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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torm" data-source="post: 2052637" data-attributes="member: 12706">Well, there is a certain amount of, "what do I deserve?" involved, too, when it comes to being punished. Once again, you can take this back to what the general answer would be in, say, a poll of 1000 people. "What would you think you deserve to have happen to you if you killed someone else for monetary gain?"Unfortunately, no one seems to really be doing these polls I speak of for consensus. Which is a shame, IMO, because without them to allow a more objective sentencing for crimes, it frequently does come down to the individual judge or juror - "What am I comfortable with doing to someone else as punishment for this?" Which isn't the same question at all, and is frequently less than they would expect to have happen if they did it themselves. :\ People sometimes like to be gracious and "civilized," so they are lenient. OR, they are forced to ask themselves, individually, "What would I expect to happen to me?" Which is probably a little better, but they still have no way of knowing whether or not their individual answer deviates significantly from the general consensus of the society they are supposed to be serving as a judge or juror. If we had a societal consensus, up front and refreshed from time to time (maybe with the census) of what we consider to be fair to be done to ourselves if we commit specific crimes, that burden would be taken off of them somewhat, and society as a whole would feel that it was served better by the court systems than it is now.(Of course, fixing the whole plea bargaining arrangement would help too. But that's not directly relevant to what we're discussing.)Maybe at this time. But, that is only a failing of current psychological knowledge, not an indicator that they won't be at some point in the future. I believe that, if mankind survives long enough, we will eventually understand the root causes of most behavior - all behavior, "deviant" or not, will be diagnosable and potentally "treatable." I only hope that at that point we will have the good sense to place the line between acceptable variance and unacceptable deviance somewhere that still allows for plenty of diversity and individual expression, or we'll doom ourselves.</blockquote>

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