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> I see, so Breivik can go kill a bunch of children and hang out in "prison" with his XBox and hope to leave on parole? And that's normal for you?

Breivik is unlikely to get out because he is likely to continue to be deemed a threat on every re-evaluation. But if he demonstrates that he is reforming and is no longer likely to be a threat, then yes, that is not just normal to me but desirable.

It is a system that works given that re-offending rates in Norway are low.

I'd consider it an absolute insult to victims of violent crime to focus on things like retribution over policies shown to actually reduce the rates of future crime.

Valuing the perpetuation of violence for the sake of retribution over reducing the number of victims seems to me the height of barbaric and immoral behaviour.

But even without any benefits to re-offending rates I'd still consider it barbaric to threat prisoners badly for retributive purposes. Free will is a fiction, and so when we are punishing people for anything other than the practical purposes of keeping society safe we are no better than those we assign blame for crimes, we just tell ourselves we are.

If free will is a fiction, how can you pass judgement on "us" for punishing people? If free will is a fiction then what good is saying things like "if we do X we are no better than people who do Y" when nobody has any choice in what they do?

Well, the obvious answer is that there is no choice in that either, but that in most context it serves us best to act as if we do have choice, because the effects of our actions still affect us.

If we "step into the fiction" so to speak, there is reason for passing judgement if passing judgement leads to better outcomes. A lack of agency does not shield us from those outcomes.

But it makes retribution as a justification fundamentally immoral. Of course, there's recursion here - retribution for retribution would be no better.

Justice has more than one aim. Deterrence and rehabilitation are two of them, so is the preservation of social order. But justice is also retributive. Retribution isn't about hate, whatever modern confusion tells you. That's why we aim to have qualified impartial third-parties (judges) who are supposed to adjudicate such things instead of leaving things up to a hate-filled lynch mob, one that often confuses envy with anger at injustice.

And Norwegian society operate just fine with Breivik playing xbox in prison.

In the end, retribution still doesn't fix anything. We're machines. We should act like this is true, not surrender to our monkey brain.

It's been a long long time (if it ever existed) where US prisons gave a crap about rehabilitation. It's always been about punishment first, then keeping society "safe" second. And studies have consistently shown that the death penalty acts as no deterrent to murder; I would suspect the same would show that other crimes are not deterred by the threat of prison. Too many crimes are a result of impulse control failures in individuals.

> if you don't think that's absolutely crazy, and I don't know what to tell you, man

> to adjudicate such things instead of leaving things up to a hate-filled lynch mob

See the duality of your own post.

If I try to be impartial, I can hardly see the point to any sentence larger than a couple decades. When you get to those levels of sentencing where you basically decimate the total useful lifetime of someone, you might as well kill the person.

... and I guess I understand something now.

> > if you don't think that's absolutely crazy, and I don't know what to tell you, man > > to adjudicate such things instead of leaving things up to a hate-filled lynch mob

> See the duality of your own post.

That reads as though you scored some virtual point, but I can't figure out what you're saying. Can you clarify?