Category: Crime and Punishment

It is Good that Osama is Dead, but No Gloating

I was a bit disappointed with Dennis Prager this morning.  He said he was "certain" that bin Laden is in hell.  No one can be (objectively) certain that there even is a hell, let alone that any particular person has landed there.  (Is Prager so en rapport with the divine nature that he understands the exact relation of justice and mercy in God and the exact mechanisms of reward and punishment?) And although there is call for some celebration at the closure this killing brings, I can't approve of Prager's joy at this event.  This attitude of Prager's plays right in the hands of leftists  and pacifists who confuse retributive justice with revenge and oppose capital punishment and the killing of human beings on that ground.

Anyone who doesn't see that capital punishment is precisely what justice demands in certain circumstances is morally obtuse.  I agree with Prager on that.  I also agree with his statement this morning that pacifism is "immoral" though I would withhold his "by definition."  (I've got a nice post on the illicit use  of 'by definition.')  And of course I agree that terrorists need to be hunted down and killed.  But there should be no joy at the killing of any human being no matter who he is.  It would be better to feel sad that we live in a world in which such extreme measures are necessary.

The administration of justice ought to be a dispassionate affair. 

Ned Polsky, Maverick Sociologist

Polsky book Reader Ray Stahl of Port Angeles, Washington, kindly mailed me a copy of Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats, and Others.  It is a work of sociology by a maverick sociologist, academically trained, but decidedly his own man.  I wasn't aware of it or him until a few days ago.  The preface already has me convinced that this is a book I will read and digest. A writer who writes like this is a writer to read:

Many readers of this book will feel that I object to the views of other scholars in terms that are overly fierce. These days the more usual mode in academia, thronged as it is with arrivistes aspiring to be gentlemen, is to voice such objections oleaginously. But luckily I cut an eyetooth on that masterpiece of English prose, A. E. Housman's introduction to his edition  of Manilius, and so am forever immune to the notion that polemical writing and scholarly writing shouldn't mix. I believe that polemical scholarship improves the quality of intellectual life — sharpens the mind, helps get issues settled faster — by forcing genteel discussion to become genuine debate.

(Hyperlinks added. Obviously.  But it raises a curiously pedantic question: By what right does one tamper with a text in this way?  Pedantic the question, I leave it to the pedants.)

Polsky died in 2000.  Here is an obituary.  You will have to scroll down to find it.

Don’t Mess With Texas: After 9th DWI, Texas Man Gets Life

News accounts like this one give me hope that there is still some common sense left  in this crazy country dominated as it is by the politically correct.  The sentence is just.  Think about it.  This is the miscreant's 9th conviction.  The road to conviction is long.  First there must be an apprehension, then a trial, then a conviction.  How many times was this dude tried without being convicted?  How many times did he drive drunk without being caught? Perhaps hundreds. 

Cops: A Necessary Evil

I don't much like law enforcement agents (qua law enforcement agents) and I try to avoid contact with them, not because I violate laws or have something to hide, but because I understand human nature, and I understand how power corrupts people, not inevitably, but predictably. Cops and sheriffs are too often arrogant, disrespectful, and willing to overstep their lawful authority. But there is a species of varmint that I like even less than law enforcement agents: criminals and scofflaws. They are the scum of the earth. To clean up scum you need people who are willing to get dirty and who share some of the attributes of those they must apprehend and incarcerate. I mean such attributes as courage, cunning, some recklessness, with a dash of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure. Government and its law enforcement agencies are a necessary evil. That is not pessimism, but realism. There are anarchists and others who dream of a world in which good order arises spontaneously and coercive structures are unnecessary. I want these anarchists and others to be able to dream on in peace. For that very reason, I reject their dangerous utopianism.

Another Round with Reppert on AZ SB 1070: Reasonable Suspicion

In his most recent post on this topic, Victor Reppert tells us that his "main concern is with the 'reasonable suspicion' clause. That strikes me as horribly vague."  Here is the relevant SB 1070 passage as amended by HB 2162 which contains the clause in question:

For any lawful contact stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state or a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who and is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation. 

Reppert continues:

In our state, most illegals are Hispanics, but most Hispanics are not illegals. If you define your conception of what it takes to have reasonable suspicion, and on my blog I made an un-remarked-upon recommendation that we have reasonable suspicion just in case we have objective criteria leading to the conclusion that it is more likely than not that the person is illegal, then you could at least eliminate the worst of the profiling problems. You can't just stop a Hispanic and make an immigration status inquiry, because being Hispanic is not sufficient for it to be more than 50% likely that the person is here illegally. (Emphasis added)

I believe Reppert is missing the point here.  I agree with the last quoted sentence.  But the  1070 law does not mandate that Hispanics be stopped at random to have their status checked.  The law clearly states the conditions under which an immigration inquiry may proceed:

1.  There must be a lawful stop, detention, or arrest.

2. The stop, detention, or arrest must be made in the enforcement of a law other than 1070.

3.  There must be reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien.

4.  The immigration inquiry must be practicable.

5.  The immigration inquiry must not hinder or obstruct an investigation.

I should think that Reppert's 50% rule is satisfied if all the conditions are observed.  For example, during a lawful traffic stop, the cop has the right to ask for a driver's license.  If the Hispanic driver has no license, no proof of insurance, no registration, has a campesino sticker on his bumper, is driving a junker, etc.  then the the chance that he is illegal is way over 50%.

There is a distinction I made earlier which is very important and which Reppert may be ignoring, the distinction between a law and its enforcement.  If a law is reasonable and just, it is these things whether or not some cowboy of a cop oversteps his legitimate  authority in its enforcement.  It would be absurd to argue that a particular law should be repealed because there may be abuses in its enforcement.  For any such argument would 'prove too much': it would prove that every law ought to be repealed.  For every law is such that an abuse can occur in its enforcement.

Eric Hoffer on the ‘Root Causes’ of Crime

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 57:

Poverty causes crime! That is what they are always shoving down our throats, the misbegotten bastards! What crap! Poverty does not cause crime. If it did we would have been buried in crime for most of our history . . . .

Why is common sense like this incomprehensible to liberals? Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue.

Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent.

P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

Continue reading “Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?”

A. C. Grayling on the Roman Polanski Statutory Rape Case

I find myself in complete agreement with Professor Grayling's commentary on the Polanski case.  Read it carefully; he makes several important points.  What is astonishing to me, however, is how this man can be so sane and judicious on this topic, and yet such a blithering gasbag of a lunatic when it comes to religion, as I document  here.  There is something I call topical insanity, and Grayling on religion is an example of it. Sometimes otherwise sane people simply 'lose it' when it comes to certain topics. 

Vigilantism? The Jerome Ersland Case

When decent citizens fail to receive adequate protection from governmental agencies, and when they have no reasonable expectation that the scum of society will be properly punished for their crimes, they will be tempted to take the law into their own hands.  Liberals need to think about this.  The American Thinker offers commentary on the Jerome Ersland case.

My thought: Ersland was fully justified in shooting the ski-masked punk who was attempting armed robbery.  But after he had felled the thug, and he was lying unconscious on the floor, Ersland was not justified morally in 'finishing him off.'  But that is very easy for me to say, sitting here in comfort and safety in my philosopher's retreat, having no need to face an increasingingly violent public as a pharmacy worker or convenience store attendant.  If  had been in Ersland's position I would have been tempted to do what he did.  Why let a malefactor live who will most likely come gunning for you later?  Why let the worthless piece of human detritus live to commit further crimes, especially when the likelihood of his being properly segregated from the rest of us is low?  Why not send a signal to the criminal element that there is no percentage in armed robbery?  And for that matter, why not send a signal to the contemptible liberals who will excuse and defend any miscreant while showing no concern for the decent citizens who pay the bills?

Hocking on the Anarchist and the Criminal

William Ernest Hocking explains the anarchist’s attitude toward the criminal as follows:

As for the criminal, his existence is not forgotten; but it is thought that he is either such by definition only, as one who has disobeyed what we have commanded; or he is such by response to the unnatural environment of the state and the inequalities which it fosters; or else he is the unusual individual of determined ill-will who is best dealt with by near and private hands, since the life of the will, whether for good or for evil, is always intimate, individual, and unique. ("The Philosophical Anarchist," in Hoffman ed., Anarchism, Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 116-117)

Continue reading “Hocking on the Anarchist and the Criminal”