of the differences.

    On another note,
    • I have never been a big fan of punishment , well beyond really doing your best to make them see they were wrong and letting their conscience deal out the punishment.
      However people who are a danger to others need to be kept away from society till they are no longer a threat... a dehumanising experience such as we have with the current prison systems throughout the world is really not working in this regard .

      The law is such a complex thing built upon roots which intertwine and twist in so many ways that the w
      • by Chacham ( 981 ) *
        The law is there to control , keep a lid on things and keeping the wheels a-turnin'

        Yeah, perhaps.

        Justice is rarely ever truly done in a court.

        DS9 had a strange take on this. Cardassian judges knew the verdict before the trial started, as the investigation took care of that. (Whether the investigation was correct or not is another story.) The purpose of the trial was only to get the accused to admit his wrongdoing and accept the punishment. All evidence was for the accused to see, and his "lawyer" merely adv
        • No ,i just want reform not guilty till proven guilty ;)
          I just don't believe lawyers and judges are really very good at it and that the law has more loop holes than emerald hill zone.
          _Legal proceedings should be about facts not technicalities ... but there is a nice idea that comes from that Cardassian thing . the investigation should be also on trial .. shake the police up a little ;)
          • by Chacham ( 981 ) *
            I just don't believe lawyers and judges are really very good at it

            They are very good at what they are supposed to be doing. Except some judges. Perhaps though, their jobs need to be re-defined.

            Legal proceedings should be about facts not technicalities

            I believe technicalities are for when everyone knows things should be otherwise, but the cold facts disagree. So a technicality saves the day. It's where common sense can do something.

            the investigation should be also on trial

            True. The only issue is, that invest
            • Technicalities are as with many things in the judicial process , one extremely sharp twin edged sword.. though I would rather a guilty man go free than restrict the freedom of an innocent.

              I don't know about the last point though ... it could be dangerous certainly but i believe it could be dangerous as some investigators could become rather good at faking it.Who investigates the investigators *ouroboros*
      • It is time we had a long hard look at total reform

        I agree. We ought not to take it for granted that the current jurisprudence is the only absolute system, this system needs reparing, especially the ones related to responsibility for those who committed the crime.

    • Thank you very much, you took pains to make a comment for my journal but I can't see your point.
    • Something bad must have happened to you, or to someone close to you.

      These kinds of things can distort our sense of judgement.

      What you are suggesting is a really bad idea. To see why, consider a doctor who has to choose whether or not to operate on a dying patient. They have a 20% probability of living. The operation will make them live, but they have a 40% chance of surviving the operation.

      Ethically, you should probably operate, although maybe you should ask them, or if you cannot, a close relative

      • No, not at all. It is one of the rarest things of me to act or say something sentimental out of my experience even if I were suffered from personal mishaps. These kinds of behaviour cannot be allowed from my normal standard of judgement. So whether I've got a personal mishaps doesn't matter at all. But believe me, my life doesn't change at all, I mean no mishaps.

        Intent does matter in the case of normal people. As long as those who are involved are normal, their profession doesn't matter, in the case of norm

        • Intent does matter in the case of normal people. As long as those who are involved are normal, their profession doesn't matter, in the case of normal, I mean mentaly healthy people, whether they had intent at the time of incident should be examined very carefully. According to whether they've got an intent or not, they ought to be defined just an accident, manslaughter, murder, etc. As the degrees of their intent, the quantity of punishment ought to be defined. There are some cases that are uncertain inten

ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.

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