Working on databases from prison

One of the most baffling elements of the justice system is how little the victim is involved in the justice. 'Society' should not lord the lion's share of the justice decisions over the victims. Quite often the victim would prefer compensation and release over getting fuck all while the perpetrator languages in prison at the tax dollar of the victim.

Much of 'justice' has been usurped from the victim into a jobs campaign for the state.

I think you're confusing or conflating civil and criminal courts. If someone breaks a law, that's generally a matter for the state to decide in a criminal court. If someone was damaged (i.e. if the victim feels the perpetrator owes them compensation), that's a matter for them to bring up themselves in the civil courts. These are separate functions; one situation could be tried in both courts. A famous example off the top of my head is that even though OJ Simpson wasn't criminally convicted of murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, a civil court found him liable, awarding tens of millions of dollars in damages, to be paid to their families.

There's no element of the civil trial I'm aware of that allows the prisoner to be released to perform activity to compensate the victim. In practice imprisoning the perp against the wishes of the victim robs them of their civil awards, either by delay or denial.

No, I don't think they are confusing those things. I think they are critiquing the system at large and are alluding towards alternatives such as restorative justice.

Distancing the victim from the outcome of sentencing is by design and, arguably, for the better in a democracy. Crimes violate the social order, not just the victim. It behooves us all to have a system wherein (in theory) the system, not the victim, applies a set of rules to determine punishment, as contrary as that might seem to one’s sense of self, morals, etc. It’s a part of why “justice is blind.”

> A famous example off the top of my head is that even though OJ Simpson wasn't criminally convicted of murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, a civil court found him liable, awarding tens of millions of dollars in damages, to be paid to their families.

The trick here is to be fortunate enough to have a biiiiig monthly retirement pension that the courts can barely touch, or enough wealth to have already bought your mother a nice house (though I now read OJ screwed that up by not transferring her the title).

https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/1997...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-dec-01-me-59847...

Most criminals aren't in a financial position to pay compensation. And even if you get a judgment, good luck ever collecting. When a drunk driver damaged some of my property I didn't bother sueing him because he was obviously a worthless deadbeat.

In most US jurisdictions the victim of a crime is allowed to make a statement during the sentencing phase of the trial. So the victim can certainly request release if they want it although the judge isn't obligated to adhere.

Also victims are nearly always emotionally involved, and emotional-based decisions aren't generally good. Punishments would be much more severe if it were up to the victims.

If victims determined the sentences, I expect people would spend a lot more time in prison, way more than a non-emotionally involved and wronged person would think fair.

IMHO letting victims set the sentence would be the worst way to do it.

You are baffled by the western concept of justice.

In western philosophy an offender is considered to have offended against society even if their crime is of a personal nature. As such, they are tried, condemned, and punished by society according to codified rules. A victim, if there is one, is not really a part of this process.

There is a fundamentally sound basis for this philosophy, including equity (different justice for different people is no justice for anyone), impartiality, and respect for human rights.

There are other philosophies of justice: for example, the traditional "I'm strongest I get the best stuff" or "you dissed me ima kill you." Some are codified similarly to western justice ("killing a man is requires you pay his heirs 100 she-camels of which 40 must be pregnant, killing a woman is half that, killing a Jew one-third, and so on"). Others involve negotiation between victim (or their families) and offender -- which often works out well, since the offender is often is a position of power to start with and is very likely come out on top.

The simple "an eye for an eye" is just the beginning of a very very deep rabbit hole you can go down on the road to enlightenment.

I strongly disagree. The victim is generally deeply incapable of being objective about the situation. How many perpetrators of domestic violence would go free because their spouse is too scared to ask for proper punishment? This is already a big problem with securing cooperation for prosecution, and I'd aim to make that better, not worse. You'd have enormous disparities in sentencing based on the personality of the victim. Should mugging a vindictive asshole carry a harsher sentence than mugging a nice person who believes in second chances no matter what?

The justice system is pretty far from actual justice in many cases, but this wouldn't get it closer.

It'd be such a mixed bag it wouldn't resemble anything 'fair'. I know some people who are against capital punishment even for obviously guilty serial killers. I know some people would think capital punishment is called for if you accidentally dinged their car door.

There are (institutional, complicated, well-ordered) civil and criminal systems elsewhere in the world where victims are much more directly involved in sentencing and punishment, and you probably wouldn't want to live in one.

There are certainly differing personal opinions on what they'd like to live under. For instance, Dutch lawyer Michael van Notten moved from the western to to the xeer system in the horn of Africa, and found it superior in his personal estimation from the perspective of serving victims, as documented in his book.

A clan-based blood-money system? I reiterate the claim I made previously: while you might enjoy reading about them, you wouldn't want to live under one.

I don't see it as a binary option. Why can't we learn from one another? I'm more interested in some of the elements found in for instance that system, where the victim can elect to prioritize restitution over retribution when it leads to a higher likelihood they will be made whole. I don't see any requirement that one has to embrace everything about a societies' system to find advantages in elements of it.

Well, I'll just say, when I referred earlier to institutionalized systems wherein victims are given principal roles in meting out justice, I was specifically using that word to contrast with things like xeer clan law --- a system you just implied might be superior to our common law system (it is not). There are "modern" legal systems descended from that kind of oral tradition honor law. You would not want to live under them.

Happy to keep nerding out on comparative legal stuff from around the world! Just keeping this grounded in "you probably wouldn't enjoy living somewhere where your landlord can have you imprisoned for unpaid rent".

I'll be honest, I have not seen a single implemented legal system I would like to live under, although that's not to dismiss all systems as equally bad. I was imprisoned in the USA once because an officer claimed a dog alerted, resulted in being stripped naked and cavity searched -- but that doesn't mean the entirety of our justice system is bad. Which isn't implied to be as bad as, say, a rapist getting away with it via a forced marriage as might happen under Shariah or xeer law.

Very well said. Here's a concrete example. After the Charleston church shooting, some members of victims' families forgave their murderer. Should that mean the shooter should have gone free? Certainly not, he was still prosecuted because that is what is good for society.

https://www.wbtv.com/2025/06/17/what-forgiveness-charleston-...

The fact that someone can be temporarily jailed without any evidence or a change to challenge the charges is a painful compromise that the Founding Fathers made to balance justice (they themselves were at risk of arbitrary imprisonment by the Crown) with order (sometimes you see someone running with a bloody knife and you should arrest him before you trace his steps to find a corpse). Police departments try really hard to push what they can get away with, and there are certainly areas where I wish the courts would constrain them.