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tcpipReceived my results for the first two units of my MBA, Financial Management and Management Perspectives; I passed both with Distinction grades. This was an enormous relief, especially for the Financial Management exam, which I thought was extremely difficult at the time. It also means that, assuming I complete Marketing and Information Systems, I will have a Graduate Certificate in Management (Technology Systems) by the end of next month. Then on to the Graduate Diploma. On a related angle, I have been given the necessary task of trying to make some sense of the internal wiki, external website and some of our marketing material. It doesn't make sense to pitch with generic marketing speak to scientists, for some well-known reasons, which have recently become evident at the Australian Synchrotron.
The events of Roman Polanksi's extradition for sexual assault have been long discussed. If you have the stomach for it, you can read the testimony of the young Samantha Geimer on the events themselves. When some members of the entertainment industry tried to defend Polanksi on the grounds of his international cultural reputation, most people responded to this with appropriate outrage. An unexpected angle however has come from the Sparticist League who have defended Polanski because Samantha was sexually experienced and had tried quaaludes previous. You can read the Sparticist League's position in the Communist Party of Great Britian newspaper in issue 794 and my response in 795.
The events of Roman Polanksi's extradition for sexual assault have been long discussed. If you have the stomach for it, you can read the testimony of the young Samantha Geimer on the events themselves. When some members of the entertainment industry tried to defend Polanksi on the grounds of his international cultural reputation, most people responded to this with appropriate outrage. An unexpected angle however has come from the Sparticist League who have defended Polanski because Samantha was sexually experienced and had tried quaaludes previous. You can read the Sparticist League's position in the Communist Party of Great Britian newspaper in issue 794 and my response in 795.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 02:23 am (UTC)Even if the next guy thinks - somehow - that the victim will be of the same mind as Samantha Geimer then I believe then I believe as deterrence that can be incorporated into more severe sentencing.
The perpetrator should be held responsible for their own choices, not whether the victim feels forgiving.
Yes, and this is our fundamental difference. In my opinion (coming from my "almost anarchist" legal theory), crimes must have victims, and the victims must also feel whether the crime is worth proceeding upon. Otherwise you will end up with victimless crimes, and, where there is a victim, punish the victim further by acting against their express will.
It has the potential to exacerbate systemic inequities.
I acknowledge that is possible, however it is a different matter.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 05:08 am (UTC)My recollection, and it's been a while since I looked at the studies, is that the severity of a sentence doesn't actually have a lot of influence on deterrence; what has a larger effect is the probability of conviction.
crimes must have victims, and the victims must also feel whether the crime is worth proceeding upon
How would you deal with a situation where it's not possible to determine the victim's wishes?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:02 am (UTC)That is interesting. I would like to have a look at such data. I would think that basic risk analysis would work out to as punishment times likelihood%.
How would you deal with a situation where it's not possible to determine the victim's wishes?
*nods* I have thought about this, in the most obvious cases (e.g., a murder victim can hardly call for prosecution). In these cases I would do agree for public prosecution. However, I may disagree where there was clear and prior statements to the contrary (the famous German voluntary cannibalism case comes to mind)
My main interest here is to ensure that actions are not taken that against the desires of real or imagined victims.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 07:07 am (UTC)It does, but if people were that rational about risk decisions, nobody would buy lottery tickets.
On criminology, see e.g. Nagin & Pogarsky, Integrating Celerity, Impulsivity, and Extralegal Sanction Threats into a Model of General Deterrence: Theory and Evidence:
Further, as discussed here, harsher penalties can have paradoxical effects: they make juries more reluctant to convict, lowering the rate of conviction, and from the would-be criminal's side the reduced risk of conviction can outweigh the increased consequences.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 04:05 am (UTC)Most people do risk analysis on lottery tickets; it's just based on affordable fun rather than probability of winning.
Two prominent findings from this literature are that punishment certainty is far more consistently found to deter crime than punishment severity
OK, that seems to be fair enough; than you for that. It then becomes a multiple metric of ratios, ie., what increase in punishment severity reflects what change in punishment certainty.
the extra-legal consequences of crime seem at least as great a deterrent as the legal consequences
That part is certainly interesting. It seems that despite the existential angst of 'hell is society', it would appear that social isolation is even worse.
Further, as discussed here...
From the abstract: This article shows that optimal fines should rise with the severity of the infraction, that is, the penalty should "fit the crime."
In other words, this certainly does not contradict with what I have been describing. The severity of the infraction is, and must be, a subjective matter when a victim is involved, assuming that tests of sincerity are confirmed.