Can appeasement reduce crime in today's world?

Question

Human Rights philosophies revolve around love and appeasement. I agree appeasement didn't work in the past, but in today's liberal world it can work wonders.

Answer 1

Hi Maddy, I have been thinking about this question a bit. It is a complicated issue, not one in which an easy anwer is possible. There are just so many different angles one could look at and as such many differenst stances to take. It gets a tad difficult when a person is able to see both sides of an issue, let alone more than one! lol Well, I will give this my best shot. I first was applying this to the world stage, not our societal stage. This is where I got lost a few times while trying to answer this. I made the mistake of applying this to world events, and it bogged me down. I have strong views on our countries security, the direction we are headed and the dangers we face. I am deeply distressed over the torture and mishandling of American Government "foreign security prisoners in hidden prisons". However, I now realize this is directly related to OUR cultures crime and punishment. I am glad I stopped my rant on the other very important area of choosing to try appeasement!! Ha-ha!


I am a strong advocate of human rights. I feel very strongly about the corrolation between treatment and recidivisim. Locking a human into a four by eight cell, with cement walls on three sides and bars on the front for months and years at a time, is a problem for me. I do not see how treating human's, regardless of their crimes, worse than we treat animals. I strongly believe that such treatment instills a hatred for humanity which is unleashed upon our society when the person is finally released. I also do not believe it humane to so imprison a death row inmate, regadless of his/her status of death penalty. I do not subscribe to babying such prisoner's, just treat them more humanely. Our prisons contain more "criminals" than any other country, per capita. Why is this so, when we are told we live in the most enlighted, free, and democratic country in the world. A democracy so "well structured" our current president seems he has a God given qwest to impart our so wonderful form of democracy onto those who do not agree with our way of life. I will not get off subject!! lol However, it can easily be aurgued that with our over full prisons and tendency to imprison for punishment instead of rehabilitation points towards a broken decocracy rather than a healthy system. Are you aware that in CA prisons men are allowed access to higher education, but, until very recently women have been denied this? Women were allowed to participate in six week "certification" programs, finish highschool credits, but not have access to the exact same higher education than men. These certificates stack up well but turn out to be worthless out in the free world. To gain a job an individual needs a history of education and/or experiance. Working in the laundery, or ladeling out food in the cafateria, or putting out chairs in the visiting area, etc, does not provide any real world job related experiance or training. This makes it very difficult for women re-entering society when they are released. Now, many women who are in prisons are caught and convicted for crimes their men actually committed. When our justice system uses bartering for criminals higher up the ladder of seriousness of crime, women are most often left without any type of bargaining tools. This sad state of events is due to a number of factors, including the idea that if the district attorney charges a wanted or suspected criminals woman he will come forward and confess in order to keep his woman out of prison or jail. This has sadly shown not to be the case in 90% of cases. The woman, who often was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as inside a car her boyfriend/husband held illegal substance (often without her knowlege) or at home durring a raid where illegal items are discovered (again often without the woman's knowlege), and not due to any belief she really has anything to do with the crimes. These women do not have any bargaining tools, as they have no knowlege of anyone higher in the criminal activity. One may well aurgue that the woman deserves what she gets for choosing such a loser for a mate, but in reality is this really fair? In a society where we supposedly hold each individual accountable for their own individual activities and behaviors, we are punishing, often with outragous long terms, those who are the mates of those who actually committed the crime and not the criminal responsible. Is it right for a woman to spend fifteen years to life for a crime she did not commit, and because the district attorney wishes a few notches in his/her belt and how they get there is besides the point. Where is justice in cases such as this? This is just one example of how inhumane our country tends to behave. A so called "enlighteded" society in the free world. Due to our countries knee jerk response to imprison any whom it feels has done something "wrong" and while I agree many in prison deserve to stay there the rest of their lives, especially violent criminals, we have a disapropriatly higher number of prisoners than any other developed country. This fact greatly disturbs me. One reason our prisons are stuffed to the point men and women sleep on think pallets on the floor and in hallways, or stacked up like sardines in cells meant for two, eight are now housed in them, is directly due to our stubborn refusal to admitt our stance on how to deal with drug addicts and those addicts who deal to friends and aquantances. We put billions into the prison system, yet ignore the fact that treatment is a fraction of the cost of imprisoning these people and has a decent long term recovery rate. England has a system in which addicts are signed up in a program in which they receive a daily allotment of maintaince drugs. This actually has been shown to work well, and they lock up only those who traffic significantly and who has refused to participate in treatment.

Now, appeasement withiin our society legal system is defenantly woth revisiting. This attitude we corrently have of lock them up and throw away the key, has proven unworkable, and in fact creates more hardened criminals due to the conditions inside the prisons. Prisons have two very seperate rules/laws, and enforcement of those rules and laws. When we have two vastly different systems, one created by the institution and one created by the criminals, we have a huge problem. Inmates are unable to seek releif, assistance, or anything at all from the institutions system. If they attempt to do so they are labeled snitches and killed. This is true in both sexes prisons. As long as we have a system which allows for the inmates to create a parrallel world we will not be able to successfully apply appeasement. Appeasement must require some basic grounding in fairness and allow for a person to seek its paramenters and alieviations under its precepts.

Appeasement must begin in the innitial charging of individuals. Individuals must know some type of redress is available. The criminal justice system is a horridly frightening system. If an individual is falsly accussed of a crime, the district attornys office has a full aray of resourses to throw at the person, while s/he is often limited by their individual resourses, and during the fight for justice (pray you are not falsely convicted!!) an individual and his/her entire family will be wiped out. Sadly, justice is boughten in our society, with the wealthy treated vastly different that those without resourses. Those with connections are not arrested where as if they had not those resourses they would have been arrested. Look at the Ramsey's for instance. Everybody believed they had something to do with their daughters violation and murder, yet due to how wealthy they were they were never arrested, never charged, never spent a day in prison. Had this been a person like you or I, we would still be incarcerated, as we would have been found guilty as well as charged. There is no real evidence linking either parent or their son to this poor child's death, nothing tangable to do so, yet had they lacked the resourses they owned, they would have been sentenced to life in prison and Patsy would have died there. Much sooner in fact than she did, as in prison there is a lack of proper medical care. Certainly not any cutting edge technology to stave death off a longer period. Another very frightening example is the Scott Petterson Case. This man has been sentenced to death and on absolutely no physical evidence he did anything to his wife!! If we are to use appeasement, we must not ever sentence a person to death when there is not any physical or eye wittness evidence. This was done on emotions, the community wanted somebody to pay, and so due to Scott Petterson's being a total ****** or the first degree, a lying, pandering, cheating, B**astard, he was sentenced to death. When are wel killed due to a lack of morals alone? The inherent unfairness of all this and more is contrray to appeasement.

I think appeasement, like any other ideal, needs to be used with reason and constraint. I certainly do not think we need to appease a person who is a child molester, or a serial murderer, or a serial rapist. When it comes to violent crimes, no I do not think appeasement will work. No amount of love, understanding, or accomodations will ever rehabilitate these folks. So, I just wanted to get this out what I stand for is not misunderstood. I also do not stand for coddling criminals. I do stand for treating them humanely as possible, and to actively work towards real rehabilitation and education is a vital part of that. We must work from within the prisons to stop the parallel society, in which the strongest rule by brute force alone. This type of society within our prisons is widely recognized and yet nobody is willing to speak up and admitt it creates an atmosphere, an enviroment, contrary, and inibitive of rehabilitation efforts. When a person must follow criminal laws they are being forced to mutatate their behaviors to conform within those hidden but brutal systems. When an individual walks into a prison for the first time, many folks say, "It is good they are afraid, that they will be brutalized inside and know it", that "this is justice, justice just locking them away does not satisfy for us". Sadly, this is not conductive to soceity. These non-violent prisoners who walk inside so innocent of life inside are quickly taught the rules in very brutal methods. Worse is the fact we are not only throwing our children away, we are sending them to adult prisons at such young ages there will never be a hope of rehabilitation. Children who commit violelnt crimes are the one group which rehabilitation is actually a possibility, actually could occur, yet we so quickly throw these children to the wolves and call that justice. This is an issue I best not get into here as I am outraged how our society treats our child criminals. Their brains are not fully developed, and as such their entire world view changes radically from year to year as it does mature and they are allowed access to the world stage. The idea that if a child is "old enough to commit an adult crime s/he is old enough to serve and adult sentence" is montrous to me, and is uncivilized and just plain nuts, a sign of deep moral decay within our society. We wish to punish not rehabilitate. We ruin children who, if we just made a few simple changes, could walk out a productive and healthy member of society. As it stands now, when or if a child gets out the rate of recidivism is so high it is tragic. These children go from dysfunctional homes to a brutal adult prison population where they are used as sexual objects and come out twisted, sick, damaged, never to be repaired, hardened criminals. How is this justice, how does this serve our society? How does this serve our future?

Appeasement is so far from our current reality we would need to strip our system down to its bare bones and rebuild from the foundation up. What is the foundation? Why our constitution of course, where cruel, inhumane, over long, physically punishing, and unjust treatment is forbidden. We convienanlty over look our consititution and regularily interpret as we see fit, rather than work zealously towards its literal meaning. Just as many christians attempt to inturpret the scriptures in self serving manners, to control and minipulate, so too does our justice system with our current system of crime and punishment.

The first step towards appeasement would be to re-emburse the legal expenses of those who are found not guilty. This is fair and just. The money used to build a case against a citizen is public funds, does not come out of the district attorney's pocket. The vast resourses thrown against a defendant is grossly unfair. With our current trend towards makeing "deals" we are subverting justice. This creates an atmosphere where the district attorney ruotinely over charges defendants. This creates both a strong terror of actually being found guilty of such high offenses and of beggering his/her family in the fight for exoneration. If the state was required to return legal funds of a defendant who won the case, several things would instantly change, and in my opinion for the better. First the District Attorney would not be so quick to arrest and charge an individual. The District Attorneys office must work more diligently to build a strong case, which would lend itself towards actually finding the right person who committed the crime rather than the first person who fits into the profile of one who "may" have committed it. This would reduce the "rush to judgement" and force law inforcement to actively investigate all avenues. In doing so other possible suspects will arise, and the prospect of one of them being the actual perpetrator will increase. With the knowlege that funds will be returned if the case is won, defendants will be much less inclined to take a "deal". Some may say this would increase the costs of the justice system. Perhaps, but if justice is actually met out, wouldn't that be worth the extra cost? If the right person is caught and brought to justice, isn't this what we want in the first place, not just somebody, anybody, in order for soceity to feel somebody is paying and therefor they feel safer. That is a false sense of safety as the actual perpetrator is still out walking the streets, committing futher crimes against humanity. This is not what I want to see happen!! If we knew we would have our funds returned, we would be less inclined to take a deal in order to simply not begger our families. People are so innocent today, when they think only actual criminals take these deals. There are many who will do so just to save their families the loss of their home, of all they worked so hard to build. If this is appeasement bring it on!!

Now, we need to address the inner parallel world within our prison systems. In order for any type of appeasement to actually work, we must create an enviroment where inmates are safe. Safe from abuse, safe from autocratic control by the more hardened and stronger criminals. Those who are violent. We must work to seperate the non-violent from the violent, and to house young violent criminals from the older hardened violent prisoners. We must find a method of rehabilitating those who can be rehabilitated. We must not allow imprisonment to alter the very personality of those incarcerated in negitive manners. We must offer education to all, to both sexes, not just one. We must stop imprisoning women for the crimes their partners commit. I know a woman who spent three years iside prison for a crime her husband committed. The district attorny told her (I was there) that if they could not have him she would settle for her. This is outragous! She was punished for being in her own home where without her knowlege her husband hid drugs. I know it was without her knowlege as she is the biological mother of four of my adopted children. She IS an addict, but not a drug dealer. She did not know her husband was dealing on the job. As she did not have any information to provide the district attorney she was given the maximum sentence allowed under law. She did not have any information to dea down the sentence. This is outragous!! This is not only not a situation of appying appeasement, it is simply unjust and morally wrong.

Will appeasement reduce crime in todays world? Well, Maddy, that can only be determined by restructuring our justice system. Something our population would not be willing to do at this time. Many in our society lack any real knowlege of how our current justice system works. They are unaware of a vast many critical details which would force them to evaluate their current beliefs. It amazes me how many are willing to jump to beliefs based on little or no facts. These folks strongly believe in something they have no real knowlege of nor do they wish to become enlightened as it would create a situation in which they would feel uncomfortable. We must avoid uncomfortable situations like the plague, don't you know? LOL

The average intelligence amongst our population is 100 on the standard IQ test. The emotional IQ test has even lower results. If one with a high intelligence quota has a low emotional quota, the resut is flawed thinking and poorly formed judgements. What this means is that 80% of our population has an intelligence IQ between 80-120. An intelligence IQ of 80 is one percentage point above retardation. Yet, a high majority of those who are put to death are most likely to fall into the lowest of IQ ranges. The less intelligent an individual is, the less likely that person is to ever change beliefs regardless of the information and knowlege placed before them. This simple, yet fundemental truth, is what stands between our current system and any real change for the better.

I personally believe appeasement, if applyed appropriately, will indeed reduce crime today. If our society had a firm belief in fairness and knowlege they would be treated humanely, we would see a marked improvement in lower crime. However, as in all situations involving a society, other factors affect this issue. We can't just isolate out our justice system for change. We have to change other situations within society in order for true appeasement to work. As I said at the beginning of this term paper, this is a huge issue, not one in which any real response can be written here. However, it is great to get this out in the open, have people begin an open discussion. Something as small as that can change even one person's attitude, or at the least put in a seed of conscienceness which just perhaps someday will grow and evolve.

Any change has to start with an open dialog. Without an open dialog change is impossible. I thank you for all your questions which are so deeply rooted in serious discussion. I also like you more frivolous questions as well. I really apologize for how long these are. It is difficult for me to cut short my thoughts. I think I will begin to write these in Word, so I can spellcheck them and edit more easily. So, in the future these should look much better! Have a great day! I will ask a question today I hope you will answer as I want to see how you think of a few things too! lol

p.s. I asked a question, but your address has not been confirmed so I was unable to let you know about it.

Answer 2

Any time there is dissagreement there is some level of appeasment at the end otherwise the conflict would still be on going and in progress. An negotiated end to conflict is sometimes the best way to end what might be a endless bloodbath. Under such terms there is appeasment on someones part.

Answer 3

You are incorrect about human rights philosophies. They result from an expectation, perhaps sometimes erroneous, of reciprocity and from a distrust of power, especially absolute power -- a distruct that has Bibilical and Shakespearean as well as practical origins.

Here's the postwar basis for human rights in a nutshell:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

-- Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...

Apeasement is quite a different matter. One can legitimately use that as a stalling technique while planning a permanent solution. It is never, in itself, a permanent solution because it generates further demands. This is true both domestically and internationally. And within the family, for that matter.

Answer 4

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The commencement of World War II forced the western allies to realize the flaws of the policy of appeasement. Though appeasement appeared to be the solution to all problems, it ensured a peace that would have been very costly to maintain.

Answer 5

I believe that it will work in many instances. However the same greed that prohibits many from fulfilling their social obligations to the disadvantaged when found in some of those disadvantaged makes them desire so much that all of society cannot appease them adequately even if society and most of its individuals pauper themselves pecuniarily, temporally and intellectually.

Answer 6

Well if I(we) buy McDonalds and Burger King and Wendy's and Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen and KFC etc etc ...and if I turn them into establishments which serve DELICIOUS VEGAN MEALS, better than anything any of us have ever had... well it just might work.

ETHICS and a higher stance

what is appeasement to appealing ~ "one will never be in true/secure/safe love while in non-vegan establishments."

Answer 7

Appeasement , like paying Blackmail , never works . Give them what they want , they want more , pay that , they want something else , it never ends.
Yes, it can work wonders , you wonder where all your money went and why you have nothing to show for it.

Answer 8

How many robbers or rapists do you know who say, "I'm sorry" as they ravage their victims.

All appeasement does is encourage bad people to do more bad things.

Bad people should be stomped on until they learn that it's better to be good than roiled through the gravel.

Answer 9

So you think we can appease the radical islamist? Just let them murder all they want and they'll leave us alone? I guess if we would all just convert then there wouldn't be any issues right? I don't agree with you.

Answer 10

The worse conservatives are young inexperienced conservatives that think they are clever. That's how we got into Iraq.