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Originally Posted by Trollheart
Yeah but you seem to be going the other way, like "it's not their fault, let them go, they knew no better". I mean, come on, wtf? This from a man whose tagline says "children should die"? I know it's a joke but you've never come across to me as someone who would advocate going easy on criminals. It's not like they were forced to do it (despite their swiss cheese story)!
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I'm not arguing that at all. They certainly did the crime and should be dealt with accordingly. I'm saying that they're idiots, not violent criminals. People who need to be removed from society should get long-term sentences (well, I have opinions on that, but for the purposes of the current justice system we'll say that) not naive morons who are probably just entertaining romantic
Scar Face fantasies. They may
know about the consequences of drug smuggling, both on themselves and on the people who will buy the drugs, but I doubt they have any real, visceral appreciation for them on the perceptual level, just like a teen drunk driver likely knows they might kill themselves, but the possibility isn't really "real" to them.
P.S. I don't really care about these people, I just have an issue with your line of reasoning in general and feel it to be irrational and harmful.
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Next you'll be saying that hit men shouldn't be jailed as they're just carrying out the orders of a higher-up! The whole "I was only following orders" or "I'm a small cog in a larger wheel" argument doesn't wash with me. US's community service thing might or might not work, but what do you say the solution should be? How would you discourage people from doing this? Would you discourage them, or do you just think it's me getting my knickers in a twist over something small?
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Hitmen are violent criminals. See above.
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Seriously, I'd like to know: what solution/sentence do or would you propose for this sort of crime? Never mind who's ultimately responsible; those who take the risks and want to share in the spoils should be prepared to share in the punishment, so please don't tell me they're unwitting pawns or something...
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Well, for starters, a five years sentence is about as fair as we're going to get I imagine. In a perfect world though this whole concept of justice as punishment should be done away with. I don't believe in free will, at least not in some magical, religious form. I think our actions are as predetermined by mathematics as a bouncing ball or any other inanimate object. If that's true then the concept of responsibility is based on faulty logic, and punishing people for something because they are "responsible" is as irrational as punishing an asteroid for killing the dinosaurs. The justice system, rather than worrying about punishment, should treat a crime as evidence of some kind of social dysfunction that needs to be "fixed".
If this particular argument goes much farther then it might make sense to split it into its own thread.