State charges included kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of husband of Nancy Pelosi
The man who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for attacking the husband of Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole following a separate state trial.
A San Francisco jury in June found David DePape guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elder.
Before issuing the sentence, Judge Harry Dorfman dismissed arguments from DePape’s attorneys that he be granted a new trial for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi, who was 82 years old at the time.
“It’s my intention that Mr DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” Dorfman said while handing out the punishment.
Mental illness treatment and rehabilitation is the path forward, but it’s not a one-size-fits all solution. I was more direct about this in my other comments: What do you do with people who don’t want help and actively refuse to be rehabilitated?
Practically speaking:
You can’t reintegrate them into society as they are.
You can’t ship them off to an island in the southern hemisphere and wash your hands of them.
Morally speaking:
You can’t execute them.
You can’t lock them up.
You can’t treat them against their will.
What now?
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The American prison industrial complex is a privatized slavery-for-profit feedback loop, yes. It’s an atrocity that needs to be dismantled and replaced with a justice system with rehabilitation and reparation as its core tenets. But, the inevitable truth is that either prisons must exist in some form as the lesser of many evils, or you voluntarily choose to repeat the atrocities of our past.
I’m not arguing against treating and rehabiliting people who have made mistakes. I’m arguing that championing it as the solution to prisons is either an overly-optimistic pipedream, or a hypocritical display of indifference to the idea of involiable bodily autonomy.
You seem unable to separate rehabilitation / treatment for mental health from medical interventions and drugs.
What I’m arguing is that punishment is not justice. No person should have the right to dole out punishments to another. To think otherwise betrays a very authoritarian mindset.
I don’t have a 500 page document detailing a new version of our justice system, partly because, as you correctly stated, there isn’t a one size fits all solution. But I know whatever system that is should be focused on empathy and compassion, not making people pay for their misdeeds.
But even if I completely agreed with what you’re saying, I would still think it’s gross to cheer for anyone being sent to “an atrocity that needs to be dismantled and replaced”, especially if it’s for the rest of their lives.
You have to stop people from victimizing society and the kknds of folks who normally do so regularly ignore dialogue.
If someone rapes women you may not be able to fix them but you can be sure most of society won’t be in danger while he is in prison.
You commented twice and apparently I attached my response to the one you deleted so I wanted repost that response with the context that the other comment included the phrase “an evil man”
I’m not capable of raping people. I’m not capable of murdering someone for the insurance money. I’m not capable of organizing the liquidation of millions of people. The people that are capable of such acts are inherently evil pieces of shit. Being able to understand that such acts can only be committed by individuals who are morally evil doesn’t make me vulnerable to labeling innocent groups evil because I have a functioning brain.
I have no way of knowing if any of that is true
I don’t know if I agree with this tbh. Bad people deserve a chance to reform, but at a certain point they start deserving bad things.
Bad people don’t deserve bad things. That eye-for-an-eye mentality makes the whole world blind.
That being said, living in a society means existing within an implicit social contract. If someone choose to not uphold their end, it’s reasonable that they should lose the benefits that come with it until they agree to and make meaningful effort demonstrating that they wish to follow through if given another chance (rehabilitation).
That’s not to say that convicted individuals should be given the privileges to walk freely among society, though. For most people, there should be options for rehabilitation away from the general public, like how Norway does it. Throw in reparations for the wronged parties, and we have a humane approach as an option to carry out justice.
As it stands today, I agree with the other guy, though. The current system is not justice; it’s punishment. Is it a practical way to isolate irredeemable people like rapists and murderers? Sure. But it’s also used as a sledgehammer for dealing with everyone, nonviolent offenders included. It’s also needlessly cruel and exploitative, putting profits above humane treatment.
I suppose you’re right, I’m conflating the type of “bad things” that criminals do with the type of “bad things” that we should do to criminals-- most of which we shouldn’t do because they’re bad, but because they prevent future harm. I generally agree with your analysis.
In line with the rest of my paragraph, labeling them as bad people who deserve bad things is very authoritarian and dehumanizing. That’s the type of rhetoric someone like Trump uses. The more comfortable society is with that rhetoric the more susceptible we are to a fascist takeover.
Someone who runs around murdering people they don’t like does deserve punishment imo. I wouldn’t say it’s right to dehumanize them, but we must recognize that humans can be evil and if they are they must change or suffer the consequences. I’d also argue lacking hard lines about behavior is exactly why we currently have a fascist takeover. Society cannot survive if the average person doesn’t condemn people who do bad things. If that’s not possible, one of the only remaining ways to prevent negative behavior is to collectively agree to use the government to prevent it. Look at where we are now-- laws not being enforced on the rich and powerful. People voting for racists, fascists, and others who want to take away our rights. Constant blatant lies and unwarranted attacks. Propaganda. Sex crimes. Human trafficking. Widespread support for rapists and muderers-by-proxy. Misinformation/disinformation. Price fixing. Xenophobia and tribalism. In short, a lack of basic empathy.
We (or at least, some of us) recognize that these things are bad, but we do not have the will or power to stop it at its source. Only through collective agreement can we create a system that can enforce consequences on these behaviors. I will advocate for reform first, and we should make sure that we’re trying to do it in the best way that we can, but if that is not possible or effective, then yes, the people who continue to exploit and deceive and hurt should be punished. It has to stop.
Of course, no system is immune to corruption. Authoritarian systems especially are prone to being taken over by groups with special interests, whoch not only guts their effectiveness but completely revrses their intended goals if they were noble ones. That’s why I advocate for more democratic processes, not actual authoritarianism. We should have direct votes on core issues-- those that I mentioned above-- to implement laws to stop those behaviors. Spokespeople for all options should present their arguments to a panel of fact-checkers who have experience or credentials in related fields, who must unanimously approve the statements, which are then presented before the public votes on the issues. Enforcement should be handled by anonymized trials. The court system should scrub all references to who did the crime (and any related actors) and present the series of actions to a jury to decide their fate. These tricks are similar to the classic “two children need to share a cake; have one person cut it and the other select their slice first” solution. They must ensure that the incentives to cheat in our current system cannot be effective.
TL;DR: Through collective action we can build a system that uses tricks to avoid the pitfalls of our current system. This system should be robust and can be used to enforce rehabilitation and prevention, and then punishment if behavior does not improve, for violations of the social contract.
You definitely have some good ideas about an alternative system, but you also have some nonsense in that first paragraph.
The idea of someone deserving punishment is inherently dehumanizing. It’s not possible to punish someone unless they are beneath you. Thinking another human is lesser than you defines them as less than human.
Hard lines of behavior? That’s just what laws are, like we currently have. Yes, look at where we are now with the centuries long mentality of people deserving punishment. The rich and powerful are not subjected to the law in the same way because, to use your words, “authoritarian systems especially are prone to being taken over by groups with special interests, whoch not only guts their effectiveness but completely revrses their intended goals if they were noble ones.” Seriously though, “hard lines of behavior” is an extremely authoritarian phrase.
There are no “evil people” there are only evil actions. Every single person has the capacity for evil. We’re going to be stuck where we’re at until we collectively recognize that truth.
Thank you, and yeah some of that post was a little shaky, I didn’t proofread it much.
I disagree that it’s not possible to punish someone unless they are beneath you. Firstly, a group could punish someone who is equal to any given member of the group. But mostly, I think your definition of dehumanization might be too strict, although your argument is consistent if I take that definition to be true. To consider someone punishable, they do generally need to be beneath you in some sort of power structure, but that doesn’t make them less than human. Is a child less human than a parent? A boss more human than an employee? A follower less human than a leader? You can easily advocate for universal human rights and general equality while creating punishments for those who violate the peace or cross moral lines. Someone who is punished isn’t given that punishment because they’re less than human, they’re given that punishment because they did something wrong-- a rule that applies to every human equally. To allow them to violate the social order and harm others without consequences would in fact put them higher on a hierarchy than everyone else, and by your logic dehumanize everyone else!
Everyone has the capacity for both good and evil, but some people consistently choose one over the other. I believe someone who consistently chooses to be evil can be usefully categorized as an “evil person”, even though they can change. And we should give them as much of an opportunity to change as we can. But if that doesn’t work, are we to allow them to continue to do evil in hopes that they’ll turn good eventually?
I meant on a more personal level, we should have less tolerance for behavior that’s unfair, deceptive, malicious, etc. Social enforcement is powerful but people are reluctant to do it (and understandably so).
I try not to concern myself with what categories my personal beliefs fall into because I think that limits the way in which you can think about things. I wouldn’t categorize myself as an authoritarian but I’m sure I have some views that go towards that territory. I don’t consider a passing similarity to concepts used for bad purposes to be damning, though. If it’s bad in the context of my usage, it will be apparent without the need to compare it to existing systems of thought. That sounds a bit conceited but mostly it’s that I want to avoid arguing about beliefs that I don’t hold that are seen as related to the ones that I do hold in some way.
Yes, protecting people is always the first priority, otherwise there just wouldn’t be a justice system. That doesn’t mean punishing people for wrongdoings.
Yes, I think hierarchy is bad in general, it defines people as not equal. You can’t have a hierarchy of equal members. It has lead to those higher up thinking the laws for us don’t fully apply to them, either because we’re less than human or because they’re more than human. Even the hierarchy of parents has turned children into property instead of, again, people who need help. It might even be why people are more tolerant of shitty behavior, because they don’t feel high up enough in the hierarchy to be able to do anything about it.
Part of the critique of that phrase is its seeming dismissal of context and nuance. Authoritarianism isn’t really a system of thought, but even without mentioning that, you’re going to have a tough time drawing hard lines around behavior without infringing on valid personal freedoms. Though, in general, seeing how your beliefs map onto different ideas is a good way to interrogate yourself and try to determine if you should keep that belief as is. If an idea of yours seems to tie in with a system of thought you’re opposed to, maybe ask yourself why that is and what aspects you identify with versus the aspects you can do without.
I don’t really have much more to say on this subject but I appreciate your responses, they’re well thought out and helpful for thinking about these subjects.