NOV 26

27: NOV 26. Reading Day -

Assigned

• Dennett, What is Free Will? 6 minute video [1]

• Cavadino, Michael and James Dignan. "Penal policy and political economy". (17)

• Some videos/websites about prisons and incarceration:

• Prison Policy Initiative Prison Policy Initiative]: A good up-to-date overview of prison facts and some popular myths about the US prison system. Updated to 2023!
• The Atlantic, data visualization on incarceration of African Americans [2]
• Data visualization on mass incarceration. [3]
• Norwegian prison, [4]
• US Supermax prison, “Red Onion” [5]
• ”When kids do hard time,” Wabash Prison, [6]
• Inside a Finnish prison and Finnish prison reform. [7]

• This second video shows several prisons in Finland that seem even more humane than those shown in the video about Norway's prisons. The video discusses their "open prisons," which provide prisoners with their own cars and allow them to leave for various activities. They also provide education, teaching the inmates technology skills and other things.

• Wandsworth Prison in UK. [8], [9]

• These last two videos are about Wandsworth Prison, one of the largest prisons in the United Kingdom. This is a foreign example of a prison that is more similar to the circumstances in the United States. The videos discuss overcrowding, understaffing, corruption, inmates' self-harm, and a major drug problem inside the prison.

• View of prisoner care at ADX Supermax in Colorado. [10]

• Tax rates by country.[11]
• Crime rates by country [12]
• Homicide rates by country [13]

Dennett, What is Free Will?

• Interviewer poses the question, “If everything is determined, how can we have free will?
• Dennett: Free will isn’t just hard to reconcile with determinism, but also indeterminism. [If the universe is “indeterminate” that still doesn’t help us to think about being the origin of our actions. Indeterminacy is randomness.] We want to be the one’s determining our actions.
• History of the question: People look to physics to think about FW, but should be thinking about biology. Key: FW is a biological level phenomenon. [That means it exists at the level of the organism and its intentions, not the cellular or physical level.]
• ”Our actions are determined but not inevitable.” Inevitable mean “unavoidable”. But we have gotten really good at “avoiding.” Anticipation, corrective measures.
• ”You can change what you thought the future was going to be, into something else.” [I think this sounds puzzling if you don’t remember that we have causal agency. Determinism doesn’t mean we are like a billiard ball on a pool table, only subject to forces.]
• Physics level vs. Biological level.
• ”We also need to give up absolute blame and responsibility, but there is still responsibility. “We are determined” to control our future and hold each other accountable for doing that.

Cavadino, Michael and James Dignan. "Penal policy and political economy"

• Huge increase in US incarceration rate since 1970s. 5x, highest in the world.

• Two claims:

• Diffs in penalty likely to continue in spite of globalization
• One reason for this is that penality tracks political economy. (Think of it as a "local mental adaptation" in American culture -- like our libertarianism or our "car culture" mentality or our "suburban" mentality.)

• Starts with an overview of the influence of the US on global penal policy. To the extent that US exerts influence on other countries to move in a neo-liberal direction there may be "penal convergence". Also, incarcertation systems are one of our global exports! "correctional imperialism"

• Some elements of the US "justice model" (retributive punishment and retributive deterrence) travel faster than others. "3 strikes" and "zero tolerance"

• In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights is influential. Moved Russia away from capital punishment. Example of global influence.

• Political Economy and Penality

• 441: Table: Typology of political economies and their penal tendencies.

• Neo-liberal. Example: US. Free market capitalism, individualism, minimal welfare state. Social exclusion (442) - acceptance of underclass with lower access to market goods. High inequality. Tracks this also in UK, Australia, and NZ (443).

• Conservative corporatism National interest groups integrated into political governance. Great welfare protections, but allows for class difference and some inequality. Also, still valuing church institutions. “Christian democrats” for example. Example: Germany in 2008 recession reinvests in industrial modernization and worker skills. Netherlands a borderline case between this and “Social dem corporatism”

• Social democratic corporatism More egalitarian and secular. Sweden. Strong trade union movement, more egalitarian social insurance than Germans.

• Oriental corporatism Japan, for example. “Corporate paternalism” High job security, structured pay scale to life stages. Welfare is more employer based obligation. Some neo-liberal influence after WWI, but more egalitarian than US.

• Let's review some of the connections the authors make in their discussion. (bring in crime rates)

• Table 2: Political economy and imprisonment rates. (447)

• Is neo-liberalism "criminogenic"?

• Possibly: Evidence that unequal societies with weak community relationships suffer from worse rates of crime. 447. Social exclusion reduces social cohesion.

• Interesting: Weak link bt crime rates and imprisonment rates. More to do with “cultural attitudes toward deviant and marginalized fellow citizens”

• Some possible mechanisms: Neo-liberal societies have high social exclusion: labor market and CJ failures treated similarly. The authors suggests a "feedback loop" here: the socially excluded confirm the neo-liberal narrative.

• By contrast, Corporatist and social dem states are inclusionary, have a communitarian ethos. (Less likely to intervene, less likely to ask citizens, “Are you alright?” Old MRFW news example [14]

• Beckett and Western (2001) and others claim that high welfare spending correlates with low incarceration (except Japan). Also, economic inequality predicts high incarceration rates.

Some Ways of Responding to Rule Breakers

• Retributive punishment / retributive deterrence.

• Requires very strong concept of MR (db-mr) and FW to be just. Retribution is justified by "moral desert". It can also involve "social exclusion" -- making it hard for offenders to vote or hold a job. One can also advocate for a punishment dimension as a deterrence. Even if it is not wholly deserved, punishment deters bad behavior.

• Utilitarian models of punishment: General principle: Goal of penal system is to reduce harm to public and offender.

• Versions include: Rehabilitative approaches, Restorative justice. These models can overlap and tend to assume that crime has natural causes that can either be mitigated through preventative welfare measures (see below) or through rehabilitation, confinement, and/or monitoring.

• Accountability and Interventions

• Distinguishing retributive punishment from "penalties and interventions". Punishment is about pain. Penalties (like speeding and parking tickets) might also hurt, but they can be justified not only on utilitarian grounds, but also more simply as ways of making the standards for behavior clear and reminding us of them, e.g. promoting accountability. Interventions include conditioning liberty (staying out of jail) on getting help with a problem, suspending privileges like driving on better behavior, working with offenders to create a "plan" to avoid recidivism. Using social science knowledge about the patterns of our behavior to offer solutions. Technology (leg braclets and geo-location) and options for medications (libido killers) are also morally controversial in terms of consent, but might be preferable to more painful methods.

• Prevention -- Interventions "before the fact"

• Some Utilitarians might argue for approaches to rule breakers that work from a Public Health-Quarantine Model, Community welfare model (crime is a kind of welfare issue, also for communities). (For example, the difference between reducing speed with traffic engineering and "nudges" (signs showing your speed), rather than tickets. Addressing demographic variables that predict some crimes: low SES, for example.

• Grounding punishment in the consent of the punished.

• Consider responses you might have to causing a harm to others. "Thanks! I needed that!" "I understand there will be consequences..." But what kind?
• Try the "veil of ignorance" approach to finding just principles of punishment. (see below)

Using Rawls to think about Punishment

• Recall our theories of punishment from last class. Here are two thought experiments to help you sort out your views on punishment:

• 1. Imagine you are in the original position in Rawls' theory. You don't know if, when the veil is lifted, you will be a crime victim, criminal, or neither. Moreover, you don't know if you will live in a crime prone area, have good parents, and other factors that affect criminal behavior, like Socio-economic Status (SES). But you do know everything we currently know about the causal factors (both social and individual) that produce crime. You also know how victim's families feel and how you would feel if you were a victim of crime.

• Here are three choices you might make. Does one sound better than the other two? Is there a fourth?

• A. Contractors would choose a retributive punishment system, much like the current US system.
• B. Contractors would choose a "public health model", more like corporatist cultures (Cavadino & Dignan).
• C. Contractors would choose a "dual system" allowing for mix A and B. (Maybe using the tort concept.)

• 2. Faculty sometimes talk about how "punitive" the grading systems in our courses need to be. This can pit "softies" vs. "toughies". As with the moral responsibility and punishment issue in the criminal justice system, some faculty (toughies) worry that if they don't give more C, D, and F grades, students will become lazy. They also might believe that a higher level of performance would occur if we put students in fear of failing the course. (!) However, other faculty (softies) have the feeling that many differences in student performance are "baked in" prior to the first day of class and grading is largely "sorting" the same people over and over again. We need to give students good information about their performance, but we don't need to make harsh final judgements. If this is true, praising and blaming students more severely than needed to motivate the work seems undeserved. Softies sometimes acknowledge the "free rider" problems with their view. Do you find yourself agreeing with one group of faculty over the other? How punitive do we need to make a particular process for it to work? What are the variables? Do you have an analysis? How would you want your kids graded?

PP2: Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Punishment Position Paper

• Stage 1: Please write an 1500 word maximum answer to the following prompt by Friday, December 6, 2024, 11:59pm. There will be no peer review process for this paper, but you will receive comments from me along with your grade.

• Topic: In this unit, we have explored different ways to think about free will/agency, moral responsibility, and punishment. We've looked at arguments for "moral responsibility skepticism," critiques of our ordinary ideas about free will, and the justification of our culture's approach to punishment. Draw on these resources as you also develop your own view, with supporting reasons, of free will and responsibility and how we should approach “rule breakers” - people who break the law. For example: Are there important reasons to retain retributive approaches in which punishment is an end in itself? How should we take into consideration the growing body of knowledge about biological influences on our behavior? Do cultural comparisons of correctional systems tell us anything useful about our own? What should a life in prison look like?

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: FWMRandPunishment.
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the "3 - Position Paper #2: FW, MR and Punishment" dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.