Life in prison is wrong, because anybody can change, no matter what they did. Prison itself is unhelpful and rarely necessary, the money spent keeping people alive in prison would be better spent rehabilitating them and preparing them for society, to stop them reoffending, and incentivising them to become productive and law-abiding members of society.
Yes and they can never bring back the people they killed. Can not tell that person you raped it never happen. That child will always live with the scares you have given them. Since these people can not change what you did. You also choice to commit the crime. So if someone willingly chooses to commit these deeds should they not be punished? Is that such an alien concept? If someone destroys your car they must pay for it. If you stay something you must repay it or give it back. I guess we could just tell the pervert down the street that raped 6 year old sally and he can say "Sorry I raped you sweety! hear is a cookie". No hard feelings dear". Yes fucking brilliant! That fixes everything.
"...if someone willingly chooses to commit these deeds should they not be punished?"
If that punishment probably won't be successful in rehabilitating them then no, they shouldn't be punished.
"If you stay something you must repay it or give it back [sic]"
You can't repay rape though, no matter what the punishment. You said it yourself: "these people can not change what you did". No amount of punishment or jail time can take back a rape, so why punish a rapist? Why punish a murderer either? Punishment doesn't "fix" anything any more than an apology does. Instead, work on rehabilitating them to reduce the chance of them killing or raping more people.
If you don't want to do the harm you would not have done it. Lashing out of anger is one thing but why do you need to commit acts of rape? You really think these people did not have another option? What about people who kill for the insurance money? How about people who drowns the kids they have because they decided one day "I don't wanta be a mom anymore I want to party, drink and do drugs". Like they had a choice. So how is rehabilitation going to fix them? You can fix crazy you cant fix an assholes since you choose to be one!
You can by being punished. That is kind of the point of prison. You are missing the point of locking someone up. So if someone was hurt you are going to say "Well nothing we can do about it"! They will just be let go and we hope we fixed them. If not you better go hide"! So being a good person counts for nothing. Nice knowing someone has our well being in mind. I am sorry I killed your son. I will not do it again. Ok young man you are free to go! I know you wont kill again so you may continue. That is a wonderful message that is sure to get abused. Yet you act like hurting these victims is ok?
You can't put a murderer back on the streets in the hopes they've changed. Then what are you going to tell the relatives of the next person he kills? "Oh my bad, we thought he'd changed for sure this time."
Honestly, I don't know what it is lately with naive people and their utopian way of thinking. The government is there for a reason, the police are there for a reason, punishment exists...for a reason. I'm not saying you shouldn't have faith in humanity, but you can't let your bleeding heart color the way you feel about the infrastructure of our society. If this whole "live and let live" ideology was really the answer to all of humanity's problems, don't you think we'd all be in a much better position right now? Murderers belong in jail, or better yet, dead. That way they can't kill those of us that aren't murderers. This is just basic biology.
There are ways of being very confident, almost completely certain, that a person has changed, using brain scans and the like. Obviously we can also put tags on them to moniter their movements, as we would for many recently released criminals. Compulsary meetings with a therapist could be arranged once the person has been released, and these could go on for many years. Any sign of problems and the criminal goes straight back inside and starts over on their sentence.
Also, consider this. In Greenland, there is/was a system by which many criminals were kept in "open prisons". They were allowed to leave, were encouraged to get jobs and decorate their cells, were allowed to go to bars and drink. There was a curfew which they had to return to their cells in time for. The re-offending rates were less than 1%, compared to over 2/3 of criminals in the US. Obviously, there are good reasons why such a system would not work in most parts of the US, and I don't advocate this system, but to say that a system not based on punishment does not work is ignorant and arrogant. I have a link with some information about this, if anyone is interested: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/sep/13/4?cat=world&type=article
Don't get me wrong, I think of myself as being pretty liberal if I have to attach a term to myself, but I believe that becoming overly compassionate as a species would be detrimental to our well being. At what point are we just being overly optimistic fools? With 7 billion people in the world or whatever it's up to these days, we have to hold people responsible for their own actions. There are bad people out there, and it shouldn't be up to the rest of us to worry about sorting them out. We've got bigger fish to fry.
The Greenland example is intriguing in principle, but would you want someone who murdered someone you loved to be out partying at bars? I sure as hell wouldn't.
That all costs taxpayer money. Lots of it. I can think of better ways to spend our money rather than trying to rehabilitate murderers. Sure, everyone makes mistakes but...you kill another person, you kinda blew it, there's not really any going back from that. I mean I see your point of view, and it would be great if we could be as helpful a society as possible, but we simply can't afford to help everyone with every problem. People need to take some personal responsibility.
People don't change as easily as you think. In fact most people never change and the second they get out the commit crimes again. I agree prisons burn through money but I think it's because it's not managed well. Rehabilitating everyone would cost even more.
Even so, it isn't their fault if they can't change, it's society's fault that they're there in the first place. It is worth the money to keep them alive, if we kill them we are no better than the murderers. The arguement that it works as a deterent to potential criminals is a myth.
Rehab could be made much cheaper per person if it was rolled out nationwide and well budgeted, and it could save a lot of time in prison, reducing prison over-population, and every person it saves is really worth the money. You can't put a price on human life, even a murderer's life.
Fixing society fixes all problems doesn't it? It's also so much easier to blame society than the criminal him/herself. That's why it's the toughest problem to fix. But until we reach utopia I prison seems like a fine solution to me.
"You can't put a price on a human life."
That's a nice quote.
How can rehab be cheaper than prison when it requires one on one patient/doctor time to be guaranteed successful?
How do you define human? And at what point is a person less than human? Killing a 3 year old doesn't seem human to me.
I would say that we are all human beings, and we all deserve human rights, no matter what we have done or how many people we have violated the rights of.
When I talk about rehab being cheaper, I am not suggesting that rehab could be cheaper than prison, but it could be much cheaper than it is, simply because time in rehab would be much less than time behind bars. There is no reason why a murderer could not be "cured" in, say, 2 years, compared to over 20 in prison.
Neither am I suggesting that rehab would be appropriate in all cases, but even the ones who cannot be changed should be treated with pity rather than punishment, which often does little to deter re-offenders.
Is it normal to think life in prison is wrong
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Life in prison is wrong, because anybody can change, no matter what they did. Prison itself is unhelpful and rarely necessary, the money spent keeping people alive in prison would be better spent rehabilitating them and preparing them for society, to stop them reoffending, and incentivising them to become productive and law-abiding members of society.
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Yes and they can never bring back the people they killed. Can not tell that person you raped it never happen. That child will always live with the scares you have given them. Since these people can not change what you did. You also choice to commit the crime. So if someone willingly chooses to commit these deeds should they not be punished? Is that such an alien concept? If someone destroys your car they must pay for it. If you stay something you must repay it or give it back. I guess we could just tell the pervert down the street that raped 6 year old sally and he can say "Sorry I raped you sweety! hear is a cookie". No hard feelings dear". Yes fucking brilliant! That fixes everything.
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"...if someone willingly chooses to commit these deeds should they not be punished?"
If that punishment probably won't be successful in rehabilitating them then no, they shouldn't be punished.
"If you stay something you must repay it or give it back [sic]"
You can't repay rape though, no matter what the punishment. You said it yourself: "these people can not change what you did". No amount of punishment or jail time can take back a rape, so why punish a rapist? Why punish a murderer either? Punishment doesn't "fix" anything any more than an apology does. Instead, work on rehabilitating them to reduce the chance of them killing or raping more people.
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If you don't want to do the harm you would not have done it. Lashing out of anger is one thing but why do you need to commit acts of rape? You really think these people did not have another option? What about people who kill for the insurance money? How about people who drowns the kids they have because they decided one day "I don't wanta be a mom anymore I want to party, drink and do drugs". Like they had a choice. So how is rehabilitation going to fix them? You can fix crazy you cant fix an assholes since you choose to be one!
You can by being punished. That is kind of the point of prison. You are missing the point of locking someone up. So if someone was hurt you are going to say "Well nothing we can do about it"! They will just be let go and we hope we fixed them. If not you better go hide"! So being a good person counts for nothing. Nice knowing someone has our well being in mind. I am sorry I killed your son. I will not do it again. Ok young man you are free to go! I know you wont kill again so you may continue. That is a wonderful message that is sure to get abused. Yet you act like hurting these victims is ok?
You can't put a murderer back on the streets in the hopes they've changed. Then what are you going to tell the relatives of the next person he kills? "Oh my bad, we thought he'd changed for sure this time."
Honestly, I don't know what it is lately with naive people and their utopian way of thinking. The government is there for a reason, the police are there for a reason, punishment exists...for a reason. I'm not saying you shouldn't have faith in humanity, but you can't let your bleeding heart color the way you feel about the infrastructure of our society. If this whole "live and let live" ideology was really the answer to all of humanity's problems, don't you think we'd all be in a much better position right now? Murderers belong in jail, or better yet, dead. That way they can't kill those of us that aren't murderers. This is just basic biology.
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Perfectly said!
There are ways of being very confident, almost completely certain, that a person has changed, using brain scans and the like. Obviously we can also put tags on them to moniter their movements, as we would for many recently released criminals. Compulsary meetings with a therapist could be arranged once the person has been released, and these could go on for many years. Any sign of problems and the criminal goes straight back inside and starts over on their sentence.
Also, consider this. In Greenland, there is/was a system by which many criminals were kept in "open prisons". They were allowed to leave, were encouraged to get jobs and decorate their cells, were allowed to go to bars and drink. There was a curfew which they had to return to their cells in time for. The re-offending rates were less than 1%, compared to over 2/3 of criminals in the US. Obviously, there are good reasons why such a system would not work in most parts of the US, and I don't advocate this system, but to say that a system not based on punishment does not work is ignorant and arrogant. I have a link with some information about this, if anyone is interested: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/sep/13/4?cat=world&type=article
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Don't get me wrong, I think of myself as being pretty liberal if I have to attach a term to myself, but I believe that becoming overly compassionate as a species would be detrimental to our well being. At what point are we just being overly optimistic fools? With 7 billion people in the world or whatever it's up to these days, we have to hold people responsible for their own actions. There are bad people out there, and it shouldn't be up to the rest of us to worry about sorting them out. We've got bigger fish to fry.
The Greenland example is intriguing in principle, but would you want someone who murdered someone you loved to be out partying at bars? I sure as hell wouldn't.
That all costs taxpayer money. Lots of it. I can think of better ways to spend our money rather than trying to rehabilitate murderers. Sure, everyone makes mistakes but...you kill another person, you kinda blew it, there's not really any going back from that. I mean I see your point of view, and it would be great if we could be as helpful a society as possible, but we simply can't afford to help everyone with every problem. People need to take some personal responsibility.
People don't change as easily as you think. In fact most people never change and the second they get out the commit crimes again. I agree prisons burn through money but I think it's because it's not managed well. Rehabilitating everyone would cost even more.
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Even so, it isn't their fault if they can't change, it's society's fault that they're there in the first place. It is worth the money to keep them alive, if we kill them we are no better than the murderers. The arguement that it works as a deterent to potential criminals is a myth.
Rehab could be made much cheaper per person if it was rolled out nationwide and well budgeted, and it could save a lot of time in prison, reducing prison over-population, and every person it saves is really worth the money. You can't put a price on human life, even a murderer's life.
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Fixing society fixes all problems doesn't it? It's also so much easier to blame society than the criminal him/herself. That's why it's the toughest problem to fix. But until we reach utopia I prison seems like a fine solution to me.
"You can't put a price on a human life."
That's a nice quote.
How can rehab be cheaper than prison when it requires one on one patient/doctor time to be guaranteed successful?
How do you define human? And at what point is a person less than human? Killing a 3 year old doesn't seem human to me.
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dom180
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I would say that we are all human beings, and we all deserve human rights, no matter what we have done or how many people we have violated the rights of.
When I talk about rehab being cheaper, I am not suggesting that rehab could be cheaper than prison, but it could be much cheaper than it is, simply because time in rehab would be much less than time behind bars. There is no reason why a murderer could not be "cured" in, say, 2 years, compared to over 20 in prison.
Neither am I suggesting that rehab would be appropriate in all cases, but even the ones who cannot be changed should be treated with pity rather than punishment, which often does little to deter re-offenders.