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Comment by csn | Hacker News Reader

Death sentence is considered harsher than imprisonment for life, right? It includes paying for your crimes with all your time and your existance.

What if, in the future, it becomes possible to serve a x year sentence in a chemically induced coma or such, in a way taking away your existance too temporarily? Wouldn't that be a milder punishment because the element of "serving time" is no longer there?

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Prison should serve two goals. It should rehabilitate those who can be, and it should sequester away the people who are too mentally unstable to be in the general populace. These should be two separate institutions. Yes, there's a punishment aspect for being away from people, but that shouldn't be the main goal.

Jails, on the other hand, should be terrible places for people who have been convicted of crimes and will be there for short stays, but they should have a time limit for how long someone can be there (longer than that, go to the prison to get your rehab). Slap them hard enough on the wrist and hope they get the message.

It seems like that would take away any rehabilitative effect prison might have. Convicted of a crime, go to sleep, wake up ready to continue committing crimes.

Or it would actually rehabilitate. The current prison climate arguably does the opposite of rehabilitation.

Except that prison doesn't rehabilitate at all: it does the opposite and makes people worse. The rehabilitative theory of justice is essentially nonexistent in the US, nobody even pretends. Instead it's about punishment/retribution and "keeping them off the streets" during the period of their sentence. The coma solves the second concern, but isn't cruel enough to solve the first so I don't think you'll ever see it accepted in the US.

Like in 'Demolition man', only that there it also have its drawbacks.

Time still passes when you're in a coma, you're just not aware of it.

Of course time passes. My point was that in a way, in that situation you are paying with your time and your existance, as opposed to a "normal" imprisonment where you only pay with your time. I also meant to raise the question whether the loss of your existance holds a higher value than your awareness of time served as a crime-paying currency.

I'd rather be in solitary than suddenly wake up and find that the world, and I, had aged 40 years.

IMO that's more cruel, but obviously that's an opinion.

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