1.5.12.2 Harsh Punishment and Core Values

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

In our discussion of Responsibility we acknowledged that in some situations it may be reasonable for a punishment to be imposed that is more severe than that required merely for crime prevention because of the potential for a negative public reaction if the penalty is seen to be too lenient for the crime.  This is a sad reflection on the societies in which this is necessary, but it is justifiable if the public reaction would lead to such opposition that the government is forced to increase penalties, or the minimum penalty, or make certain penalties mandatory.  This is an attempt to minimize unjustified punishment over the long term, consistent with our values of Love and Responsibility.

●   The USA is notorious for harsh punishments, especially its use of the death penalty (which is exceeded only by Saudi Arabia and China).  In the USA the dominant culture is Christian (70% of the population), and fundamentalist Christianity is widespread.  The number of Atheists and Agnostics is growing (now about 7%) but about 6% of Americans follow other faiths, and the unaffiliated remainder still have religious attitudes.  America’s public response to crime is moralistic, based on free will and punishment.  Justice in America is dominated by vengeance.

●   Saudi Arabia is avowedly Muslim, ruled by a monarchy supported by the conservative Islamic clergy, who are empowered in return by the rulers.  Most Muslims are literalists, and Saudi Arabia follows Sharia law, based on the Qu’ran, written in the 600s, well before the European punishment reforms, and well before modern criminology was invented.  So it too is moralistic.

●   The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is essentially a minority government, always fearful of popular uprisings, so they brutally suppress any form of potentially organized opposition (though there are many small scale local revolts).  The Cultural Revolution in the 1970 attacked managers and intellectuals and any politicians opposed to Chairman Mao Zedong’s increasing paranoid rule.  The CCP keeps under its control all foreign religions such as Catholicism (they are aware the Catholics helped overthrow the Communists in Poland in 1989), and brutally suppresses the locally grown practice of Falun Gong, which began in 1992.  Now it is attacking any of China’s billionaire business people who make any remarks that are remotely political.  The CCP remains culturally isolated, because of the fear of being seen to be influenced by the West, which is anti-communist.  So the CCP remains committed to harsh criminal punishments initially adopted in mid 1900s and brutal suppression of any political opposition.  In the 2020s it’s getting worse.

●   Unfortunately many ideologues and otherwise unpopular politicians around the world appeal to the less educated, more neglected and poorer voters (three separate but overlapping subsets who still believe in the supposed effectiveness of harsh punishments and the supposed justice of an eye for an eye) by running supposed law and order campaigns, promising more police, less discretion for judges, longer or mandatory jail sentences and stricter bail conditions, and they are criminalizing (or recriminalizing) normal human behaviour such as homosexuality and recreational drug use.  These causes great harm and doesn’t make society safer.  it's a tragedy.

If we accept the core values of a Reasonable Global Way, REALigion, then we must oppose these trends, because they contravene our values of Truth, Reality, Diversity, Life, Love, Equality and Responsibility.  They are misleading, contrary to science and history, intolerant, causing unnecessary death and suffering, are grossly discriminatory, and will not result in a safer and more secure society. 

We may be constrained to tolerate some harsher than necessary punishments for fear that a popular revolt against what is seen to be soft in crime may lead to even harsher unnecessary suffering.  At the same time we must hope and expect that religious and political leaders resist the temptation to appeal to our primitive vengeful notions of justice and instead educate the citizenry and push for more enlightened responses to crime and punishment.  Over time politicians can reduce their demands for harsher penalties, focus more on the inadequacies of rehabilitation and crime prevention strategies, and advocate for the poor and needy, to improve social welfare so that the underlying causes of crime are minimized as far as possible.  There plenty of room in this agenda for bashing your political opponents, but it requires a more nuanced approach than a simple law and order campaign.

Such leadership is not a fanciful ideal.  For much of the 1900s political leaders especially in Europe and the rest of the West, did reform their criminal codes, reducing harsh and unusual punishments and focusing more on rehabilitation of offenders and reducing the recidivism rates.  This movement seems to have been most effective in North Western Europe, notable the Scandinavian countries, where there is widespread support (now under threat) for these more enlightened practices. 

There has been little corresponding education of the public outside those areas, leading to a growing intolerance of modern policing and sentencing practices. 

There has been a huge growth in recent decades of the influence of the religious and political right.  These people are generally more moralistic in their views on crime and punishment, and they generally support unfair discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race and ethnicity.

Subsection 1.5.12.6 provides examples in more detail of nationalism, religious and ethnic sectarianism, and tribalism that leads to unequal harsh treatment of out groups and irrational responses to social issues that are not aimed to promote a safe and secure society for all.

Many politicians in supposedly affluent, pluralist, liberal democracies, such as Australia, are not ethnic nationalists, racists or bigots, but advocate supposed law and order policies that require more aggressive policing and harsher sentencing, despite the fact that these do not promote safer and more secure societies.  They do this, not because they believe in the justice of their proposals, but because these policies appeal to sections the electorate that are frightened by supposedly high crime rates and mislead by the purported effectiveness of harsher law and order policies.  Law and order campaigns have made otherwise sane people, especially the elderly, to be frightened to leave their homes, or go out to a restaurant, at night.  These policies collectively probably cause greater harm than the violent behaviour the policies are supposed to address, and they don't make ‘the streets’ any safer.

This problem can only be addressed by the leaders of political parties acting as though they have ethical values that correspond to our values of Life, Love, Equality and Responsibility.  They can behave (correctly) as though it is beyond the pale to create fear in the community for short term political gain, and come to an agreement with other political leaders, one way or another, that they will do the same.  This kind of behaviour is called Leadership, but it is in short supply right now.

We summarise our conclusions in this area as follows: