The final (December) 2021 edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming. Part 1 delves into the mystery of "supply chain issues"--what causes them, and how long they're likely to last. Part 2 is legal-themed, covering the January 6th defendants, the George Floyd rioters, the Molotov cocktail-throwing New York lawyers, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the general question of political bias in the justice system. Part 3 continues the legal theme with a discussion of the practice of designating certain crimes as "terrorism" or "hate crimes", highlighted by the recent vehicular homicide in Waukesha and the school shooting in Michigan.
As always, we encourage listeners to respond via comments on this post--we'll do our best to include you in our conversation.
4 comments:
On the discussion of terrorism-based killings vs. homicide killings and whether there should be a difference. One point left out in the discussion is that the goal of the terrorist is not to kill people only but also to instill fear in the rest. Thus, the intended crime goes beyond a homicide. By that token, the punishment should be greater.
This was my son's view on the issue. :-)
A similar argument can be made for treating a "hate-crime" murder worse than a more personally motivated murder. And shouldn't we also be saying that a crime is worse if it is politically motivated (as we do with terrorism)? All of this makes sense at some level: the level where we wish to fine-tune our criminal justice system based on a subjective evaluation of the mindset of the criminal.
I prefer not to add such values to our criminal justice system where they are not greatly needed. Especially since the grotesque disparity between cases (e.g. large jail time for minor crimes vs. no jail for much more major crimes) that currently exists requires gross-tuning first.
I hear you LTEC. Your clause "where they are not greatly needed" however intrigued me. When in your opinion are such subjective values "greatly needed"?
If the values are for moral reasons that in practice are enforced for political reasons, I think we should be pretty sure that we really need them in our laws.
In deciding if such values/laws are greatly needed, one thing to do is to ask their advocates if THEY think the values/laws are greatly needed. Consider "hate crimes" (that are much more common than terrorist crimes) for example. I think even the advocates of special punishments for such crimes will admit that these are given out rarely and arbitrarily, and that even in the best case, this special punishment is more for moral reasons than for any important practical effect, and I would agree.
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