Poll of the Day > Let's say that the prisons were 100% accurate...

(+) Yeah! (+)

False convictions were 100% impossible, and it is somehow impossible to use the law unethically against ethical citizens. Every single prisoner in the system is a bad person.

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

Probably...
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no
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human rights only apply to me and people I like
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Yellow posted...

human rights only apply to me and people I like

In this hypothetical situation, human rights don't apply to objectively bad people.

But let's not get into an "Is there such thing as objective morality?" nonsense please.

In a hypothetic situation where human rights didn't apply to bad people then it would be fine.

But they do
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VioletZer0 posted...

Yellow posted...

human rights only apply to me and people I like

In this hypothetical situation, human rights don't apply to objectively bad people.

So your question is "should human rights apply to bad people in an alternate universe where human rights don't apply to bad people?"

....am I missing something here?
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VioletZer0 posted...

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

What would be the worth of doing this though? Just rehabilitate the ones you can and the obviously fucked in the head ones just put to death. I'm talking the serial rapists/murders.

VioletZer0 posted...

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

Why not just off them?
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Do you believe that bad people can never be rehabilitated? Do you believe that if something is against the law, that it is truly wrong? Do you believe that torturing somebody will somehow bring good in another way? Do you believe the person torturing these people is not just as bad, if not worse, than the people they are torturing?

prisons are completely 100% accurate.

they just house the convicted people.

that is all they do.

they do not determine who is convicted or not, who is innocent, guilty, wrongfully convicted, that is the judiciary system that determines that.
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It's not a problem of too many criminals, but too many crimes.

Not giving human rights to someone based on limited actions in their life is inhumane in and of itself and would make you a bad person fit for that prison
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Just throw em in the hole until you find them smearing shit on themselves. That's how you know you won.

You'd essentially hire people to do monstrous things to other people to what end? Get a kick out of their suffering? FOH
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Even if someone did commit a crime and be sent to prison, you realize that doesn't automatically make them horrible people for the rest of their lives, right..?
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keyblader1985 posted...

Even if someone did commit a crime and be sent to prison, you realize that doesn't automatically make them horrible people for the rest of their lives, right..?

This^
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W..why would you want to torture them? Would good would that bring?

VioletZer0 posted...

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

Depends the crime and circumstances surrounding that crime.
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green dragon posted...

W..why would you want to torture them? Would good would that bring?

put it on PPV and get paid
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helIy posted...

prisons are completely 100% accurate.

they just house the convicted people.

that is all they do.

they do not determine who is convicted or not, who is innocent, guilty, wrongfully convicted, that is the judiciary system that determines that.

Yeah people really don't get this part. We don't beat the prisoners in any jail I've worked in (which to be fair is only 3). It's a pain in the ass to have to get physical with an inmate, there are multiple reports video reviews and even if you do everything right you can still be sued civilly.

My job is to tell them the rules of the facility, make sure everyone has what they need (food and other shit like that), and to make sure they aren't hurting each other or themselves.
I don't punish anyone, hell, most of them think I'm a fairly nice dude and when I do run into them on the outside it's normally a handshake "Hey, mylastname" a how are you and that it.

Yes, abuse and torture are unethical - even in prison, even in war.
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VioletZer0 posted...

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

Yeah. Because in this situation it's also safe to assume that law enforcement are a "beacon of hope" of sorts when it comes to ethics, and forcing those ethical people to do acts deemed as unethical is unethical in and of itself.

Cus, like, torturing someone would make you a bad person and put in jail in this situation, right? Why would it be seen as ethical to make people act in the same way? I know that in this case it's "torturing the torturer" or whatever, but that doesn't mean that it's right.

just execute them to save society the trouble. lets help the innocent instead of the guilty

Prisons don't put people on trial or provide any evidence of guilt.

This topic is stupid
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Yes it would still be unethical.
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Still very unethical. There are numerous things that can get you some time in prison.

Look, I'm not gonna cry if a convicted child rapist or serial killer ends up abused/tortured/killed, but the I'll definitely cry foul if the dumbass who refused to pay his speeding ticket and ended up with 90 days in prison gets abused/tortured/killed.

thatguy181 posted...

abused/tortured/killed

If they do it to each other, that's just bads being bads - but for good people to administer torture, that's unacceptable
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Lil69Leo posted...

What would be the worth of doing this though? Just rehabilitate the ones you can and the obviously fucked in the head ones just put to death. I'm talking the serial rapists/murders.

Prisons are meant to be punishment, not rehab centers.

It is your responsibility not to end up in prison to begin with. If we turned our prisons into rehab then we'd have people committing crime as a cry for help.

VioletZer0 posted...

we'd have people committing crime as a cry for help.

Why weren't you helping them in the first place?
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Yeah it's obviously not ethical.
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Lokarin posted...

VioletZer0 posted...

we'd have people committing crime as a cry for help.

Why weren't you helping them in the first place?

Because I have better things to do.

I also like how the TC apparently thinks that the only thing wrong with torture is that the courts aren't 100% accurate.

You know that's not why torture is considered unethical, right?

VioletZer0 posted...

If we turned our prisons into rehab then we'd have people committing crime as a cry for help.

It's funny, because this is the complete opposite of true.

The more prisons focus on rehabilitation, the lower their recidivism rate. This has been observed all across the world and the US is one of the worst at realizing exactly how much money they're wasting by clinging to the "punishment" model when there are much better alternatives available.
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darkknight109 posted...

I also like how the TC apparently thinks that the only thing wrong with torture is that the courts aren't 100% accurate.

You know that's not why torture is considered unethical, right?

Why? They're bad people who cares?

darkknight109 posted...

It's funny, because this is the complete opposite of true.

The more prisons focus on rehabilitation, the lower their recidivism rate. This has been observed all across the world and the US is one of the worst at realizing exactly how much money they're wasting by clinging to the "punishment" model when there are much better alternatives available.

You're supposed to rehabilitate yourself. It's not the state's job to mommy you.

VioletZer0 posted...

In this case, would abusing and torturing prisoners still be unethical?

Duh? The problem isn't just, "They might be innocent," but that torture is itself both inhumane and ineffective (or, at least, ineffective for anything but vengeance)

VioletZer0 posted...

In this hypothetical situation, human rights don't apply to objectively bad people.

What you've described aren't "objectively bad people" but just "objectively guilty people." Guilty and bad aren't necessarily the same thing. Many criminals merely made really stupid mistakes and are capable of reform. Others are more habitual criminals who require far greater efforts to reform them.

Plus it's objectively bad to promote the use of torture as a form of punishment.

VioletZer0 posted...

darkknight109 posted...

It's funny, because this is the complete opposite of true.

The more prisons focus on rehabilitation, the lower their recidivism rate. This has been observed all across the world and the US is one of the worst at realizing exactly how much money they're wasting by clinging to the "punishment" model when there are much better alternatives available.

You're supposed to rehabilitate yourself. It's not the state's job to mommy you.

...except for the fact that rehab is supposed to be a large part of prisons. Any prison that doesn't seem to rehab inmates is a complete waste of money, especially since the prisoners will be more likely to just end up back in there again.
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Zeus posted...

What you've described aren't "objectively bad people" but just "objectively guilty people." Guilty and bad aren't necessarily the same thing. Many criminals merely made really stupid mistakes and are capable of reform. Others are more habitual criminals who require far greater efforts to reform them.

Plus it's objectively bad to promote the use of torture as a form of punishment.

In this hypothetical situation, guilty and bad people are exactly the same thing.

Because everyone is capable of not doing bad things. Don't want to get tortured? Don't be a bad person. Simple as that.

VioletZer0 posted...

Zeus posted...

What you've described aren't "objectively bad people" but just "objectively guilty people." Guilty and bad aren't necessarily the same thing. Many criminals merely made really stupid mistakes and are capable of reform. Others are more habitual criminals who require far greater efforts to reform them.

Plus it's objectively bad to promote the use of torture as a form of punishment.

In this hypothetical situation, guilty and bad people are exactly the same thing.

Because everyone is capable of not doing bad things. Don't want to get tortured? Don't be a bad person. Simple as that.

Which we already know is a complete ineffective deterrent because historically even harsher punishments didn't deter criminals.
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Zeus posted...

Which we already know is a complete ineffective deterrent because historically even harsher punishments didn't deter criminals.

Then they get what is coming to them.

VioletZer0 posted...

Why? They're bad people who cares?

People with a conscience.

I mean, what are you trying to do with this? Who does this torture help?

Really, if you don't already understand why torture is bad, you're probably beyond my help.

VioletZer0 posted...

You're supposed to rehabilitate yourself. It's not the state's job to mommy you.

I mean, if you want to keep paying enormous tax bills to house these people in prisons when they keep committing crimes over and over and over again because you're putting the same people in the same situations with zero training on how they can handle themselves better and are shocked when it doesn't work out... Well, you do you, I guess.

Me? I prefer more accountability in how my tax dollars get spent. The US prison system - one of the most punishment-centric in the modern world - has, not coincidentally, one of the highest recidivism rates. About 75% of US prisoners reoffend within 5 years of being released. I mean, think about that - you're paying between $30k and $60k a year, on average, to lock these people up and "fix them", and for every four that leave, three of them come back. That's fucking ridiculous. If your business had a failure rate of 75%, you'd be bankrupt within a year; if any other government program wasted 75% of its money, heads would roll. But no, because this is prisons and people are so wrapped up in their lizard-brain emotions of vengeance and righteous indignation (and, apparently, a willingness to commit flagrant human rights violations, if this topic is any indication), this is the way we're doing things.

Contrast Norway, which has dropped its recidivism rate to 20%. They're actually having to close down prisons right now because the prisoner population has dropped so low they're downsizing their facilities. All by focusing on rehabilitation instead of punishment. And the fantastic part is everyone wins! The convict gets a second chance at life, society gets a productive worker added to the labour pool, and the taxpayers get less tax dollars thrown away on making people sit in a concrete room all day. Fucking sign me up.
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VioletZer0 posted...

Zeus posted...

Which we already know is a complete ineffective deterrent because historically even harsher punishments didn't deter criminals.

Then they get what is coming to them.

"I'm going to do this stupid thing that doesn't work because it's exactly what I did before and it didn't produce the result I wanted. I'm sure it will be different this time."
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In this hypothetical, where prisons are full of only guilty, 100 percent irredeemable people and torture is fair game... why waste money on prison systems at all? Just kill them.
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VioletZer0 posted...

Lil69Leo posted...

What would be the worth of doing this though? Just rehabilitate the ones you can and the obviously fucked in the head ones just put to death. I'm talking the serial rapists/murders.

Prisons are meant to be punishment, not rehab centers.

It is your responsibility not to end up in prison to begin with. If we turned our prisons into rehab then we'd have people committing crime as a cry for help.

Actually, when you rehabilitate people who go to prison they the crime rates drop to non-existent.

It's a "look at Europe" moment again.
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Probably but id be in support of it.
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Comparing to Europe is not fair because Europeans are genuinely better people than Americans...

(No it is not because of their policy. It is not the government's job to fix people, it is our job as citizens to fix ourselves)

I actually worked at a rehab center for troubled teen girls. We did everything we could to help them.

It was an absolute failure, they all went back to their old habits the moment they got out.

VioletZer0 posted...

I actually worked at a rehab center for troubled teen girls. We did everything we could to help them.

It was an absolute failure, they all went back to their old habits the moment they got out.

Maybe it failed 'cuz you were working there?
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Lokarin posted...

VioletZer0 posted...

I actually worked at a rehab center for troubled teen girls. We did everything we could to help them.

It was an absolute failure, they all went back to their old habits the moment they got out.

Maybe it failed 'cuz you were working there?

I was doing my job according to the program given to me, and I did a great job following it.

Just being antagonistic since it seems you're pro-torture... maybe? I mean, you coulda posited this thought experiment while also being against it.
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I am against torture.