Ha! Ironically enough, the namecalling part you're pointing out now, is the result of my loosening-up on my own self-editorial controls, because I knew this part of the thread wouldn't end up seeing much daylight, and I started treating it as a one-on-one correspondence! (And I was still rushing a bit.)
What I'm getting at is more that making offenders into victims is precisely the intent of the whole system. It's not that the categories are supposed to be mutually exclusive, it's that we are trying to make them as close as possible to 100% mutually overlapping. (If they were 100% mutually exclusive that would mean one class of people was victimizing another class and getting away with it.)
Now... is it cruel to do this? Probably. It might be nothing more than vengeance. Does it lead to recidivism ("cycle of violence")? Yup. But it exists for the benefit of the victims. (Does it actually benefit the victims? Not necessarily. It doesn't bring back their murdered relatives for example. But at least they have a sense that they live in a just world where someone's looking out for them.)
So in other words it is intentionally cruel. Which is why, if anyone is worried about the cruelty of the system, there are ways of staying out of its jaws, mostly involving not being a jerk to your fellow man in the first place. (Does this guarantee you won't be wrongly convicted or even stop-and-frisked? No.)
Anyway you're doing your editorial job and I don't particularly mind being detached from the thread -- actually I'm sort of enjoying this part now. But there are basic parts of who I am that don't fit in with Hacker News, too.
What I'm getting at is more that making offenders into victims is precisely the intent of the whole system. It's not that the categories are supposed to be mutually exclusive, it's that we are trying to make them as close as possible to 100% mutually overlapping. (If they were 100% mutually exclusive that would mean one class of people was victimizing another class and getting away with it.)
Now... is it cruel to do this? Probably. It might be nothing more than vengeance. Does it lead to recidivism ("cycle of violence")? Yup. But it exists for the benefit of the victims. (Does it actually benefit the victims? Not necessarily. It doesn't bring back their murdered relatives for example. But at least they have a sense that they live in a just world where someone's looking out for them.)
So in other words it is intentionally cruel. Which is why, if anyone is worried about the cruelty of the system, there are ways of staying out of its jaws, mostly involving not being a jerk to your fellow man in the first place. (Does this guarantee you won't be wrongly convicted or even stop-and-frisked? No.)
Anyway you're doing your editorial job and I don't particularly mind being detached from the thread -- actually I'm sort of enjoying this part now. But there are basic parts of who I am that don't fit in with Hacker News, too.
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