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A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic.
Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives.
[...] He said laws designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect”, since the vast majority had merely taken knives from a cutlery drawer.
[...] He asked: “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?
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Knives are too Sharp and Filing Down their Points is Solution to Soaring Violent Crime, Judge Says
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Now KEN and BARBIE are PERMANENTLY ADDICTED to MIND-ALTERING DRUGS ...
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday June 01 2018, @04:49AM (51 children)
how about just sending all the idiots that go around stabbing people to jail (or hanging) instead of going around to every kitchen in the land and dull their knives.
And pray tell, how does that help a victim? Just about every study shows that criminals are not deterred by longer, harsher sentences.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:00AM (7 children)
Well, if you go with the second option stated by the GP poster then you do not get any repeat offenders.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:39PM (5 children)
Agreed. Execution is a helluva deterrent!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @06:45PM
At least it has very low recidivism.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:19PM (3 children)
No it isn't. It's very effective at making sure there are no repeat offenses from the same person, but the death penalty is near-zero deterrent to most of the crimes it's typically meted out for.
And a little thought should show why: most of those crimes will be committed either in the heat of passion, wherein people aren't thinking rationally and so won't be deterred by hardly anything, or they're committed by people who are sure they'll get away with it and therefore aren't deterred for that reason.
I have an idea: the death penalty ought to be applied to massive white-collar fraud. You would see a deterrent there because this class of crime by definition needs a fair bit of sober thought and planning to pull off, meaning if someone like Madoff knew he was going to end up strangling at the end of a rope, he might not have bilked all those people out of their savings.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Friday June 01 2018, @11:14PM (2 children)
So what would be a better deterrent? A 100 dollar fine?
If we can find no deterrent for people commiting murder, as some are claiming here ("It's done in the heat of the moment" etc etc), then we might as well stop discussing ways of trying to stop future murders. However, we might as well execute people who have actually commited a murder already to make sure they don't do it again, as such people have a tendency to make a habit of it, and the autorities have a tendency to release murderers from "life imprisonment" to save money. Here are some of many examples : http://www.execulink.com/~kbrannen/, [execulink.com] http://aboutforensics.co.uk/harold-shipman/, [aboutforensics.co.uk] http://murderpedia.org/male.N/n/nilsen-dennis.htm [murderpedia.org] . It's much cheaper than keeping them inside for life (my local hardware store offers suitable rope at around 30 pence per metre), although I'm told not with the USA's silly way of dealing with these cases - that needs sorting.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:17AM (1 child)
Oh, I'm with you on that. But what you're pointing out here is that *the system itself is corrupt.* That doesn't mean the idea behind it is wrong, that means it's badly-implemented. The solution is to make the "justice" in "justice system" actually mean something. Which is another reason I'm for execution for white-collar criminals: it's them and their buddies that bend the law into eldritch origami for their own purposes and allow things to get this bad.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:24AM
Lawmakers who do the same as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday June 01 2018, @06:29PM
Unless those who believe in reincarnation are right. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Friday June 01 2018, @05:02AM (1 child)
Contrariwise, they ARE deterred by -likelihood- of punishment (unless the intent is a swansong anyway i suppose)
As our societies become progressively complete surveillance states it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 01 2018, @05:24PM
Really? Your source for that claim? From what I've read most people commit crimes working on the assumption that they won't get caught - even bank robbers, a crime where the chance of getting caught already approaches 100%.
It's something like the Dunning-Kruger effect in action - every criminal assumes they're good enough to getaway with it. Or in the case of mass shooters and the like, many apparently have no intention of getting away with it - being caught or killed may even be part of their motivation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @07:58AM (29 children)
Really? How many subsequent murders are committed by a murderer doing a real life sentence? Seems like a successful deterrent to me so "just about every study" is clearly wrong.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @09:03AM (26 children)
No, there's a difference between "deterrent" and "stopping repeat offenders".
If we had a perfect deterrent, there would be no crimes. If we had a perfect way of stopping repeat offenders, there will still be plenty of crime. As demonstrated by e.g. several US states with the death penalty.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday June 01 2018, @09:12AM (24 children)
This is confused.
Are you saying deterrence can in principle be 100% effective? That doesn't seem right. Even with torturous capital punishment and good enforcement, crime still happens. Humans are not perfectly rational beings. We're not even close.
If by 'perfect deterrent' you mean 'some system whereby no crime happens', you aren't talking about deterrence, you're talking (circularly) about some other kind of hypothetical perfect crime-prevention system.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Friday June 01 2018, @12:15PM
>hypothetical perfect crime-prevention system
Precrime.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 01 2018, @04:39PM (4 children)
You're fixating on an irrelevant part of this hypothetical. AC never spoke on whether a perfect deterrent was plausible or likely.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:51PM (3 children)
No, it's a genuinely invalid premise to AC's point. Even if we maximise deterrence to its hypothetical ideal, we still wouldn't bring crime to zero.
It's like saying Suppose my car has a perfect steering-wheel and then continuing and given that we're supposing my car is perfect...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 04 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)
You apparently don't understand how hypotheticals work.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:27AM (1 child)
No, I appear to be the only one who does. The point of a thought-experiment is to carefully explore the consequences of a hypothetical situation. It is exactly the right time to be explicit about definitions, and to insist on clear reasoning when we use terms like 'perfect'. Which is exactly what I (and apparently I alone) am doing.
No-one has pointed out anything wrong with my reasoning here, they've just ignored my point that some crime cannot be prevented by any deterrence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:23PM
[...]
No one has ignored that point. In fact, several posters have gone out of their way to agree on that point for real world deterrence (of the sorts we can come up with).
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Friday June 01 2018, @07:44PM (4 children)
You're missing the point. Usng the word "if" in a hypothetical doesn't mean to imply it's plausible or even possible.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:08PM (3 children)
I just replied to tangomargarine who made the same point.
(Score: 2, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:16PM (2 children)
And you're still missing the point.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:15AM (1 child)
So go ahead and make a point...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:10PM
I already did, and you still missed it, so what's the (uh) point?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:06AM (12 children)
He is saying perfect deterrence would be. Not much point in disagreeing because it's perfect not real world imperfect deterrence.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:02PM (11 children)
And that was exactly my point: it wouldn't.
Even if we maximise deterrence to its hypothetical ideal, we still wouldn't bring crime to zero. Humans are not rational actors.
It's like saying With a perfect system of deterrence, ants will no longer bite us. It's plainly untrue. An ant is going to do what an ant will do, whether or not you're standing ready to destroy his colony. Similarly, deterrence is of limited use against crimes of passion and desperation.
If we have some hypothetical system which does bring crime to zero, it's clearly not purely deterrence-based.
There is a point in disagreeing, because the thought-experiment is invalid. If all thought experiments were useless simple because they aren't 'real world', we wouldn't bother using them in the first place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:00PM (10 children)
Actually we would. Because any crime at all indicates that the level of deterrence wasn't at the hypothetical ideal.
And that would be right.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:13AM (9 children)
You're so focused on the 'hypothetical' and 'perfect' that you're ignoring what the word 'deterrence' means. It doesn't mean Any and all crime-prevention systems. Its definition is narrower than that.
Like I said elsewhere in the thread: it's like saying Suppose my car has a perfect steering-wheel and then continuing and given that we're supposing my car is perfect...
No, it does not. You are wrongly assuming that there is no such thing as a crime which cannot be prevented by systems of deterrence. I have already explained at some length why this assumption makes no sense (indeed, we know it is false), but I'll give it another go.
An ideal system of deterrence is, rather trivially, a system that maximally deters crime by means of reliably imposing harsh negative consequences on guilty parties (and not on the innocent).
Certain categories of crime can be prevented by deterrence. Organised crime would be reduced to zero, for instance.
Crimes of passion, however, cannot be prevented by deterrence.
If we follow this line of thinking, we end up concluding that under a perfect system of deterrence, we would be protected from inconvenient weather, right? Otherwise the system couldn't truly be perfect, right?
This is nonsense, of course. Weather is unresponsive to the threat of punishment. Ants are similarly unresponsive. Enraged and psychotic human beings can be similarly unresponsive.
Consider the man who, on discovering his wife's infidelity, murders her in a blind rage and then commits suicide. Our perfect system of deterrence would not prevent this from happening.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 03 2018, @04:17AM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday June 03 2018, @10:58AM (7 children)
Did you even bother to read my comment? Rather than responding to my points, you're unthinkingly parroting your old position again and again. Is that really the best you can do?
For what feels like the millionth time: a system which prevents emotions arising in the first place, cannot possibly meet the definition of 'deterrence'. Such a system couldn't possibly be based on imposing negative consequences for the commission of crime (which is the definition of deterrence).
It is simply not the case that as the effectiveness of a system of deterrence approaches its upper limit, the crime-rate approaches zero.
Do you disagree with my definition of 'deterrence'? If so, why don't you just say so? If not, you're not making any sense.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 04 2018, @02:48AM (6 children)
Again, we're not speaking of real world deterrence. I have no idea why you bothered to tilt at this imaginary windmill in the first place, but it is an utter waste of your time. By definition, perfect deterrence means no violations of the deterrence occur. The deterrence would not be perfect otherwise. Your arguments are meaningless in the face of semantics.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:23AM (5 children)
If it detects, it isn't deterrence.
For heaven's sake, look at the definition I just gave. Do you disagree with it, or not?
There's a reason I already asked you that question...
Ah, then we're speaking of different things. That's our whole disagreement, then. That took long enough.
Your definition is a contradiction - by definition, it cannot exist (due to the existence of crimes which cannot ever be prevented by deterrence). There's no point trying to build a thought-experiment around a contradiction. It's like trying to reason about the inverse of a non-square matrix.
I was going with a different meaning of 'perfect deterrence', where it instead means it cannot be made any more effective. Such a system would not reduce crime to zero, for the reason I've repeatedly stated.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:12PM
Deterrence is a complex process which does many things, including detection. You can't deter, if your deterrence process doesn't understand what crime is. You can't deter, if your deterrence process can't detect crime. This is silly to continue.
Once again, your argument is semantically invalid. You are claiming that perfect deterrence is imperfect and then giving a bunch of irrelevant reasons why. A perfect process is not a real world process, and thus doesn't follow those rules. It is not constrained by anything you can come up with - by definition. You're not even wrong here.
Keep in mind this whole thing started because someone started babbling about "perfect deterrence" in the first place.
Words have meaning.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)
More on this. When it became clear that nobody else was going with that meaning, why continue butting heads? It would have been simple to describe explicitly the definition you used ("What I mean here is"), instead of coyly dragging this out and speculating ad naseum on why you're the only smart person in the thread. You have ten posts on this so far, and you have yet to state what you mean by "perfect deterrence".
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday June 28 2018, @02:54PM (2 children)
Well, yes, I did. Repeatedly. I'll quote you the exact words and give you a link to the comment, but somehow I doubt you'll bother to take it on board.
Source. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 29 2018, @04:21AM (1 child)
And of course, if a system doesn't fully deter crime, then it is not maximal and hence, not ideal. You're begging the question by assuming that a perfect (or "ideal") system is not perfect and going from there. This has nothing to do with the futility of designing perfect systems. If you have a system and it allows for flaws that the system is intended to prevent, then it is not perfect. That's all there is to it.
Further, I don't agree with even your assertion that you defined a "perfect" system above. You already moved the goalposts by introducing constraints on the operation of the system. It's no longer perfect.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:23PM
Wrong. As I have already explained to you, we are discussing an ideal system of deterrence, which is more constrained than merely a crime-prevention system.
The word 'deterrence' exists for a reason. It has a specific meaning.
Deterrence isn't the only means of reducing crime, and deterrence alone cannot reduce crime to zero. I have repeatedly explained this point: a crime of passion cannot be prevented by deterrence, as we aren't dealing with a rational actor. If your system simply jumps in and tasers our would-be-criminal, that isn't deterrence, that's force-based prevention.
Wrong. I am using 'ideal system of deterrence' in the sense of a system of deterrence that cannot be further improved, without making into something other than a system of deterrence. You are using it in an imprecise sense where it must by definition reduce crime to zero, whether or not it still actually qualifies as a system of deterrence (as opposed to some other kind of crime-prevention system).
Wrong.
Consider a museum with two ticket gates, each manned by an attendant. Suppose the first attendant is perfect, and never lets anyone through without buying a ticket. Suppose the second attendant is imperfect, and sometimes lets people through who haven't bought a ticket.
Your position is that Well the first attendant isn't really perfect, as people are still getting into the museum without buying a ticket. This reasoning is clearly unsound. Only the first attendant is perfect, not the system as a whole.
This mistake even has a name: the fallacy of composition. [logicallyfallacious.com]
It's not moving the goalposts, it's clear thinking. We were discussing systems of deterrence specifically.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by jmorris on Friday June 01 2018, @07:39PM
You really can't point to the modern U.S. death penalty and say anything about whether the death penalty is a deterrent. If you commit a crime there is really no way of knowing ahead of time if you will receive it, if you do there is no way to know if or when it will be carried out other than to say it will take a minimum of a decade from crime to punishment but it could just as easily take thirty years. Nobody who is likely to be deterred by the punishment is likely to still be in their prime crime years by the time a criminal is executed. All of this is explicitly by the design of the anti-death penalty forces. Read their writings.
Now imagine a functioning criminal justice system where the penalties for crimes was crystal clear, capture highly likely and punishment known to be swift and certain. We do not need to run the experiment, only open a history book. It worked. It would work again because people haven't changed in a Century.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday June 01 2018, @10:41PM (1 child)
In the UK a "real life sentence" is very rare. There is always a psychiatrist who will sign on to let the perp go free after a few years as some sort of experiment. Further murders by the same perp are then not unusual. Only really high profile murderers get real life sentences because there would be such public outcry if they were released, such as the Kray twins, and the Brady/Hindley moors murderers.
When the death sentence was abolished in the UK, it was by hoodwinking the public into thinking that murderers would never be released, but of course that would have cost more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02 2018, @05:03PM
IPP was scrapped in 2012 [theweek.co.uk] unfortunately.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @10:55AM (10 children)
Prison isn't going to deter a punk with a knife. You know what will though? The sound of a 12 gauge pump shotgun chambering a shell, a bright red dot on his hoodie, or getting a nice, close look at the rifling in the barrel of a .45.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @01:18PM (3 children)
I can play that sound on my mobile and shine a red pointer on his hoodie.
See? Why would you need guns for that?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @02:02PM (2 children)
That actually is my SMS notification sound. Which is how I can say with authority that phone speakers don't do it justice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 01 2018, @08:21PM (1 child)
Somehow this comes as a complete non-surprise...wonder why?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @11:33PM
It sounded like a hilarious idea inside my head. Out at Chili's having a few drinks and a burger, get a text, watch people's heads jerk around trying to find out WTF. I was really disappointed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @01:28PM
i picture the punk with a wife-beater, not a hoodie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @02:11PM (1 child)
Says all we need to know about TMB.
Where is Ralph Macchio when you need him?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 01 2018, @02:38PM
If you haven't watched the new show by that name, I highly recommend it. It made it into my top five shows of the past ten years by the first episode.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 01 2018, @03:45PM
I'm a believer in the rifling of a .45. Did you know that you can probably roll a watermelon down the barrel of a Thompson? Anyone who has ever stared down that .45 caliber barrel, uncertain whether it would be fired or not, will probably agree.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 02 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
You want the punk with the knife to get so close that he can see the pistol's rifling?
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday June 03 2018, @01:59PM
No, this is why you need a larger caliber pistol.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды