Incarceration under Objective Laws

Posted by deleted 5 years, 5 months ago to Government
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Under Objectivism politics, I can understand how police, courts, and the military can arrest initiators of force, but what happens after that? Do we donate to keep prisoners in jail? Do we make prisoners indentured servants until they paid for their crimes?
This is one of the last questions I have about Objectivism, and I feel like I am close but I want the Gulch to point me to an old post, new ideas, or an objectivist essay or whatever.
Thanks.


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  • Posted by $ allosaur 5 years, 5 months ago
    The following was pointed out by an instructor to a dino in his prime when I attended the Alabama Department Of Corrections Academy at Selma during 1982 before beginning a career of 21 years as a corrections officer~

    Amendment XIII
    Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist with the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
    Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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  • Posted by DeangalvinFL 5 years, 5 months ago
    I can only speak for myself.
    If a society, via an objective court system, uses it's collective force to put someone in prison, then they are assuming the responsibility to provide basic care to that person. The benefit/value to society is that a destructive person is not allowed to roam free, thus the general public that is being taxed to provide for the prisoners are giving value for value.

    An objective legal system would not allow forced labor. Such concepts are foreign and lead to, or are, slavery. Slavery, in all of it's forms, is what Objectivism is ideally trying to destroy. No one should be forced to work for the benefit of others.

    Furthermore, conditions for the release of the prisoner should be clearly identified before a prisoner is released. If they are not willing to ever work by providing positive value to others, than they should stay in prison forever.
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  • Posted by Solver 5 years, 5 months ago
    Ayn Rand only provides a guide on this,
    “The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures. Men who attempt to prosecute crimes, without such rules, are a lynch mob. If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.”

    I don’t know what an Objectivist society would do but here is a related article describing what a “Universally Preferable Behavior” society with “no” state control could do,
    http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2006/0...
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