This is why I'm against blanket pardons/commutations. I agree that Biden's team, let alone Biden, didn't vet every person in the list. It seems they did this in a hurry and chose criteria that seemed like an easy win.
A bigger issue in many ways, is that it makes Biden look like he may have wanted to commute some specific sentences from that list, and used the rest as cover. I've seen other people's analysis that says there are Chinese spies that got released as well. I have no idea if that's accurate, and doubly so that Biden knew they were even on the list. It just adds to the potential or reality of impropriety and accusations against Biden.
He surely had staff members making the list, but he would have done that even if he was in control. My guess from what we know is that he is not entirely senile, just significantly impaired, so I expect he looked at the list for pardons, perhaps read the summary paragraphs, and approved it, and approved the idea of commuting the sentences of those who had been shifted to house arrest.
The governor of Pennsylvania complains. I have no sympathy: if the State doesn't want the feds to pardon its criminals, it should prosecute them and not wait for the feds. Similarly, all this complaining about qualified immunity. I believe that is only a restriction on the feds meddling in State business, which of course should be highly restricted. But the States have generally abdicated their job of policing themselves, leading to weak federal prosecutions and vulnerability to presidential pardons.
So... what's the problem in following "a policy whose justification implicitly assumed that the only functions of punishment are reform and incapacitation, with no role for either deterrence or desert", especially given this particular case clearly causes indignation about desert rather than deterrence (the guy's career in judiciary is still ruined as he's commuted not pardoned, a pretty deterrent thing)?
Whether it is wrong depends on your view of criminal punishment and related issues, whether you think it desirable that malefactors “get what they deserve.” Pretty clearly many people do.
So far as deterrence is concerned, just ending his career isn’t obviously a bad trade for millions of dollars in bribes, and a (say) ten percent chance of being caught certainly isn’t. How much more than that it takes might depend on what he thought the chances were — he got away with it for a long time. If all offenders were caught and convicted with certainty it wouldn’t take a lot to deter, but they aren’t. The longer the sentence the larger the punishment.
Many people also think that the Earth is flat. Or, more relevantly to the discussion, that free will exists.
As for deterrence, you have to first be arrested, spend some time in jail (COVID won't come every week to save you from that), and then, _possibly_, get commuted unless the relevant president gets some "just desert" ideas, with career ruined and needing to start again. Maybe I am too risk-averse, but a 10% chance of this sounds pretty scary to me.
Do you think you can establish the irrelevance of desert in the same sense that you can establish the shape of the Earth? More generally, what is the moral system that you believe in and believe you can show other people that they should believe in — apparently one in which what people deserve is irrelevant to what should happen to them?
In general, yes, I expect ethics and thus "desert" to be solvable. In particular, I'm with Harris and Sapolsky on the question. Free will is an illusion of an illusion, and the notion of "deserving" is inextricably linked to that illusion, we don't speak of hurricanes deserving or not deserving being nuked, only of whether it is effective, and there is no reason to treat automata called "humans" differently in this regard than automata called "hurricanes".
Do you think you have an adequate explanation of consciousness — of why there is a you to be fooled by illusions? Of all the facts of reality, that is the one of which you have most immediate knowledge, since all your other knowledge comes through it. If not, you don't have an adequate model of the subject you are expressing confident conclusions about.
In most cases the Clarity Principle prevails. The perception one is likely to get caught, paired with a swift trial and sentencing are more likely to deter crime than longer sentences- because even the dumbest criminals think they are smarter than the average bear. When we're talking about White Collar crimes, the utilitarian approach would be to maximise social shaming for the wife and immediate peer group (with the proviso of minimising harm and social impacts for any kids involved). Where I think the American system is deficient is in respect to the bullyboy tactics of federal law enforcement and the instinct to immediately seize assets (with a view to depriving the defendant of perceived adequate legal counsel).
The Biden Admin messed up on this one. The public needed a proper justification for leniency for such a heinous case, lest the appearance of a two-tier justice system solidifies in the public imagination. Health concerns, suicidality and fears of reprisal-based safety concerns and public expenditure incurred strike me as issues which might gain public traction. What does the average prisoner cost per year these days?
If he was costing the American taxpayer 5 to 10 times that amount per year, in order for the system to discharge it's Constitutional duties to him as a prisoner, then two things would likely be forthcoming. A degree of understanding, and unsolicited offers to carry out a far cheaper solution to the problem.
White collar criminals often think they will not get caught. They often are. It's the hubris, plus the innately temporary natural of political cover- private or public sector. The exception is digital crimes.
Biden's "justice" was always two-tier, and the framing and lengthy pre-trial torture of the J6 protesters proves it without even the need to cite the openly published personal anti-Trump biases of judges Merchand and Engoron and persecutor Fani. If Trump doesn't seek and get justice against all of them, we may as well get used to living in a banana republic, because we already are.
This is why I'm against blanket pardons/commutations. I agree that Biden's team, let alone Biden, didn't vet every person in the list. It seems they did this in a hurry and chose criteria that seemed like an easy win.
A bigger issue in many ways, is that it makes Biden look like he may have wanted to commute some specific sentences from that list, and used the rest as cover. I've seen other people's analysis that says there are Chinese spies that got released as well. I have no idea if that's accurate, and doubly so that Biden knew they were even on the list. It just adds to the potential or reality of impropriety and accusations against Biden.
Are these even Bidens pardons? Who is in control?, certainly not Joe.
He surely had staff members making the list, but he would have done that even if he was in control. My guess from what we know is that he is not entirely senile, just significantly impaired, so I expect he looked at the list for pardons, perhaps read the summary paragraphs, and approved it, and approved the idea of commuting the sentences of those who had been shifted to house arrest.
The governor of Pennsylvania complains. I have no sympathy: if the State doesn't want the feds to pardon its criminals, it should prosecute them and not wait for the feds. Similarly, all this complaining about qualified immunity. I believe that is only a restriction on the feds meddling in State business, which of course should be highly restricted. But the States have generally abdicated their job of policing themselves, leading to weak federal prosecutions and vulnerability to presidential pardons.
I believe qualified immunity applies to state actors as well as to federal actors.
So... what's the problem in following "a policy whose justification implicitly assumed that the only functions of punishment are reform and incapacitation, with no role for either deterrence or desert", especially given this particular case clearly causes indignation about desert rather than deterrence (the guy's career in judiciary is still ruined as he's commuted not pardoned, a pretty deterrent thing)?
Whether it is wrong depends on your view of criminal punishment and related issues, whether you think it desirable that malefactors “get what they deserve.” Pretty clearly many people do.
So far as deterrence is concerned, just ending his career isn’t obviously a bad trade for millions of dollars in bribes, and a (say) ten percent chance of being caught certainly isn’t. How much more than that it takes might depend on what he thought the chances were — he got away with it for a long time. If all offenders were caught and convicted with certainty it wouldn’t take a lot to deter, but they aren’t. The longer the sentence the larger the punishment.
Many people also think that the Earth is flat. Or, more relevantly to the discussion, that free will exists.
As for deterrence, you have to first be arrested, spend some time in jail (COVID won't come every week to save you from that), and then, _possibly_, get commuted unless the relevant president gets some "just desert" ideas, with career ruined and needing to start again. Maybe I am too risk-averse, but a 10% chance of this sounds pretty scary to me.
Do you think you can establish the irrelevance of desert in the same sense that you can establish the shape of the Earth? More generally, what is the moral system that you believe in and believe you can show other people that they should believe in — apparently one in which what people deserve is irrelevant to what should happen to them?
In general, yes, I expect ethics and thus "desert" to be solvable. In particular, I'm with Harris and Sapolsky on the question. Free will is an illusion of an illusion, and the notion of "deserving" is inextricably linked to that illusion, we don't speak of hurricanes deserving or not deserving being nuked, only of whether it is effective, and there is no reason to treat automata called "humans" differently in this regard than automata called "hurricanes".
Do you think you have an adequate explanation of consciousness — of why there is a you to be fooled by illusions? Of all the facts of reality, that is the one of which you have most immediate knowledge, since all your other knowledge comes through it. If not, you don't have an adequate model of the subject you are expressing confident conclusions about.
In most cases the Clarity Principle prevails. The perception one is likely to get caught, paired with a swift trial and sentencing are more likely to deter crime than longer sentences- because even the dumbest criminals think they are smarter than the average bear. When we're talking about White Collar crimes, the utilitarian approach would be to maximise social shaming for the wife and immediate peer group (with the proviso of minimising harm and social impacts for any kids involved). Where I think the American system is deficient is in respect to the bullyboy tactics of federal law enforcement and the instinct to immediately seize assets (with a view to depriving the defendant of perceived adequate legal counsel).
The Biden Admin messed up on this one. The public needed a proper justification for leniency for such a heinous case, lest the appearance of a two-tier justice system solidifies in the public imagination. Health concerns, suicidality and fears of reprisal-based safety concerns and public expenditure incurred strike me as issues which might gain public traction. What does the average prisoner cost per year these days?
If he was costing the American taxpayer 5 to 10 times that amount per year, in order for the system to discharge it's Constitutional duties to him as a prisoner, then two things would likely be forthcoming. A degree of understanding, and unsolicited offers to carry out a far cheaper solution to the problem.
White collar criminals often think they will not get caught. They often are. It's the hubris, plus the innately temporary natural of political cover- private or public sector. The exception is digital crimes.
Biden's "justice" was always two-tier, and the framing and lengthy pre-trial torture of the J6 protesters proves it without even the need to cite the openly published personal anti-Trump biases of judges Merchand and Engoron and persecutor Fani. If Trump doesn't seek and get justice against all of them, we may as well get used to living in a banana republic, because we already are.
If he does we are more clearly living in a banana republic, a polity where whoever is currently in power uses the legal system to punish his opponents. On which topic see my old post: https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/trumps-threat-to-democracy
It could be worse, mate- you could be living here in the UK. Check out the sentencing on the Golders Green attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWSeo6wRU4g&t=2s