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.
Is it normal to think life in prison is wrong
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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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Quizguy
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dom180
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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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Jen118584
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Jen118584
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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.