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All punishment is, by definition, cruel.
Really? So now you've shifted all the way to the point where all prohibitions against cruel punishment are meaningless, because all punishment is cruel? Seriously? You're going to pretty silly lengths to defend what was an absurd original statement.
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The more cruel (and sure) the consequences, more deterrence you get. If someone advocates punishments that are of insufficient deterrence (and certainty) to stop the next slaughter of innocent school kids, then it seems reasonable for that person to see the link between what they advocated and what the reduced deterrence wrought.
Multiple problems of logic here. First, you're pretending that "deterrent" and "cruel" are the same thing, and they are not. Second, you're ignoring the fact that the issue is more complex than simply a single "deterrent" action and a single subsequent incident. Let's say you have a kid. The kid claps his hands loudly and yells while you're on the phone. You can be sure to deter such behavior by chopping off his fingers. Of course you just gave away a whole slew of other things, like your integrity, your honor, your sense of humanity, your morals, etc. But hey, you got the deterrent effect you wanted, so....
You can't boil this down to such a simplistic cause and effect equation.
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If a person isn't willing to support punishments sufficient to achieve significant deterrent affect, I'm fine with accepting that person sees things differently than I. They are oriented on how the perp is treated and I'm oriented on fewer victims.
It isn't about being oriented on the alleged perpetrator. It's about being focused on the integrity of the system and the process. That's the point. Our system is based on the concept that the process matters most, and that if the process is honored, the end results will work, on aggregate, to our benefit. Does that mean there might be occasional smashing triumphs and occasional heartbreaking tragedies? Sure. But overall, we honor the process, because that's what sets our system apart from capricious spiteful vengeful systems.
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But the person who is against achieving significant deterrence should be honest enough with themselves that they can see the link between what the "kindler gentler" that they advocate and increased violent crimes.
Sure, except that it seems violent crime statistics have been trending fairly steadily downward for years. The FBI indicates that violent crime rates have dropped from about 611 per 100,000 citizens to 386 per 100,000 citizens from 1997 to 2016.
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If a public flogging of the FL shooter was determined to have a significant deterrent effect, would we support that? If not, what would we say to the parents of the next HS shooting?
We would say, "We're very sorry, but we don't beat people in public on the off chance that it might prevent someone else from committing a crime in the future. We left that type of thing behind more than 150 years ago." If you want to live in the 1800s, you're welcome to go live in countries where public corporal punishment is still permitted. You can find most of them in the Middle East or Africa.
Slowguy
(insert pithy phrase here...)
