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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

(www.bbc.com)
375 points begueradj | 4 comments | 22 Oct 25 05:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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yard2010 ◴[22 Oct 25 08:45 UTC] No.45666375[source]▶
[flagged]
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tauwauwau ◴[22 Oct 25 09:07 UTC] No.45666530[source]▶
Law doesn't seek to punish but to rehabilitate. Act of taking freedom away from the criminal is violent enough. Treating them badly is just a sign of unfair/poor society that cannot maintain (afford to keep) it's promise to be civil to all citizens.
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rat9988 ◴[22 Oct 25 09:48 UTC] No.45666812[source]▶
> Law doesn't seek to punish

Then who is tasked with delivering justice to the victims?

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n4r9 ◴[22 Oct 25 10:10 UTC] No.45666964[source]▶
Must justice include punishment? If someone hits me, I'd much rather they take responsibility, apologise, and work on themselves to become a better person, than simply get locked up for a while.
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1. SirMaster ◴[22 Oct 25 13:19 UTC] No.45668688[source]▶
If the only repercussion for assault is they need to apologize and "work on themselves", then what's stopping more people from committing assault? There needs to be punishment.
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2. n4r9 ◴[22 Oct 25 14:05 UTC] No.45669376[source]▶
I don't think that people are stopped from committing assault by an abstract risk-benefit calculation that considers the likelihood of jailtime. It's not what stops me, at least. Mostly I just don't want to. And even if I do want to hit someone, I know that that fleeting temptation doesn't accord with my fundamental values; I'll feel bad afterwards. I'm intimately aware that they might retaliate, or that I might accidentally kill them (or vice versa). It just doesn't feel worth it because I've been socialised to weigh up those odds. But the distant prospect of jail time feels abstract and harder to socialise into people in the heat of the moment.
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3. 9dev ◴[22 Oct 25 14:07 UTC] No.45669403[source]▶
If they show no remorse or actual will to better themselves, that's obviously not enough and the reason why we have prisons.
4. amiga386 ◴[22 Oct 25 19:52 UTC] No.45674285[source]▶
You're not a remorseless psychopath, though. Some people are.

For a nuanced discussion, the Illustrated Guide to the Law is an excellent introduction. Here's the section on Punishment: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=41

It ends with the summary "The State punishes those who commit crimes partly in the hope of preventing future offenses (via rehabilitation, deterrence, and removal)... partly to restore a sense of balance and fairness (via retribution)... and partly because fuck you, that’s why (retaliation)"