Sounds like you're in favour of something that can never be done in a fashion that you demand. So how can you be in favour of it?
I'm not saying it's an easy problem to solve. Solitary confinement may be the only way to protect others from being killed, but then you can debate how torturous that is compared to death. And some would argue that torture is what they deserve, but I don't think that way.
I guess I'm in favor of the ideal, but I'm also pragmatic enough to realize that we should aim for the goal of favoring life while we may have to make gradual steps in getting there.
When I was younger I was far more staunchly of a death penalty advocate, but the older I get, the more I value life in general and the hope of redemption.
Unfortunately, I think like with animals (I hate saying it this way), but currently there are times you have to put them down, either to end their suffering or the suffering of others.
But like I said, this is a view I'm constantly re-evaluating, as when it comes to a person's life, I don't think we should ever take that lightly. Especially if it's baked into the legal system and administered by the government.
Besides, how can one really prove that someone will not change in the future? It will all come down to conjecture and guesswork.
Life in prison is both cheaper (for the state, or at least that's what I seem to recall - the reason being that the death penalty involves much more judicial toing and froing, as it should!) AND offers the option to find out at a later time that the state has made a mistake.
While I do not believe one can fully compensate anyone for years behind bars, at least one can release them, rather than telling the bereaved that 'Oops, we were wrong - but at least you now know he was innocent, right? Proof our legal system works? Right?'
However, it would seem to this outsider (I've never been a -hm- client of the US penal system, neither am I a citizen) that the US is more focused on punishment than on rehabilitation; I believe a lot can be done about the recidivism rate by shifting the focus more towards using prison as a means to prepare the inmates for return to society, rather than simply as a means of keeping them away from the general public.
(Then again, for that to really happen, the general public's attitudes would need to change, too - I live in Norway, one of the most rehabilitation-focused of countries - while our recidivism rate is among the lowest there is, there's still considerable stigma associated with being an ex-convict.)
But there are so many cases of murderers who both have killed many outside and continue to murder and assault inside, and they seemingly will continue to be a threat to society.
With our current abilities, what do you propose we do to either rehabilitate or protect others from those kinds of folks?
Also, justice is also about repaying a debt. But how can someone ever repay something they've stolen if what they've stolen is priceless and can't be replaced? Like it or not, some families do want that to be repaid with the killer no longer being allowed to live the rest of his life.
I'm not agreeing that's right, but in any direction, there are going to be flaws.
And I do think there are cases of incontrovertible evidence (I mean, do we really think Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez were coerced into confessing? They're basically proud of what they've done). But I think it's a matter of setting the bar higher for requirements.
Lastly, in those cases where there is a lot of cost of going back and forth, at least some small part of that is also caused by activists who believe on ideological grounds that the state should never take a life, even if the murderer would prefer death. I'm not claiming that makes a large statistical portion of it, but to me the cost factor really is the least important aspect of the discussion when we're talking about people's lives.
I do think the US would benefit from some of Norway's policies, but (and I think it was Norway where even murder didn't come with a life sentence; correct me if I'm wrong) some of them, culturally seem abhorrent to us in that it's possible to murder and steal a life, but then be able to walk around free because some bureaucrat says he's fine now.
I think both systems allow for possible abuse and injustice, but it does seem to work for you guys.
I'm also of the belief that while I think humans all generally share a common set of ideals and virtues, policies that work in one society may not work in another.
This probably helps keep the recidivism rate low; the average murderer - to paraphrase a long-term official at our criminal police - is an average guy who've just had the worst moment of his life, killing someone he loved and cared about. You wouldn't be all that likely to find yourself in similar circumstances again.
I've tried to dig up statistics on how many people in Norway have been convicted of murder more than once - I couldn't find any, though I seem to recall having heard of two or three.
With these circumstances as a starting point, rehabilitation is probably more beneficial to society than going for the all-in punishment experience - once enough time is served that society feels you've paid for your crime, to some extent, there really isn't much to be gained from keeping you locked up anymore. To reflect this, the maximum prison term is 21 years (unless you're convicted of crimes against humanity, in which case the maximum is 30 years)
To ease your way back into society, you're automatically eligible for parole once you've served 2/3 of the punishment committed, as long as you've behaved reasonably well in prison (unless you were considered particularly dangerous and likely to be a lasting danger to society, in which case you may get an indefinite sentence (with regular reviews, where parole is an option if circumstances change).)
The last part of your mandatory sentence (that is, first 2/3) sees restrictions being gradually lifted - say, you get to live in halfway houses, take up a job/studies outside prison, having to return immediately to prison/halfway house once your work/lectures end.
The idea, obviously, being to prepare you for return to society. Mostly this works; we've got a recidivism rate of some 20-25% or so for the whole imprisoned population; for murderers, it must be in the low single digits.
I do, however, appreciate that this approach works better with 'our' kind of murderers - people who've committed one murder and are unlikely to ever commit another.
Oh, and don't get me wrong - cost shouldn't be the overriding concern; I was more thinking the opposite - that if one wanted to eliminate a criminal from society for good, capital punishment doesn't even make economical sense - other solutions are just as effective, cheaper and allowing for the state to admit its mistake to the wrongfully convicted rather than to his bereaved.
Manson et al are - I hope - outliers in the US, too - so the challenge is designing a system which 'works' on the majority of people deemed unfit to walk free, without degenerating into a system designed to handle the Mansonitic minority.
You do bring up some interesting thoughts; I'll probably end up pondering your points repeatedly throughout the weekend. I love HN!
So? You think Europe doesn't have people that are "beyond help" in prison? Or that their courts are wrong in not murdering them?
Yeah, our violent crime rates are so worse compared to US... Please show us the way! /s
>in countries where women aren't even allowed to carry pepper spray, there's less emphasis on keeping innocents safe and more emphasis on giving terrible people third/fourth/fifth chances.
Maybe judge from the respective results, as opposed to "law and order theater"?
I don't think they're necessarily wrong for not executing them, but to say theres never a case where that's the best option for society and prisoners seems more ideological than realistic.
I'm not saying we won't some day have some better way of correcting such folks (maybe something like CRISPR comes along and allows us to modify their predispositions; but that opens up an entirely new can of ethical worms), but there is a valid question to ask: how much freedom and how much suffering do you allow a man to cause before you realize that he's only going to do more harm? And how do you balance that out without possibly torturing him?
I don't think we will ever find the perfect solution, but I do think we should be constantly looking, and I think metrics to measure the effectiveness of policies should help guide us.
I think we all know that power of any kind, even a child's seemingly limited power over their parents can be abused to falsely claim abuse (I've actually known children who've done this) and imprison their parents or punish them.
However, I think the best answer we have so far is checks and balances, not necessarily eliminating the thing itself.
This side of heaven, I don't think there's a perfect solution, but I do think we should keep it as our goal to get as close as possible.