Quote:
Originally Posted by Rapini
In certain circumstances, it's possible that words might mitigate a sentence, but they don't negate the crime.
Crimes aren't binary. If Person #1 says something to Person #2 and Person #2 makes physical contact with Person #1, it is possible that Person #1 will (and should) get punished more.
As a matter of fact, in combination of what I posted, Person #1 can commit a verbal crime, and if that verbal crime is an immediate, specific, and personal threat to Person #2, Person #2 may not have committed a crime at all with respect to self defense laws. Like let's say Person #1 threatens to kill Person #2's kids, and Person #2 wrestles Person #1 to the ground and calls police. Do you think Person #2 should be charged with a crime (whether or not they would be is probably jurisdiction dependent)?
Quote:
If people "use their judgment" to refrain from getting incidents of violence on the record, we lose the opportunity to correct the behavior or remove the violent person from society.
Why do you believe the police / the law is the only way to correct the behavior?
Why do you believe that being violent is something that is inherent in someone's personality?
Sometimes people lash out. Sometimes - often times IMO/IME - people regret things they did not 5 seconds earlier. You see this all the time at a poker table, people throw their cards into the center and claw desperately at their flying cards because sometime in the past 500 millisecond they realized their mistake.
A very large fraction of the time, if two people are physically separated, they're capable of taking a deep breath and apologizing. You see it every day in sports. And when the police/security are standing there asking if you want to press charges, you have as good a chance as anyone to change their behavior.
"Not if he shakes my hand. I just wanna play poker. We cool?"
"No, but I don't want to see him back here until he gets that temper under control."
"If he apologizes, we'll call it even."