"Run from me, I will hurt you and I will enjoy it"

Which is insanely ironic, that's the exact same kind of person he'd throw in jail.

This is an absurd claim. How does punishment work without cruelty? Remember, that I allow for people to disagree on the quantity of cruelty (supposing that can be quantified)... so you're proposing cruelty-free punishment. This misses the entire point of what punishment is. Perhaps your reading comprehension is faulty, and you confuse the word with "rehabilitation". I see that alot.

>but I'll recognize this is nuanced and there are likely those that can't be rehabilitated effectively.

Hah! I hadn't even read that sentence yet when I wrote the above! Damn I'm good. Rehabilitation is science fiction. No one has even ever proposed a theory on how or why it's supposed to happen, let alone engineered a method to induce it to occur. On reddit, these conversations are often hilarious, but maybe here on Hackernews it will be glorious. Why do you think you need to do to cause a violent criminal to rehabilitate? If the method is performed diligently, what percentage of violent criminals rehabilitate, and what sort of timeline are we talking? Why do the failures (and let's be honest, there are failures in every manufacturing process) fail? Can these be sorted out beforehand?

But at the end of the day, there is still a big problem. Justice is what society promises to the victims so that they will refrain from revenge; the state must carry out the revenge for them. It does so for several reasons: to discourage eternal feuds, to ensure that the correct culprit is targeted, and to avoid normally nonviolent people from growing accustomed to violence. To satisfy their monkey need for vengeance in the most civilized manner possible. If you fail to satisfy it, then these people are obligated to do it themselves. Rehabilitation alone can't substitute, even if it were possible. For the lesser criminals, incarceration suffices. For those more depraved, we don't want them rehabilitated. It serves no need at all.

But I also fully understand the point of prison is /punishment/, which is why it's such a severe injustice when someone is punished when they have not committed the crime. Prison is not supposed to be pleasant and comfortable, and we should take every action to preserver prisoner's lives specifically in order to ensure that they can serve their complete sentences, upon the assumption of fair adjudication. Without clear, just, punishment within society, we will revert to vigilantism and chaos.

The core ethical/moral complexity here to me is not about treatment of prisoners, its about how people become prisoners in the first place in the state of Texas. In Texas we have a long history of racist practices in policing, in the courts, and the use of coercive plea deal structures that have resulted in many people being wrongfully convicted. As long as that situation stands, it would be clearer to argue that nobody should be imprisoned at all, but that's also not a reasonable argument. As long people are being imprisoned, we should ensure they are rightfully convicted and understand that prison is a punishment, and that we should preserve prisoner's lives and health so that they can experience whatever just punishment has been meted out by society for the harm they have caused through their choices and actions.

I'm an atheist. There is no god nor gods. But if I had to have a god, I don't think I'd choose one of the abrahamic ones. There are many to choose from who aren't big on mercy.

>Its also messed up ethics.

I don't accept your ethical framework. It's a system of bullshit rules made up by people who care for me not even a little to put me and my family at a disadvantage against a civilization that doesn't even want to go on living.

>The purpose of having the government administer punishment for crime is to prevent vendetta.

Then you're doing it wrong. It can only prevent vendetta if the victims feel as if they receive justice... if those who do wrong are punished. If you remove the punishment/cruelty from the equation, they will simply do that part themselves. Unless you're hoping to emasculate and disarm them so thoroughly that they have no hope of doing so... but I guess that was the ethics stuff you were talking about above.

>The resistance is baked into European regulation. In many countries a conventional air conditioner lowers your building’s energy rating. The result is entirely predictable: owners and landlords decline to install units, or rip out the ones they have. Those left without built-in cooling fall back on drafty, inefficient portables that can scarcely make a dent in the temperature. I own one myself—a wheezing box with a fat hose shoved through a rickety fabric covering the window. It is the thermodynamic equivalent of mopping the floor with the tap running, but that’s simply the direction in which Europe’s regulations have nudged me.

https://maartenboudry.substack.com/p/how-europe-became-the-w...

Its easier eh?

But lets be clear, you will be on the reciving side or have been already anyway.

Or if never, you speak from a point of privilige...

My comment is independent form the others.

But cruelty shouldn't be part of this. Help and rehabiliation