Why sentencing people to life in prison makes no kind of sense

aeon.co

5 points·Tomte··5 comments

“Of course, some offenders may have to stay locked up for life because they remain dangerous. How to assess and manage their sentences is an important question I will ignore here.”

Great idea, just ignore considering the violent people for whom a life sentence make most sense and then claim for the rest it make no sense.

another gem:

> Another group are the families and communities of those who have committed crimes, who are also victims. The harms of having their members – especially men and, disproportionately, young Black men – disappear from the community for years at a time are incalculable, even taking account of the benefits of having violent people removed.

more violence to words and plain meaning. the family of criminal are the victims. the criminal is a "community member [who] was disappear[ed]"

I'll digress and pick on something else: saying that something makes "no kind of sense" at a time when it is heavily debated is presumptuous. If it made no sense, there would be no debate around it. It might be a worse choice than something else (which is presumably why it is being debated), but it does make enough sense to be debated.

Taking the phrase literally you are correct. As it is used in common speech saying “that makes no sense” indicates more a person’s position on a topic. I generally take it to mean that the person saying this is indicating how strongly they feel about the opposing position. Or that they can’t comprehend how an opposing position can be held.

Here’s when it make sense: someone is a danger to society and there is no known way to rehabilitate them, but you find the death penalty morally a bit icky.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com