What did you do with my RWHN?

[Cramulus]

The disconnect here is that you seem to be stuck in the American paradigm of punishment, rather than thinking about social shifts that could reduce crime, which is the main reason we need to understand what causes kids like the Tsarnaevs to do what they did. "Reducing crime" and "arresting people" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Punishing people doesn't prevent crime at all.

surely some people do not commit crimes because they are afraid of being arrested

I'm not saying it's a good system, but that is the theory - to make people associate the crime with the punishment

this is where the "disciplined society" comes from. It's not about reforming the individual who broke the law, it's about reforming the crowd, the people who have not committed any crimes, and deter them from going down that road.

[Doktor Howl]

Both brothers also had a strong sense of Chechen pride, Tamerlan being desperate to belong to something and Dzhokar identifying with a culture that, from what I read, he had very few ties to.

Those are the factors that need to be looked at, more than anything.

Something about Irish Americans getting worked up over the IRA, drunkenly bawling Irish ballads, despite knowing nothing about the situation in Ireland, or its actual history.

Hmm.

[Eater of Clowns]

Both brothers also had a strong sense of Chechen pride, Tamerlan being desperate to belong to something and Dzhokar identifying with a culture that, from what I read, he had very few ties to.

Those are the factors that need to be looked at, more than anything.

Something about Irish Americans getting worked up over the IRA, drunkenly bawling Irish ballads, despite knowing nothing about the situation in Ireland, or its actual history.

Hmm.

Right. Again, scatterbrained at work. That sentence isn't meant to imply that Chechen pride was the problem, but that a lack of American cultural identity is.

[Doktor Howl]

this is where the "disciplined society" comes from. It's not about reforming the individual who broke the law, it's about reforming the crowd, the people who have not committed any crimes, and deter them from going down that road.

The only program that even attempted that was "Scared Straight", and it largely only dealt with drug crimes, and it also didn't deal at all with root causes.

In addition, the felony court system is a faceless monolith.  You hear about whatever case the media wants to cover, but never the literally MILLIONS of cases that happen off camera...There's just enough information to instill low grade fear of the courts rather than the crime, since your actual guilt has nothing to do with your fate, and anyone smart enough to question the system at all is smart enough to see THAT.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Both brothers also had a strong sense of Chechen pride, Tamerlan being desperate to belong to something and Dzhokar identifying with a culture that, from what I read, he had very few ties to.

Those are the factors that need to be looked at, more than anything.

Something about Irish Americans getting worked up over the IRA, drunkenly bawling Irish ballads, despite knowing nothing about the situation in Ireland, or its actual history.

Hmm.

Sounds like it's at least somewhat on the mark, speaking from a personal perspective.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The disconnect here is that you seem to be stuck in the American paradigm of punishment, rather than thinking about social shifts that could reduce crime, which is the main reason we need to understand what causes kids like the Tsarnaevs to do what they did. "Reducing crime" and "arresting people" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Punishing people doesn't prevent crime at all.

surely some people do not commit crimes because they are afraid of being arrested

I'm not saying it's a good system, but that is the theory - to make people associate the crime with the punishment

this is where the "disciplined society" comes from. It's not about reforming the individual who broke the law, it's about reforming the crowd, the people who have not committed any crimes, and deter them from going down that road.

Most people do not commit crimes because they are trained to no commit crimes. Fear of punishment has little if anything to do with it.

Compare murder rates in states that have the death penalty with those that don't.

[The Johnny]

Im just saying that people that do horrible acts should be made accountable, but also those that influenced given person to do said horrible acts. But influences can become abstractions with no sole guilty individual, who would be accountable for a crime derived from systemic poverty?

Woooo...So, basically, we would convict the parents, for example, alongside the person who committed a crime?

The disconnect here is that you seem to be stuck in the American paradigm of punishment, rather than thinking about social shifts that could reduce crime, which is the main reason we need to understand what causes kids like the Tsarnaevs to do what they did. "Reducing crime" and "arresting people" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Punishing people doesn't prevent crime at all.

I was specifically responding to his comment about holding people accountable, in that post.  His follow up argument (the cartel member example) seems to be saying the same thing.

I asked for clarification, but he seems to have missed that post.

So I am responding to the two different arguments; yours, and what I perceive his to be.

Well, sorry for not directly quoting, but, I thought the Cartel example was a good clarification, but no, parents should not be convicted for things their child did... either the child didn't know to a full extent their crime and are just partially accountable (economical restoration if it was damaged goods, but not jail time), or they did know what they were doing, so accountability rests upon themselves.

[Cain]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Somewhat like Marx? An anti-bourgeois member of the bourgeoisie?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The disconnect here is that you seem to be stuck in the American paradigm of punishment, rather than thinking about social shifts that could reduce crime, which is the main reason we need to understand what causes kids like the Tsarnaevs to do what they did. "Reducing crime" and "arresting people" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Punishing people doesn't prevent crime at all.

surely some people do not commit crimes because they are afraid of being arrested

I'm not saying it's a good system, but that is the theory - to make people associate the crime with the punishment

this is where the "disciplined society" comes from. It's not about reforming the individual who broke the law, it's about reforming the crowd, the people who have not committed any crimes, and deter them from going down that road.

Perhaps there are some people who don't commit some crimes because they're afraid of being caught and punished, but that would be a tiny minority. Most people don't commit major crimes simply because they view them as wrong, and because they have no motivating factors pushing them to commit them. As for minor, victimless crimes... we all commit them, all the time. Jaywalking, speeding, smoking pot, what have you. Walking in the street. We may not do them when we think an authority figure is watching, but the simple fact that some people do get caught and punished isn't a deterrent for most people.

All you have to do is look at the US crime and imprisonment rates and it is astonishingly clear that punishment is doing nothing to deter crime.

[The Johnny]

That's going near-sighted. What made them "bad parents" in the first place?

Not sure I understand what you're getting at, here.  Can you elaborate, please?

OH, here it is, sorry again, I'm not accustomed to fast moving threads, serves me well for not directly quoting in the first place, so here's a reconstruction

Im just saying that people that do horrible acts should be made accountable, but also those that influenced given person to do said horrible acts. But influences can become abstractions with no sole guilty individual, who would be accountable for a crime derived from systemic poverty?

Woooo...So, basically, we would convict the parents, for example, alongside the person who committed a crime?

Not sure I can agree with that.

The more I think about it, the more I don't like it.

That's going near-sighted. What made them "bad parents" in the first place?

Not sure I understand what you're getting at, here.  Can you elaborate, please?

"Bad parenting" is the war-cry of so many conservatives over basicly any issue alongside with the "decay of morals and decency", so that's a semantic problem from the start, thats why i said <<"bad parenting">> rather than <<bad parenting>>, the quotation marks were used to denote not something i meant myself, but a reiteration of the conservative discourse.

If a child steals bread because he's hungry, it could be because it's parents are poor (which to conservatives is "bad parenting"), but why are its parents poor? Then we are back to macro-economics.

Does this clear it all up?

[Cain]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Somewhat like Marx? An anti-bourgeois member of the bourgeoisie?

Not necessarily.  Most Islamic extremists have rather right wing views on economics and similar, which is why we have cosied up with them historically and unleashed them against the "godless atheists".

Poverty can form a macro-economic structural condition wherein political violence becomes more likely, and elements of ideologically charged members of the educated middle classes take the form of a terrorist vanguard.  And that's also oversimplifying matters.

This happened in Italy in the 60s, when University students were unable to get jobs which allowed them to take part in the (highly selective) Italian economic boom, and thus working in the factories with traditional working class groups. 

Equally, Al-Qaeda's average members, back when it was a cohesive organisation, were almost uniformally university educated, in the hard sciences or engineering, of fairly prosperous means by the average of their country of origin, and had spent extensive time abroad. 

Indeed, the "terrorist with an engineering degree" trope exists for a reason.

Again, with the Palestinian groups, Fatah was at it's core an intellectual, middle class cadre, and Hamas has a similar background.  The Shining Path in Peru are mostly university graduates in a country where many do not receive higher education.  And so on and so forth, Baader-Meinhof, the original IRA, various anarchist groups etc.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Right, in this case the root cause seems to lie in social alienation.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Somewhat like Marx? An anti-bourgeois member of the bourgeoisie?

Not necessarily.  Most Islamic extremists have rather right wing views on economics and similar, which is why we have cosied up with them historically and unleashed them against the "godless atheists".

Poverty can form a macro-economic structural condition wherein political violence becomes more likely, and elements of ideologically charged members of the educated middle classes take the form of a terrorist vanguard.  And that's also oversimplifying matters.

This happened in Italy in the 60s, when University students were unable to get jobs which allowed them to take part in the (highly selective) Italian economic boom, and thus working in the factories with traditional working class groups. 

Equally, Al-Qaeda's average members, back when it was a cohesive organisation, were almost uniformally university educated, in the hard sciences or engineering, of fairly prosperous means by the average of their country of origin, and had spent extensive time abroad. 

Indeed, the "terrorist with an engineering degree" trope exists for a reason.

Again, with the Palestinian groups, Fatah was at it's core an intellectual, middle class cadre, and Hamas has a similar background.  The Shining Path in Peru are mostly university graduates in a country where many do not receive higher education.  And so on and so forth, Baader-Meinhof, the original IRA, various anarchist groups etc.

Makes sense. With the example of the original IRA, I seem to remember that a good portion of the republican thinkers were educated Protestants. Wolfetone and Parnell come to mind.

[Cain]

Yes, and I believe they had certain Marxist sympathies, also.

Interestingly, the Provisional IRA probably has a very good claim to being a working class terrorist organization, though it's hard to say exactly how the economic condition of Northern Ireland may have impacted on this, being as it was.  Still, far more of the leaders there, while very clever men, were of more modest means and backgrounds than most.