SocJus blame for crimes - Who's to blame: the criminal or society?

[Wallace]

Here’s another inversion of a traditionally conservative trope that I see coming up in social justice circles. If someone commits a crime, particularly a vice crime, it is because they have chosen to break the law. They have knowingly and willingly chosen to disregard the rules of society due to their own moral failures, therefore the blame for their crime rests upon them alone.

SocJus flips this notion to claim that society is to blame for crime, not the criminals. Because society creates an environment where moral injustices go unchecked, criminals are empowered to commit crimes. The moral failing lies not with the criminal, but instead with society at large. The propagation of a racist/sexist/transphobic society enables racists/sexist/transphobes to commit hate crimes, therefore society is at fault. Bu not doing enough to combat these issues, everyone (who isn’t an SJW) is tacitly complicit in permitting these events to continue.

An example of this would be the mass shooting which occurred at the Emanuel African Church in Charleston last July. Who should shoulder the blame: the shooter, or Southern society for not doing enough to counter racism? The shooter is clearly violent and disturbed, and not acting in a way that is 100% rational, therefore his decision-making capabilities are compromised. Does this mean that he is not to blame for his actions?

A killer can be put in prison and forgotten, but what penance can be meted out upon society? Do we merely wring our hands at how awful everyone (but us) is?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

It is important to note that although they say society is to blame in all crimes they still advocate punishment against people with privilege.

I think that in order to make it so that rational people will not commit crimes everyone needs to be punished regardless of circumstance

 

[autisticdragonkin]

The thing I find interesting about this idea is that it isn't rehabilitative justice or reparative justice but rather it is something closer to collective retributive justice with a desire to punish groups rather than promote social harmony

 

[Sweet and Savoury]

When ever you deal with SocJus issues the first thing you need to do it look at the progressive stack.

That will quickly tell you wether the perpetrator is a wanton criminal (white male), helpless victim of patrichary (female) or brave fighter against systematic oppression (minority)

Only then can you assign guilt.

 

[Assorted Nuts]

The thing about social justice warriors is that they will absolutely refuse any degree of personal responsibility. Everything is about groups to them and the actions of one individual somehow magically applies to everyone of even the vaguest affiliation with them. It also makes for a convenient excuse to blame society or the patriarchy or whatever for their personal incompetence.

 

[Watcher]

People are responsible for their own actions, outside factors have no bearing on this.

You can say a person was driven to murder someone. IE: Their wife cheated on them. But that does not excuse their actions or make them justifiable.

Society is not a monolithic concept. It's all of us as a collective brought together.

 

[ScrewTheRules]

Eeah... Call me a SJW - everybody else does - but society does, to some degree, create criminals. This isn't to say that individuals aren't responsible for their own actions, because they are, but there ARE certain factors in certain societies that influence which crimes are committed and how they're committed. Take the absurdly high rate of mass shootings in the US, for example: Yes, the shooters are all responsible for the shootings they committed and by all means send them to the firing squad, there is a reason mass shootings are committed at a much higher rate in the US than any other developed country. While partly that comes down to gun control (or lack thereof), I refuse to believe that if you fully legalised guns in the UK we'd have anything near to US rates of mass shootings within the next ten years, because the attitudes towards and culture around guns are different here. So while mass shooters should still be lined up against a wall and shot, you also need to look at the patterns behind crimes like this, find the common link, identify what is making this specific crime more common in this part of the world than others, and the make an effort to change that, whether that be through changes to the school curriculum, overhauling the TV ratings system, or just giving stricter background checks before selling guns to assholes.
The problem with the conservative view is that it's an attempt to say "It's all the shooter's doing and I shouldn't have to change anything", while the problem with the SocJus view is that it's an attempt to say "It's all society's doing and I shouldn't have to change anything". It's two sides of the same coin. What a large number of SJWs don't seem to get is that they're part of society, and thus partially accountable for society's shit, so if they want to see any societal change at all they have to be a part of that change. But why waste time trying to better the word around you when you could be shitposting on tumblr, amirite? </Hypocrisy>

 

[Puppet Pal Clem]

A man who pretends his will is not his own, is not a man.

If your will conflicts with the prevailing society, it is your duty to fight the world and die.
You are to be the stone that society sharpens or breaks itself upon.
The weak man who denies his own nature, the godhood of will, is simply penetrated as the knife intended.

I'm gonna go wank off for hours over how pretentious I am, and then enjoy some post-fap cringe.

 

[Marvin]

Take the absurdly high rate of mass shootings in the US, for example: Yes, the shooters are all responsible for the shootings they committed and by all means send them to the firing squad, there is a reason mass shootings are committed at a much higher rate in the US than any other developed country.

Mass shootings as an event happen so rarely that I consider it a waste of time to investigate the phenomenon on its own merits.

There are a bajillion little variables that can cause such things. Those variables are tied up in a lot of very important systems. Those systems have costs and benefits that are supported by much better evidence.

A drive to make changes purely to address mass shootings is like a cure for acne with a 99% success rate... except once in awhile, you might get a broken bone or two.

So while mass shooters should still be lined up against a wall and shot, you also need to look at the patterns behind crimes like this, find the common link, identify what is making this specific crime more common in this part of the world than others, and the make an effort to change that, whether that be through changes to the school curriculum, overhauling the TV ratings system, or just giving stricter background checks before selling guns to assholes.

I think most of these proposals are a bad idea if they're being pursued in an attempt to curb violence. The last one kinda has legs, mostly because it concerns an existing system (background check) that can be tweaked easily enough, and more importantly: guns are used in a lot of more common crimes.

 

[DuskEngine]

People are obviously responsible for their actions in the sense that they are criminally culpable for them, but violent crazies don't emerge from some mystical vacuum.

Who should shoulder the blame: the shooter, or Southern society for not doing enough to counter racism?

The shooter killed the people, and the society brought the shooter into being.

Laying blame on everyone in a social group for the actions of an individual, or implying that they hold similar views, is absurd, but it does reflect a failure on the part of a social group that such an individual was allowed to participate within it. It's not like Dylann Roof was particularly silent about his views or his intentions before he committed the shootings.

 

[ScrewTheRules]

Mass shootings as an event happen so rarely that I consider it a waste of time to investigate the phenomenon on its own merits.

Yes, rare... Maybe from an American perspective they seem rare, but over here having more than one mass shooting in a year is considered an epidemic. 7 listed for 2015 - that averages more than 1 every 2 months, and while I appreciate that the US is a much larger country with far more people than the UK, it bares noting that neither Canada nor Australia have anywhere near those rates, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Canuks with guns.

There are a bajillion little variables that can cause such things. Those variables are tied up in a lot of very important systems. Those systems have costs and benefits that are supported by much better evidence.

A drive to make changes purely to address mass shootings is like a cure for acne with a 99% success rate... except once in awhile, you might get a broken bone or two.

Mass shootings was an example. Sweden have one of the highest rape statistics in the world, South Africa aren't far behind, not to mention Lesotho, and again, there is a reason for that. There is a reason for certain crimes being more common in some parts of the world than others, and unless you want to be fighting some giant hydra of crime until the end of days, you need to deal with those underlying issues as you're putting people in jail.

I think most of these proposals are a bad idea if they're being pursued in an attempt to curb violence. The last one kinda has legs, mostly because it concerns an existing system (background check) that can be tweaked easily enough, and more importantly: guns are used in a lot of more common crimes.

Again, mass shootings were only one example, and different strategies work better for different problems. Th UK had a huge teenage pregnancy rate when I was in high school; are you telling me that a change to the current sex ed curriculum wouldn't change that? Because my high school sex ed was literally just a two hour talk on the differences between having sex and "making love" that I spent the next week mocking with several friends who had already had sex anyway...
Yes, stricter background checks are a step towards reducing gun crimes, but so is sitting your kid down and telling them that guns are not toys, and I don't trust a great many parents to do that.

 

[Fulda's Gap]

The blame shouldn't be shared equally, across all types of crime. However, to some degree, culpability should be shared. And, of course, this culpability differs from individual case to individual case. Examples of what I mean:

-Cases of theft of a luxury item for your own: You wanted that stereo, you wanted that TV, and you broke in to steal it. The perpetrator is 100% culpable for the theft of a luxury item.

-Cases of theft of luxury item in order to provide necessities or theft of necessities: Culpability should be shared in some degree. The individual still decided to commit theft, but the society around them didn't provide ample opportunity to at least live. Culpability is 100% the perpetrator's if he or she is unwilling or too stupid to take advantage of public services or charities such as food pantries in the US.

-Cases of murder: Culpability varies, once again. In the case of gang violence, once again society shares some of the blame for not providing at least an outlet for those who would fall into gang behavior while the individual pulling the trigger still made that decision. In the case of Mateen, he hoards the blame for himself.

As for penance required from society? Society has to pay taxes to fund the jailing and rehabilitation of these individuals. At their own risk of further financial loss, they choose to either emphasize punishment or rehabilitation.

All of this non-law-degree having fagopinion, of course.

 

[Marvin]

Yes, rare... Maybe from an American perspective they seem rare, but over here having more than one mass shooting in a year is considered an epidemic.

I really have a hard time caring about these numbers. It's for the same reasons that I don't care about terrorism. Car accidents are a lot more of a problem than either mass shootings or terrorism.

Furthermore, mass shootings might happen slightly more often in the US (and I emphasize "slightly"), but mass violence in general happens all over the world.

7 listed for 2015 - that averages more than 1 every 2 months, and while I appreciate that the US is a much larger country with far more people than the UK, it bares noting that neither Canada nor Australia have anywhere near those rates, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Canuks with guns.

The US is more than large. It'd diverse. Not just in the trivial sense that we have brown people, but in the sense that we have a very diverse political spectrum. And it's interesting that you bring up Canada. Canada is super homogeneous, but also as gun friendly as the US. If not more. Canada's advantage isn't that they're not saturated in guns (they are) but that they don't disagree with each other as much.

Again, mass shootings were only one example, and different strategies work better for different problems. Th UK had a huge teenage pregnancy rate when I was in high school; are you telling me that a change to the current sex ed curriculum wouldn't change that? Because my high school sex ed was literally just a two hour talk on the differences between having sex and "making love" that I spent the next week mocking with several friends who had already had sex anyway...

Teenaged pregnancy is trivial to solve if no one disagrees that teenagers have sex. It's a combination of making facts available and providing resources when people fuck up. All that's left are parents/prudes interfering with the system.

The US teen pregnancy rate, for example, has dropped like a rock. We managed to overpower the prudes. But if the prudes refused to accept that teenagers have sex, we wouldn't have been able to do it.

Yes, stricter background checks are a step towards reducing gun crimes, but so is sitting your kid down and telling them that guns are not toys, and I don't trust a great many parents to do that.

Do you think it's that simple? It's not that you're having to explain that guns aren't toys, but you need to explain that death is permanent. The only way you can learn that is through life experience.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Canada is super homogeneous

Canada is far more diverse than the USA

 

[ScrewTheRules]

I really have a hard time caring about these numbers. It's for the same reasons that I don't care about terrorism. Car accidents are a lot more of a problem than either mass shootings or terrorism.

Furthermore, mass shootings might happen slightly more often in the US (and I emphasize "slightly"), but mass violence in general happens all over the world.

"A million is a statistic"...
Yes, mass violence happens all over the world, but there's a reason mass shootings tend to kill far more people at a time than mass stabbings do; guns are a really efficient way to kill people. One idiot with a gun can do far more damage far more quickly than even a relatively competent individual can with a knife. And that's not even counting the emotional impact...

The US is more than large. It'd diverse. Not just in the trivial sense that we have brown people, but in the sense that we have a very diverse political spectrum. And it's interesting that you bring up Canada. Canada is super homogeneous, but also as gun friendly as the US. If not more. Canada's advantage isn't that they're not saturated in guns (they are) but that they don't disagree with each other as much.

I'm pretty sure I clearly stated in the post you're quoting that there are plenty of Canuks with guns, and anyone who tells you Canadians don't disagree with each other is lying. Canadians aren't nice, they aren't friendly, they are passive-aggressive little fucks who prefer to keep their fighting as underhanded as possible. I like Canadians. Canadian disagree with each other plenty; they don't have as many mass shootings as the US because the attitudes towards violence, and particularly gun violence, and the whole culture around guns differs from the US, not because their some weird hivemind.

Teenaged pregnancy is trivial to solve if no one disagrees that teenagers have sex. It's a combination of making facts available and providing resources when people fuck up. All that's left are parents/prudes interfering with the system.

The US teen pregnancy rate, for example, has dropped like a rock. We managed to overpower the prudes. But if the prudes refused to accept that teenagers have sex, we wouldn't have been able to do it.

Oh, absolutely. Given my point was that this (teenage pregnancy) is an issue where education makes more difference than education, we're hardly disagreeing on this point. Proper sex ed, i.e. "making facts available", goes and awful long way.

Do you think it's that simple? It's not that you're having to explain that guns aren't toys, but you need to explain that death is permanent. The only way you can learn that is through life experience.

You know, somewhere between the rabbits, the gerbils, all those goldfish, not to even mention actual human relatives, I got that whole "death is permanent" thing pretty young. Honestly, it doesn't take half as much experience as you'd think. Yes, there is more to reducing gun crime than teaching kids that guns aren't toys and death is permanent but you know what they say, every little helps. Kids are more capable of understanding that death is permanent than you'd realise, the problem is that nobody bothers to tell them; people try so hard to protect kids from things like death that they never prepare them for reality.

We appear to have seriously derailed this thread, so might I suggest we take it to a new one before a Mod comes and smacks us down?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Canada is far more diverse than the USA

The USA has a strong federal government and limited regionalism, most people would call themselves an American first and a New Yorker/Californian second. By contrast everywhere in Canada that is not Ontario says the reverse. Canada is clearly divided into 5 regions: The North, Ontatrio, Quebec, The Maritimes, and The West. British Columbia is sometimes considered to be part of the west and sometimes its own region. All regions have their own political movements to gain more autonomy with the exception of Ontario, Ontario is a little bit of an exception but Ontarioers do not always consider the rest of Canada to be Canada proper so it is more a linguistic difference and they were historically privileged by the political system so did not need an autonomist movement. Canada has one of the weakest federal governments in the world

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Honestly, I'm one of those who thinks it varies depending on the person. Sometimes the blame goes to the person just being a shitty individual. Others a terrible upbringing. And yet others because of society doing nothing to stop them.

It varies, and I can't say I have a definitive answer beyond that.

 

[ZehnBoat]

who's to blame, the criminal or society

yes

 

[Pikimon]

People are obviously responsible for their actions in the sense that they are criminally culpable for them, but violent crazies don't emerge from some mystical vacuum.

My opinion pretty much. It's not an A or B situation, its a A+B+C=X situation

 

[melty]

I believe that one of the biggest differences between the left and the right is that the right generally believe in personal responsibility, while the left believe more in collective responsibility. Since SJWs are far left it makes a lot of sense they would blame crime, etc. on literally anything but the individual.
I don't know the more extreme/alt-right take on this would be, because the right is pretty heavy on personal responsibility as it is. I guess blaming women for how they were dressed when they got assaulted is a close comparison.
Either way this is just another example of a false dichotomy, both society and the individual are frequently to blame, it's not either/or.