[Voyce]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Antisocial personality disorder does require you to have tried to kill someone. Quoting the APA Diagnostics and Statistics manual it is "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood." Deceit and manipulation are considered essential features of the disorder.

I'm going to assume you meant to say doesn't, like I said you're not going to find it defined as such in most dictionaries, interestingly there's a lot you won't find defined in dictionaries. All I can tell you is to ask psychologists that have worked in the field for a decade or so, especially with criminals (not just 20 year old pysch majors).

That is not a deterrent. That is conditioning.

Seriously, are you trying to argue semantics here? I don't have a rebuttal for this because you don't have an argument.

Revenge is not one of the cornerstones of criminal justice.

Revenge is a part of justice, period.

If you don't believe that then your denying some of your basest humanity. Certainly "criminal justice" is not a person, it's a collection of ideologies but those ideologies are all based on people. And people--and if you deny this you might as well not argue with me because I won't value any more of your arguments--are vengeful.

The primary problem with deterrence is that it assumes rationality. People don't really think things through and they overestimate their own abilities when they do. Almost everyone arrested is either drunk or high at the time and that puts a real damper on logical thought. Panic, passion, and necessity all do a good job of hindering the possible benefits of deterrence. Strong social and economic forces make a mockery out of deterrence as well. It is not an unimportant concept but it is not what the US is basing its laws on.

Just because people don't always act rationally doesn't mean they can't, and therefore is not argument against using deterrents. If your implying that the only way for deterrents to work is for people to be "conditioned" than your argument is kind of dumb.

How many of you actually had to stick your hand over a burner when you were a kid, resulting in a serious burn, in order for you to learn "stove hot, no touch stove!"? I know I didn't.

Pain is the deterrent, we can rationalize why we don't want to feel pain, just like we can rationalize that we don't want to go to jail and take in the ass from big Bubba, just like we can rationalize if we're angry drunks, maybe we shouldn't drink so much.

Sure an alcoholic who goes to jail might not be deterred from drinking ever again when he comes out. It could put him on the right path to sobriety or it might influence him to drink more. Likewise I'm not saying deterrents work for everything, of course they don't, but they definitely work for many.