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Comment by hyproxia | Hacker News Reader

So you think that locking up people for the rest of their lives is less barbaric?

I don’t know. If I knew that I’d really have to spend the rest of my life behind bars, I’d rather they just take me out back and shoot me right now.

> really

Being the key word here: you do not really know and so you would not want to get shot as you might be out in 5.

If I got multiple life sentences with no chance of parole, I think that would be a pretty good indicator that I wasn't going anywhere in 5 years.

If you in fact did kill multiple people then sure, but that is a tiny % of people who are locked up. But then, maybe. I think most would prefer life even in that situation.

But, why? A lifetime of misery in prison or a quick release… That doesn’t seem like a tough decision to me.

At least it's usually a costly barbarity for the state, with no perverse incentives. Though I'd argue it's not a dichotomy, and a maximum sentence combined with risk assessments that can extend a sentence beyond the maximum is state of the art.

Yes

And forcing law abiding citizens to foot the bill.

If you want to save taxpayer money, then you should be advocating for an end to the death penalty. Sentencing a person to death ends up costing significantly more than life imprisonment.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalt...

A more reasonable take would be to find ways to reduce its costs.

Surely killing someone can be way cheaper than sustaining them for life.

Sure, you could execute them the day after they're convicted. But that would greatly increase the number of people we let the state murder, not to mention the number of innocent people they'd be putting to death. Personally, that's not the type of society I want to be a part of.

Boy, if paying to keep people imprisoned upsets you, wait til you see how much we law abiding citizens have to pay when the state fucks up and locks up the wrong person.

Philly just paid nearly $10 million to some guy they'd wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 30 years.

If justice was about money it would be cheaper to just shoot anyone accused of being a pick pocket, heck the cop should just shoot the accuser twice to make sure his costly time isn't wasted again. Not to forget bill the families for the bullets.

> it would be cheaper to just shoot

Ah, no, that's not how this works.

As all government money is fungible from the perspective of the average citizen, and not all of it comes from taxing, you can't really say that "law abiding citizens" are "footing the bill". It's funny how this type of comment always comes into play when it comes to the rights of others. Not projecting this onto you specifically, but often times it comes across as "oh, we can't be fair to people because I have to pay for it! oh no!"

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