Political Memes

Punishment as a crime deterrent is acceptable

Ok, I'll be the one to disagree with that statement.

Let me first say that the word "crime" is rather problematic. If I'm going to argue that society shouldn't "punish" people for certain things, it doesn't make sense for me not to take exception to contjnuing to use the term that means basically "the set of actions for which society should punish one." So maybe something more like "antisocial behavior" is better?

Anyway, I think it kindof takes a broken person to hurt people. (To a large extent, at least. There are thresholds of "hurting people" below which I'm sure you'd agree no action should be taken.) And punishment, at least after a certain age, cannot but further damage a person. What a person needs in order to rehabilitate is to become whole/well. Not to be (further) oppressed.

I can get behind, say, protecting people (not just the "innocent", and potentially including the perpetrator) by involuntary imprisonment. (Were I in such a mental state in the future, the (hopefully) sane person writing this post would want to be kept from doing anything truly terrible. That's not to say I trust the institutions we have today to do the right thing in such a case, but in principle I'd be for the practice if executed well.) Rehabilitation (even sometimes involuntary rehabilitation) as you rightly call out can be laudible (again depending on the execution). But I can't advocate for state-imposed or society-imposed "punishment." Even aside from theoretical arguments about the roll of the state, punishing someone who was already desperate enough to commit antisocial acts is just going to make them more desperate for longer and prevent real rehabilitation. Probably dooming them to a life of repeat offending.

Whatever institutions are necessary for dealing with antisocial behavior in a populace really need to be more akin to medical institutions than places of "punishment."