Hypothetical re: crime and punishment

[maquiscat]

Read (listened to really since as a driver audiobooks are my best friends) a book recently and in it was a concept that, while certainly decades away, if possible at all, I wanted to see what people's feelings were on it.

In the story, immersive VR was developed. 100% sensory input. Body goes into cryogenics (that was developed successfully as well), if you are going to be inside for more than a few weeks real time. The key point is that time within can be manipulated. You could be in cryo for 10 years real time, but only a year would go by for you in VR. Or the reverse was possible. You might only be in for a week real time, but inside you spent 50 years.

One of the ways that they used this technology was with those convicted of crimes, particularly non-violent crimes. They would go into cryo for a year, but they would serve out 10, 20, or whatever time the sentence was inside the VR. The idea was that they would not have been passed by for hireable skills while serving their sentence, as well still being able to be with their families as much as possible in the real world. I think there was a few other reasons. And I should be clear here. The VR was that of a prison faclility, complete with guards and other inmates.

I'm not looking for criticism on the technology. My question is do you feel that a person who has had the experienced of the length of the prison sentence in VR has sufficiently served their time, even though they are only separated from the public for a short period of time? Or do you feel that they need to be apart from society in real time for the length of the sentence? Another point to ponder that I just thought of while writing all this? What about for those who have multiple life sentences? Maybe this could be used to have them serve all of them one at a time. Or for anyone who is to have life imprisonment or needs maximum security, this could be a way to ensure no escape.

Again, this is a hypothetical, and is to examine the principle of the thing, not the technological feasibility of it.

 

[reinaert]

Within a year, the programming would be changed to hellacious torment in Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, to be adopted nationwide soon after.

How about we just decriminalize drugs, homelessness, poverty and the like and stop treating prisons as either reformatories or rape academies?

 

[phoenix2020]

It's an interesting scenario that I've thought about before. I think I would not be in favor of it, because the criminal would go into the execution of the sentence knowing that he may be giving up only a few weeks of real-world time, and incarceration might lose some of its deterrent value.

 

[maquiscat]

Within a year, the programming would be changed to hellacious torment in Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, to br adopted nationwide soon after.

How about we just decriminalize drugs, homelessness, poverty and the like and stop treating prisons as either reformatories or rape academies?

While I agree with you on your points on how prisons are run, that is not the subject here. It is a consideration on whether or not the time served in VR is sufficient, especially if the real world separation is much less than the person experienced. This could be in a bad prison situation or a good prison situation. IIRC, in the story, the prison the people were in were programed such that inmate on inmate violence could not occur, the guards were respectful but firm, and education opportunities were available, so if they didn't have job skills going in, they could have them coming out.

 

[maquiscat]

It's an interesting scenario that I've thought about before. I think I would not be in favor of it, because the criminal would go into the execution of the sentence knowing that he may be giving up only a few weeks of real-world time, and incarceration might lose some of its deterrent value.

Even if the inside length is say 75 years? Also, do you think it would make a difference with the type of crime? More effective on non-violent crime than violent? Any consideration on the last bit that I threw in?

 

[reinaert]

While I agree with you on your points on how prisons are run, that is not the subject here. It is a consideration on whether or not the time served in VR is sufficient, especially if the real world separation is much less than the person experienced. This could be in a bad prison situation or a good prison situation. IIRC, in the story, the prison the people were in were programed such that inmate on inmate violence could not occur, the guards were respectful but firm, and education opportunities were available, so if they didn't have job skills going in, they could have them coming out.

My answer reflects that I don't think it can be separated. Because once the VR experience is inevitably changed to suffering, terror, torture and agony, the matter of duration becomes all consuming.

Three months of hell that feels like a hundred years? Think of the trauma. And how that kind of shattered person(a) enters society again.

 

[Integrityrespec]

Read (listened to really since as a driver audiobooks are my best friends) a book recently and in it was a concept that, while certainly decades away, if possible at all, I wanted to see what people's feelings were on it.

In the story, immersive VR was developed. 100% sensory input. Body goes into cryogenics (that was developed successfully as well), if you are going to be inside for more than a few weeks real time. The key point is that time within can be manipulated. You could be in cryo for 10 years real time, but only a year would go by for you in VR. Or the reverse was possible. You might only be in for a week real time, but inside you spent 50 years.

One of the ways that they used this technology was with those convicted of crimes, particularly non-violent crimes. They would go into cryo for a year, but they would serve out 10, 20, or whatever time the sentence was inside the VR. The idea was that they would not have been passed by for hireable skills while serving their sentence, as well still being able to be with their families as much as possible in the real world. I think there was a few other reasons. And I should be clear here. The VR was that of a prison faclility, complete with guards and other inmates.

I'm not looking for criticism on the technology. My question is do you feel that a person who has had the experienced of the length of the prison sentence in VR has sufficiently served their time, even though they are only separated from the public for a short period of time? Or do you feel that they need to be apart from society in real time for the length of the sentence? Another point to ponder that I just thought of while writing all this? What about for those who have multiple life sentences? Maybe this could be used to have them serve all of them one at a time. Or for anyone who is to have life imprisonment or needs maximum security, this could be a way to ensure no escape.

Again, this is a hypothetical, and is to examine the principle of the thing, not the technological feasibility of it.

Lock em up for the entire sentence, that's the penalty.

 

[phoenix2020]

Even if the inside length is say 75 years? Also, do you think it would make a difference with the type of crime? More effective on non-violent crime than violent? Any consideration on the last bit that I threw in?

I think it could be okay there was a limit to the ratio of virtual time to physical time, say 2:1, in other words 60 years inside, 30 years outside. Maybe even 3:1. But more than that and I suspect the deterrent value starts to diminish, although I understand the upside of lower prison costs.

As to type of crime, I agree with your postulation that perhaps this could be reserved for non-violent crime. I don't think I could support it at all (any ratio) for violent crime. There's an element involved to protecting victims as well.

If a person has a life sentence then I assume the underlying motive and intent is that as a society we do not believe the people are safe with the criminal being free--ever. In that case, application of this technology would not serve any purpose. In the case of multiple life sentences however, it's an interesting idea to force a person to live hundreds or thousands of years in incarceration while their body ages and eventually dies--it's a more fitting punishment, perhaps, but is that cruel and unusual?

All good questions.

 

[maquiscat]

My answer reflects that I don't think it can be separated. Because once the VR experience is inevitably changed to suffering, terror, torture and agony, the matter of duration becomes all consuming.

Three months of hell that feels like a hundred years? Think of the trauma. And how that kind of shattered person(a) enters society again.

So then what would be the difference between the hell of prison in real life vs the hell of prison in VR?

 

[maquiscat]

Lock em up for the entire sentence, that's the penalty.

They are. They experience the full time while in the VR.

 

[maquiscat]

I think it could be okay there was a limit to the ratio of virtual time to physical time, say 2:1, in other words 60 years inside, 30 years outside. Maybe even 3:1. But more than that and I suspect the deterrent value starts to diminish, although I understand the upside of lower prison costs.

Could you expand on this a bit? Given that they have to experience every bit of that 75 years (or 60 or whatever), regardless of how short or long the real word time was, why do you think that a ratio of more than 3:1 would lose it's deterrent value?

As to type of crime, I agree with your postulation that perhaps this could be reserved for non-violent crime. I don't think I could support it at all (any ratio) for violent crime. There's an element involved to protecting victims as well.

I think that type of violent crime would also matter. Involuntary manslaughter for example, can include things like causing a death through negligence, or the lower murders where it was a crime of passion or lost temper and the person is not generally a threat to the overall population. I think we are in agreement for things like premeditated murder and intentional rape and other violent crimes that were done with a rational mind.

If a person has a life sentence then I assume the underlying motive and intent is that as a society we do not believe the people are safe with the criminal being free--ever. In that case, application of this technology would not serve any purpose.

You noted earlier the lower prison costs. And there is the reduced risk of them getting out.

In the case of multiple life sentences however, it's an interesting idea to force a person to live hundreds or thousands of years in incarceration while their body ages and eventually dies--it's a more fitting punishment, perhaps, but is that cruel and unusual?

Personally I am a fan of unusual punishments, especially if they are more effective as a deterrent. Public stocks are a good example of a principle, although I am on the edge of the actual use of the stocks. But the public humiliation aspect could be a deterrent. I think I remember one judge making a juvenile's sentence standing on a corner with a sandwich board showing his crime. But I do think cruel is an important aspect to avoid.

However, that now brings up a story element from another source, but in this vein. What if the memory of a victim could be captured and the perpetrator could be made to go through his crime as the victim. Would that come under cruel? I think it would be effective to prevent doing the crime again.

All good questions.

Thank you.

 

[phoenix2020]

Could you expand on this a bit? Given that they have to experience every bit of that 75 years (or 60 or whatever), regardless of how short or long the real word time was, why do you think that a ratio of more than 3:1 would lose it's deterrent value?



I think that type of violent crime would also matter. Involuntary manslaughter for example, can include things like causing a death through negligence, or the lower murders where it was a crime of passion or lost temper and the person is not generally a threat to the overall population. I think we are in agreement for things like premeditated murder and intentional rape and other violent crimes that were done with a rational mind.



You noted earlier the lower prison costs. And there is the reduced risk of them getting out.



Personally I am a fan of unusual punishments, especially if they are more effective as a deterrent. Public stocks are a good example of a principle, although I am on the edge of the actual use of the stocks. But the public humiliation aspect could be a deterrent. I think I remember one judge making a juvenile's sentence standing on a corner with a sandwich board showing his crime. But I do think cruel is an important aspect to avoid.

However, that now brings up a story element from another source, but in this vein. What if the memory of a victim could be captured and the perpetrator could be made to go through his crime as the victim. Would that come under cruel? I think it would be effective to prevent doing the crime again.


Thank you.

For now, I’ll just answer your first question. Your premise was that time spent in the virtual environment was roughly equivalent to time spent in a physical environment. If that’s the case, then buy definition 60 years spent virtually across 30 years of physical elapsed time is very different from 60 years spent virtually across say one year of physical time, because in the ladder scenario, the inmate knows that he has separated from his family and loved ones for only a year, whereas for the former punishment option, the inmate is spending a large percentage, if not the majority of his adult life away from family and loved ones.

I think that’s a big difference from a deterrent perspective.

 

[maquiscat]

For now, I’ll just answer your first question. Your premise was that time spent in the virtual environment was roughly equivalent to time spent in a physical environment. If that’s the case, then buy definition 60 years spent virtually across 30 years of physical elapsed time is very different from 60 years spent virtually across say one year of physical time, because in the ladder scenario, the inmate knows that he has separated from his family and loved ones for only a year, whereas for the former punishment option, the inmate is spending a large percentage, if not the majority of his adult life away from family and loved ones.

I think that’s a big difference from a deterrent perspective.

I'm trying to understand the how of it. They still have to experience that 60 years. They still experience 60 years separated from family and loved ones. Even knowing that your child will have only grown a year in that time, you would still have to wait 60 years before you could see and hold them. It would seem to me that still is 60 years worth of suffering.

 

[reinaert]

So then what would be the difference between the hell of prison in real life vs the hell of prison in VR?

One would be experienced actually as hell. The other is just metaphor.

 

[BirdinHand]

I think we need to move away from simply warehousing individuals when they commit crimes to actually rehabilitating them.

Unless rehabilitation is the goal of VR, I don’t see how this is not just another version of warehousing (and potentially further damaging) individuals.

 

[reinaert]

I think we need to move away from simply warehousing individuals when they commit crimes to actually rehabilitating them.

Unless rehabilitation is the goal of VR, I don’t see how this is not just another version of warehousing (and potentially further damaging) individuals.

We've never reckoned with the Quaker Prison/Panopticon presumption that constantly surveilled, tightly controlled pain and suffering produce moral clarity and metanoia.

No matter how we, as Americans, tinker with prisons, we still code right back in that being separated from society is only the first step in a plan to torment persons into goodness.

 

[BirdinHand]

We've never reckoned with the Quaker Prison/Panopticon presumption that constantly surveilled, tightly controlled pain and suffering produce moral clarity and metanoia.

No matter how we, as Americans, tinker with prisons, we still code right back in that being separated from society is only the first step in a plan to torment persons into goodness.

I mean, it works SO well

I’m convinced we could have half (if not fewer) individuals in prisons if we didn’t have such a grossly managed society where wealth keeps accumulating into a smaller and smaller group of hands.

 

[phoenix2020]

I'm trying to understand the how of it. They still have to experience that 60 years. They still experience 60 years separated from family and loved ones. Even knowing that your child will have only grown a year in that time, you would still have to wait 60 years before you could see and hold them. It would seem to me that still is 60 years worth of suffering.

60 years of suffering offset by 59 years of spending time with your child, as opposed to 60 years of suffering offset by spending up to 0 years with your child.

One is clearly more attractive than the other.

Or, are you saying that you’d happily choose the former over the later or leave it to a coin toss if you had to choose?

 

[maquiscat]

One would be experienced actually as hell. The other is just metaphor.

Then you are not understanding the premise of the hypothetical. This is a 100% immersive VR. You can't tell the difference.

 

[maquiscat]

I think we need to move away from simply warehousing individuals when they commit crimes to actually rehabilitating them.

Unless rehabilitation is the goal of VR, I don’t see how this is not just another version of warehousing (and potentially further damaging) individuals.

Certainly the VR , as well as real life prisons, could be structured as actual rehabilitation facilities. But that is not the aspect being discussed here. We are discussing if an accelerated experience, which is felt fully by the one experiencing it, is sufficient to be considered time served or not

 

[maquiscat]

60 years of suffering offset by 59 years of spending time with your child, as opposed to 60 years of suffering offset by spending up to 0 years with your child.

One is clearly more attractive than the other.

Or, are you saying that you’d happily choose the former over the later or leave it to a coin toss if you had to choose?

I agree that choosing the VR is the more attractive of the two, but that in and of itself does not speak to the effectiveness of rehabilitation, positive or negative. And maybe it's me and how I think. After experiencing 60 years away from my child or children, I doubt I would want to experience that large a gap from them again. It doesn't matter that they hardly aged during my term, I still have to slog through that whole time period. It might seem like nothing to a person on the outside, but living it would be very real.

 

[reinaert]

Then you are not understanding the premise of the hypothetical. This is a 100% immersive VR. You can't tell the difference.

No, I get it. I just don't think an actual hellscape is indistinguishable from bad prison conditions people call hellish.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I'm not looking for criticism on the technology. My question is do you feel that a person who has had the experienced of the length of the prison sentence in VR has sufficiently served their time, even though they are only separated from the public for a short period of time? Or do you feel that they need to be apart from society in real time for the length of the sentence? Another point to ponder that I just thought of while writing all this? What about for those who have multiple life sentences? Maybe this could be used to have them serve all of them one at a time. Or for anyone who is to have life imprisonment or needs maximum security, this could be a way to ensure no escape.

I think we should realize that there are two kinds of people we call criminals. One kind is exactly what we typically think of-someone who steals, mugs people, may well commit or has already committed murder (perhaps without us knowing), who enjoys basically hurting other people and doesn’t really have much of a conscience. The other kind is merely someone who breaks a law-these folks are usually in for drug possession or something similar, sometimes a few different types of white collar crime, occasionally assault in certain very specific circumstances (e.g. A credibly threatens B’s spouse or life partner with serious or deadly physical harm, B punches A’s lights out, B is nevertheless convicted thanks to some technicality).

The first kind of criminal cannot be rehabilitated. We should look at how such people are made and do all we can to prevent it, but once someone is there, there’s no going back. The VR thing would be of no benefit for these folks as far as I can tell. The second kind of criminal is very worth saving, however. These are otherwise ordinarily caring people who either made a mistake or take a principled stand against certain laws (some people think that, for instance, taking psilocybin regularly is a profound spiritual practice and the laws against it are immoral). I think if the VR experience were modified in a specific way for each individual in such cases, it could serve to rehabilitate them, and there would probably be much less concern about reintegrating them after they get out of prison (that’s one of the major criticisms of reintegration-that prison changes people inevitably, the person who comes out is much more mean and uncaring than the person who went in, mainly because we lump in the second kind of criminal with the first in our thinking about criminals in society).

 

[maquiscat]

I think we should realize that there are two kinds of people we call criminals. One kind is exactly what we typically think of-someone who steals, mugs people, may well commit or has already committed murder (perhaps without us knowing), who enjoys basically hurting other people and doesn’t really have much of a conscience. The other kind is merely someone who breaks a law-these folks are usually in for drug possession or something similar, sometimes a few different types of white collar crime, occasionally assault in certain very specific circumstances (e.g. A credibly threatens B’s spouse or life partner with serious or deadly physical harm, B punches A’s lights out, B is nevertheless convicted thanks to some technicality).

The first kind of criminal cannot be rehabilitated. We should look at how such people are made and do all we can to prevent it, but once someone is there, there’s no going back. The VR thing would be of no benefit for these folks as far as I can tell.

What about the use of it for those who are in for life? Or to make literal the serving of multiple life sentences?

The second kind of criminal is very worth saving, however. These are otherwise ordinarily caring people who either made a mistake or take a principled stand against certain laws (some people think that, for instance, taking psilocybin regularly is a profound spiritual practice and the laws against it are immoral). I think if the VR experience were modified in a specific way for each individual in such cases, it could serve to rehabilitate them, and there would probably be much less concern about reintegrating them after they get out of prison (that’s one of the major criticisms of reintegration-that prison changes people inevitably, the person who comes out is much more mean and uncaring than the person who went in, mainly because we lump in the second kind of criminal with the first in our thinking about criminals in society).

I agree with your point here, although we could do much the same with our RL prisons. Maybe not as customized as the VR could be made, but we could still do better with how we set up the prisons.

However, I do want to return to the original question. Do you think that the time served in the VR satisfies the punishment of time in prison, given that the real world time will be much shorter, but they still experience the full time personally?

 

[maquiscat]

No, I get it. I just don't think an actual hellscape is indistinguishable from bad prison conditions people call hellish.

So you are saying, that no matter how realistic it is, they would always be able to tell? Or is it based on them knowing that they are in VR that will make a difference? And if the latter, if they could be sent in with that knowledge blocked, so they think they are in a real world prison the whole time until they come out, would that make a difference?