These headlines are always misleading. He is not spending life in prison over 1.5 ounces of marijuana.
He is spending life in prison because he was convicted of a felony and did time. He got out. He committed another felony, did time, and got out. He then committed a third felony, the weed possession which is over a personal amount, and did so knowing it was yet a third felony. Whether you believe that weed laws are unjust or not, you are put on fair notice not to possess such an amount. The article says that one of the prior felonies has to be violent.
These guys have shown that the rehabilitation portion of the need for punishment doesn’t work for them. They keep committing crimes. They have shown a propensity for violence. At what point does society say that the rehabilitation portion of the reason for punishment has failed?
But why have a serious discussion about that when these websites can throw up scary and misleading headlines?
The problem with the Norwegian solution is that someone like Breivik is serving a 21 year sentence that could be extended if he is considered a danger, or not sufficiently repentant, or whatever. This in fact means that he does not know where he stands and how many years he will actually be incarcerated. This somewhat resembles the situation in the USA, where AFAIK some prisoners get “elastic” sentence with a wide range of time. The European perception of such sentences is that they are deplorable, and in effect constitute the “cruel and unusual punishment” that that USA harps. And the “three strikes and you are out” approach is simply ridiculous, from a legal perspective.
Breivik is actually only serving less than three months per person killed. Jeez.
AFAIK, while Japan has the death penalty, it only applies it to those who killed more than once, and actual executions are rare. And often very delayed. Shoko Asahara of Aum Shinrikyo was executed 25 years after the gas attacks in the Tokyo subway (something I missed by only about six months).
Justice always has the goals of deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation. The impression I get of the US prison system is that it does very little for rehabilitation and the US judiciary imposes very stiff sentences for relatively minor crimes in an attempt at deterrence. The entire system needs a radical change.
I can see a campaign to end excessively long sentences and to provide more opportunity for rehabilitation. I can’t see eliminating life sentences. I only disapprove of the death penalty because I don’t trust the state to make such a decision, and I endorse giving prisoners the opportunity to commit suicide in a simple painless and efficient manner.
There still needs to be a way to keep society safe from some people for as long as they live. The standard has to be clear so we don’t waste time arguing over how many people a criminal has to rape, torture, and kill before they can never be allowed out again.
Some stand out like sore thumbs. Serial histories of sexual torture/mutilation/murder are strong indicators of the need to ensure that no opportunity to re-offend is ever given.
Well, in the course of a long prison sentence you do have plenty of opportunity to observe them, study them, assess them, measure their progress, etc, etc. In countries that have legal provision for extending the sentences of still-dangerous prisoners, decisions about extensions are made at the end of the initial sentence, not at the beginning, and are based to a signficant degree on information that wasn’t available at the time the sentence was imposed.
It can be very difficult since many behind bars are sociopathic geniuses at conning and manipulating people (including doctors, judges, and parole panels).
Would your view be, then, that we should extend detention for them all because we cannot identify those who are likely to reoffend, or that we should release them all at the expiry of their sentences because we cannot identify those who are likely to reoffend?
(It’s a serious question. When we’re talking about people who are at the end of their sentences, what we’re talking about here is not imprisoning them as punishment or retribution for what they have done - they have served the sentence imposed for that - but imprisoning them to prevent offences which we think they might commit in the future. Which is, um, ethically problematic.)
@UDS1 my view is that we can’t really predict recidivism risk all that well at all with certain categories of offenders. What to do with that evidence-supported view is a knotty problem.
I concur. This is a really bad idea if you wanna get rid of the DP. The big argument for the DP when we were talking dangerous killers like Dalmer is “locked up forever”.
And now this movement seeks to release those mad dog killers.
I can not in all honestly vote to end the DP if we are just gonna release them in 20 years or so.
If I were in charge, I would keep life sentences, but I would end life without possibility of parole. The maximum sentence would be 20 years to life, and after that the prisoner would have an opportunity to be paroled every 5 years.
I totally understand the mindset of those wanting the punitive aspect of imprisonment to be at the forefront, and as a Norwegian I particularly understand the example of Breivik, but I’m still with Velocity on this one. It requires more than just changing sentence lengths though. It requires an incarceration system that overall is focused on rehabilitation.
Here’s a brief summary of my reasons: The vast majority of people in prison anywhere in the world are not mass-murderers or serial killers. Lengthy prison sentences are harder on a person than us non-incarcerated can imagine, even if it’s not a “shared cells and prison rape is what they deserve” kind. And unless every sentence is a life sentence, rehabilitation is what society actually needs, breaking someone down in prison and then branding them “con” for life guarantees few of them will become contributing members of society and many will go back to crime.
Is it always possible to identify those that are just innately horrible? No. But just as I think we cannot fulfill the Norwegian “Zero traffic deaths”-vision by banning cars, or banning absolutely all guns to get to zero gun deaths, I think rehabilitating the majority of people sentenced and turning them from a cost to society to contributing members is more important than never getting a “previous murderer murders again” headline.
Will this also mean some people “don’t get what they deserve”? Yes, certainly. But “getting what they deserve” is somewhat of a delusion anyway and using it as the guiding principle for the judicial system poisons not only that system but society as a whole.
I agree with this, but would go further. Many of them are not psychopaths but can behave in a controlled environment. Maybe they have a problem with alcohol. In prison, they can’t go down to the local liquor store or bar and get hammered. So because of that restriction, they are able to abide by the rules, but cannot if they are released. Likewise, in prison, they don’t have a girlfriend or a wife, so they don’t have to worry about her cheating on him. When outside, their already violent tendencies will cause them to abuse or murder the wife/girlfriend and/or the man who participated.
It would be like saying that because we locked this guy in a room with no access to tobacco for six months, that he has shown an excellent ability to quit smoking. Yes, that’s true, but it doesn’t say what will happen when we let the guy out and he can go to the local canteen and buy a pack of smokes.
I genuinely would like to agree, but the very term “rehabilitation” requires the “re” prefix which makes an assumption that they were okay, then strayed. Many of the prisoners had terrible childhoods and were never taught the right way to behave to begin with.
While you or I who were taught to eat right, get up early, engage in some meaningful pursuit, drink responsibly if at all, and treat others with kindness, others were not. If we stray from our upbringing, someone can point us back to that right way of doing things. If we were never taught that, it seems like a silly thing in an untrained mind. Why do I have to get up at 6am again? Why can’t I drink and get all messed up? It’s fun!
Their formative years have made a transformation all but impossible. Sure there are exceptions, but rehabilitation has a very low level of success.
So it’s slightly harder and it requires also having a society that cares about people before they go to prison. My answer to “everything is interconnected” is definitely not “I guess we just have to leave this part shitty then”, it’s “I guess we need to improve the other parts too”.
One of my chief arguments against the death penalty is that you can imprison a lethal criminal for life, thus protecting society from further harm. If they do away with the life sentence, I may have to reconsider my position on the death penalty.
Right. And this anti-punishment creep just hardens the opposition. The Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for those under 18 years of age with the assurance that life without parole would do the job. Then, less than a decade later, they said that life without parole for juveniles could only be given in homicide cases, and even then in a “rare” circumstance.
The issue is that we just can’t trust the anti-punishment groups not to continue down the slippery slope.
And I agree with you in theory, but how do we get there? State controlled parenting? Prisons with one on one counseling? Segregating prisoners based on ability to rehabilitate? How do we judge that ability?
As I said above, guys can show progress on the inside but that doesn’t translate to what they will do on the outside.
ETA: I’ve seen it with my own clients. They stay sober inside a prison because in their weaker moments they can’t run to the store or a bar and buy booze. When they get released, they can. The observations on the inside are pretty much meaningless.