
Sorry but not sorry - bsbechtel
http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-apology-is-a-friend-of-the-powerful/
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tehwalrus
Plea bargaining, and racist/classist apology-rejecting, among factors like
this, seem to be what's broken the US justice system. Or so it seems from
articles like this, and the horrible reports of unapologetic police brutality
in places like Ferguson, Missouri.

The USA really really needs to do something about this, if I'm (and many other
aliens like me are) ever to believe a criminal conviction there has anything
to do with reality.

~~~
funkyy
In a world of couch people it seems this is OK to majority of society. They
will be outraged, but only from safety of their houses, internet and tv.

We are in the age of people grown on no-stress doctrine, where people just
dont really care.

The only people that care are either unemployed, immigrants or extreme right
wing groups. Those people will never get proper attention of rest left-center
oriented society. They are not being taken seriously.

The things will get only worse until something big happen to the world.
Something that will make people get out to the streets and fight for the
cause.

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A1kmm
I think that the article trying to imply a stronger link between apologies and
the law than really exists in practice.

Corporate apologies are not about trying to win a lawsuit or reduce damages,
they are about trying to regain trust and prevent or stem the loss of market
share.

The public are not so stupid as to be significantly swayed if the company
apologises publicly for some problem and doesn't say what they are doing to
address the problem. For example, if a companies widgets were exploding, the
company might apologise and explain that they have fixed the exploding
component, and instituted review processes to stop it happening again.
Sometimes the change will not be sufficient to fix the problem, and the public
may not have the background to realise this.

The article claims safe apology "laws provide another way to protect
wrongdoers from liability". But that is not really true - without the laws,
companies in the wrong would not apologise at all, so there would be no more
evidence against them. The laws allow companies to apologise without legally
self-incriminating; the article takes a very law centric view, but I would
think most people would value an apology even if it didn't incriminate the
person making the apology - the apology (and particularly, the explanation of
why it won't happen again) has value to the public outside of the legal
system. Of course, the company apologising should still be able to be held
liable if their explanation is untrue or misleading (for example, if the
company says that the new version of their widget no longer explodes, but they
are lying to get more sales, and it in fact does still explode, they should
face an additional charge with big penalties for misleading or deceptive
conduct in the course of trade, with the apology admissible as evidence).

~~~
kefka
"I'm sorry you're stupid."

"I'm sorry you caused this."

"I'm sorry you feel bad."

"I'm sorry you were offended."

"I'm sorry you (apologize for your wrongdoing or feelings)."

And none of those mean anything in terms of contriteness. However, many of
those are rather offensive. But they all express "Sorry".

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ScottBurson
_What can be done? If we are to continue reducing punishments for apologetic
offenders (and for the record, I think we should)_

I completely disagree. The article already provides an excellent argument
against this practice: it is inherently subjective and clearly biased.

I'll add another argument: the justice system will never be perfect. We'll
always occasionally convict innocent people. Such people cannot be asked to be
contrite about a crime they did not commit, nor does it make any sense to hold
their lack of contrition against them, as we currently do.

I think the only fair way to do it is to base the initial sentence solely on
the severity of the crime itself, and then, once the sentence is underway, to
make parole decisions based solely on the prisoner's behavior in prison.
Contrition should not factor into it.

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yuhong
Personally, I have been mentioning the idea of an admission of wrongdoing with
an apology letter in the employee poaching scandal for a while now. I think
the SEC is pushing admission of wrongdoing in settlements.

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Houshalter
It's not just racism/classicism. A study found ugly people get sentences twice
as long as attractive people.

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hownottowrite
Ref: The book by the article's author (Nick Smith)
[http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/jurisprude...](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/jurisprudence/justice-
through-apologies-remorse-reform-and-punishment)

It's interesting to note the volume of literature on the subject. Check out
the references at the bottom of this symposium page:

[http://philpapers.org/rec/BENSTA-5](http://philpapers.org/rec/BENSTA-5)

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Freeboots
Just pulling one point from the article; its interesting that sentencing is
often based on 'gut feeling' of the offenders level of remorse. It makes me
think of the research of John Gottman, who developed a system to predict
divorce rates with surprising accuracy from analysing a single conversation. I
wonder if his technique's could be applied for a more scientific and perhaps
more accurate judgement of remorse.

