Making it a "community decision" ensures that parole won't happen, because it is much harder to argue for giving people like Milograd another chance, and much easier to appeal to emotion and negativity. The entire purpose of a separate parole board is to remove the whole mob mentality from the equation, and ensure that parole can happen even if it's unpopular. If we're only going to give people parole when it's popular, then again, there's no point to it. We could just unban them altogether and let them become full citizens, because everybody is in agreement that they're okay now. Parole is supposed to be giving "criminals" a chance, despite what the community thinks.

But this region actually has a history of giving people a second chance, in good time. So I don't think you can say that making it a community decision means it will never happen otherwise LR and Punk D would have never been back and accepted into the community.

What if we just have public comments with the parole board making the final decision? (Kinda like the briefs we have for the court system.)

Again, information has been a bit hit-and-miss here between the PB and the community. As I've pointed out elsewhere, I think Milo/Carta's public apology -- which several members interacted with -- did go a long way in showing he's "changed." As a member of the parole board, there's a good chance I would have voted the same.

I think in such a case, if the community gets a say and the parole board can justified their decision, we'd be in the clear.

Neither couped the region.

I mean there are other criminal offensives besides couping the region. Just because we have a parole system doesn't mean it has to be one that almost automatically grants parole.

This is why I wanted to make a thread discussing reform of the system. This is about more than Milograd, it's about trying to make TSP better.

We all have different views on that, and I think it's incredibly important to discuss this.

(11-20-2014, 12:32 PM)southern bellz Wrote: I don't think that is 'mob justice' because we aren't sentencing or determining guilt, we are deciding if we want to uphold justice or are ready for true forgiveness.

Not to be too analytic here, but I think it's problematic to say that it's a choice of either "upholding justice" or "true forgiveness". This kind of thinking, I think, assumes there is only one kind of justice: retributive justice. You might also, however, be coming from a restorative background, which is slightly different too. 

It might be helpful for me to sketch a broad lecture on different theories of justice. 

Essentially there are many different ways to consider justice and these views inform our penal policies. We can say theories of justice include utilitarian justice, retributive justice and restorative justice. 


The traditional view of justice, especially in the western context, was retributive justice. This is to say that offenders deserve a certain kind of penalty that is proportional to the crimes they have committed against the state. This could be considered more or less, an "eye for an eye" - the goal of justice for "retributivists" is to punish wrongdoings and, in doing so, satisfy a deep conviction that wrongdoing must not go unpunished.

In the nineteenth century and onward, classical liberalism turned to the reform of the justice and penal system (influenced by the ideas of Utilitarian thinkers). They desired to improve the justice system -- under the retributivist tradition, large masses of people were being executed or shipped to Australia. It was becoming increasingly more difficult in urban centers to maintain justice with such high counts of hangings and executions.

Utilitarian justice proposed that justice needed to be refocused on what it perceived as the actual purpose of justice: the general welfare of the public. This view encouraged the use of incarceration, because for utilitarians, simple incarceration would aid in protecting the well-being of the public just as much as, say, capital punishment.

This form of justice is committed to deterrence, rehabilitation and security. These are the "goods" that justice provides to the public: it deters crime from happening, it rehabilitates criminals into contributing members of society and it brings security to the public by incarcerating dangerous criminals.

Parole is a development of Utilitarian justice. It seeks the rehabilitation of criminals, provided it can be done in a way that maintains public security and the deterrence of criminal activity. Because parole is rooted in utilitarian justice, not retributive justice - it is not particularly concerned with the punishment of individuals for the sake of punishing wrongdoing.

Restorative Justice is a newer development in western society, but it builds on older communal and native traditions of justice - finding that offences are between individuals or individuals and communities, not the state. Under this understanding, restorative justice moves away from penalties and incarceration towards mechanisms for improving dialogue between victims and offenders -- concerning itself with reconciliation, mediation and meeting the needs of victims and offenders. If "crime hurts", restorative justice argues justice should "heal". Restorative Justice is conducted through mediation circles and is practiced in a more intimate way than the more traditional forms of justice.

The rehabilitation process of Utilitarian Justice is often aided with Restorative Justice to rehabilitate offenders and mediate the acceptance of communities of rehabilitated offenders -- this means to say that Restorative Justice is vital for Transitional Justice, incorporating offenders back into general society.

---

Our justice system is kind of a hodgepodge of different kinds of justice because we've never really agreed upon a unified idea of what justice means. Utilitarianism pursues the public good, Retributivism pursues the punishment of wrongdoing and Restorative Justice tries to repair the relationships between the community, victims and the offenders. We see shades of all these concepts in our current Justice system and it might help to "untangle the mess", deconstruct it a bit to further discussion.  

Parole has been a divisive subject because as a Utilitarian practice it conflicts with notions of Retributive Justice and how parole has been conducted conflicts with Restorative Justice, because as an individualist creation, our parole system isn't necessarily concerned with the acceptance of the community. Here is where it gets tricky to reconcile parole with notions of community while retaining the rights of individuals -- a clash of individualism and collectivism. Political Liberalism considers the individual rights of criminals, while the rise of multiculturalism has challenged liberalism with a call for "community rights" and "group rights" -- and the obvious question which Liberals especially would ask is whether the rights of individuals can be respected in a criminal justice system also concerned with group rights and whether the latter's rights might conflict with the former's rights in a way that is unfair to offenders. 

Main topics:


Individualism v. Collectivism
Utilitarianism v. Retributivism 

The difference between individualism and collectivism is, I think, especially important because it is a dividing point on a number of issues in The South Pacific between those who see The South Pacific as a group of individuals with rights and duties between one another, or The South Pacific as a community with a number of expectations and norms for which they are expected to uphold. Justice can be seen in an individualist or collectivist framework. 

Alright, Unibot. The reason why we have a "hodgepodge" system of justice is because, in reality, social theory rarely comes into conversation with practical application. In fact, there is less of an argument about whether or not there should be "parole," and more of an argument on what the parole board takes into account. Likewise, people are concerned about the practical applications of those actions will be rather than taking an ideological stance.

But there is an argument about the need for parole. I agree with Glen: if we don't want criminals to get parole, then it makes no sense to have the option. Let's just admit that we don't want those people back in the region, instead of pretending otherwise.

(11-20-2014, 05:17 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: But there is an argument about the need for parole. I agree with Glen: if we don't want criminals to get parole, then it makes no sense to have the option. Let's just admit that we don't want those people back in the region, instead of pretending otherwise.

Honestly, that's just from proponents of parole who -- it seems like -- are trying to take their marbles and go home.

SB has stated several times that we need to reform parole. I've asked several times that I just think we need to understand the thought process that went into the parole boards discussion. There's a difference between a need for parole and granting parole right this minute.

While I'm not a fan of parole in the cases that have most often been discussed, it is better to have a system for this than to fly by the seat of our pants like we did letting PunkD and LR back.

The problem is that the Milograd decision is being extrapolated to represent all parole cases ever. He is an extremely unique figure in the history of TSP and I think it would be unfair to all involved to read too much into this decision.

(11-20-2014, 05:17 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: But there is an argument about the need for parole. I agree with Glen: if we don't want criminals to get parole, then it makes no sense to have the option. Let's just admit that we don't want those people back in the region, instead of pretending otherwise.

I can admit to that, and won't pretend otherwise. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Edit: This does specifically apply to Milograd. I can possibly see parole being useful on occasion, just not in this situation.