# Define life sentence for me **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 6, 2006, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653 "2006-06-06T18:45:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/21 "2006-06-06T21:59:00Z")
> [@Ensign Edison](#): > > The point in question is, can we deny people parole hearings if they probably won’t make parole. You are here to defend the idea that we should deny people parole hearings if we think they probably won’t make parole, and that such uneven treatment would be perfectly just? Or are you being deliberately obtuse? Well, that may be the point you’re questioning, but the point I’m addressing is your assertion that making “special laws” for people we “extra hate” will “break the system.” I’m reasonably confident that, should a state wish to write something into its laws changing the way that parole hearings are offered, they would be able to do so. > [@adam yax](#): > > Do “3 Strikes” offenders get a shot a parole? If parole’s written into the law, then yes. If not, no. ---
**Author:** ![Ensign\_Edison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ab992/32.png) [@Ensign\_Edison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ensign_Edison)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/22 "2006-06-06T22:06:08Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > Well, that may be the point you’re questioning, but the point I’m addressing is your assertion that making “special laws” for people we “extra hate” will “break the system.” Do you think we can make a special law that says Charles Manson shouldn’t get parole? Not serial killers, not people with beards, specifically Charles Manson. I didn’t say classes of people, I said people, and meant individuals. That is what I was referring to, though it seems now I may have misunderstood the initial question/argument anyway. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/23 "2006-06-06T22:19:02Z")
I’m 100% anti DP but do believe that if someone if found guilty and receives a life sentence then they should leave prison in a box. I think that if that change was to be made then offences that carry the life sentence should be looked at to make sure that such a harsh sentence is being handed out appropriately. Once that work’s been done then a life sentence should be for the rest of your natural life. Unless a legal appeal succeeds naturally. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/24 "2006-06-06T22:25:32Z")
> [@yojimbo](#): > > I’m 100% anti DP but do believe that if someone if found guilty and receives a life sentence then they should leave prison in a box. > > I think that if that change was to be made then offences that carry the life sentence should be looked at to make sure that such a harsh sentence is being handed out appropriately. Once that work’s been done then a life sentence should be for the rest of your natural life. Unless a legal appeal succeeds naturally. I refer you up to my post. What’s “a life sentence” in your post? A definite (“determinate”) sentence that he will be incarcerated for life, with no chance of getting out except pardon or reversal on appeal? We have that, here in NC at least. And it’s used rarely but when needed. Otherwise “a life sentence” is a sentence of “been N years and life,” N being a high value: 20, 25, 40 years. And in such a case, the prisoner is entitled to _be considered for_ parole after N years. Not to **get** parole, to be **considered for** it. At that point he has to convince a fairly skeptical board that he will be more of an asset to the community outside than in, and no more a danger than random person X if let out on parole. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/25 "2006-06-07T12:57:33Z")
That’s an excellent distinction, Poly. It would seem that we have a misunderstanding here, perhaps caused by a linguistic shortcut, or an editorial failing. Where the newspapers use the phrase “serving a life sentence,” it may mean only that “life” is the upper limit of the sentence imposed by the courts. I don’t know the specifics of the sentencing in any of the examples in this thread, but before getting up in arms about parole hearings, that’s something that should be determined. We may find that the our anger is misplaced; that the media has, once again, distributed an inaccuracy. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/26 "2006-06-07T13:22:50Z")
> [@DiosaBellissima](#): > > Call my ignorant, but why even _have_ parole hearings for people like Manson or any number of other people? If someone has multiple life sentences, why waste the time, money, and every other necessary resource? So that when they get really old and expensive to care for, [we can get them out of the system to save money](http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05065/467032.stm): > [@](#): > > Pennsylvania has long recognized this problem. > > In 2002, state lawmakers asked the Joint State Government Commission, a research agency for the General Assembly, to establish a task force to study the issue and come up with solutions. > > “It was clear that we had a growing geriatric population in our prisons at a growing expense,” said state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, chairman of the task force. “Some of these people are no longer a threat to society and maybe we could reduce these costs and find alternative settings for them.” The bottom line always trumps justice. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/27 "2006-06-07T14:54:07Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Parole hearings after five years decide whether there has been \*rehabilitation \* sufficient to release the prisoner before his maximum sentence. That is the problem. We expect prison to rehabilitate people. Prisons are what they are: Penal institutions. Punishment for screwing up royally. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/28 "2006-06-07T14:57:59Z")
> [@DiosaBellissima](#): > > Call my ignorant, but why even _have_ parole hearings for people like Manson or any number of other people? If someone has multiple life sentences, why waste the time, money, and every other necessary resource? Many states have eliminated parole in favor of “flat sentencing.” The only people still subject to it are those who were sentenced before the laws took effect. Within a generation or so, parole boards won’t exist. Personally, I think it’s a bad idea. Flat sentencing removes judicial discretion (which has its positives and negatives, of course,) but worse, it eliminates any control that the state had over ex-offenders. The parole system has flaws, but at least it allowed for some monitoring of ex-inmates and gave them a reason to try to stay out of trouble during their parole period. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/29 "2006-06-07T15:12:09Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > That is the problem. We expect prison to rehabilitate people. Prisons are what they are: Penal institutions. Then how come so many prisons refer to themselves as “[correctional facilities](http://www.corrections.com/links/viewlinks.asp?Cat=5)”? Is “correction” not synonymous with rehabilitation? ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/30 "2006-06-07T15:31:50Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#): > > Then how come so many prisons refer to themselves as “[correctional facilities](http://www.corrections.com/links/viewlinks.asp?Cat=5)”? Is “correction” not synonymous with rehabilitation? In theory. In practice, the results are usually much different. As they old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Similarly, you can offer an inmate rehabilitative programs and try to help him work on his issues, but you can’t force a person to change if they don’t want to. For prison rehabilitation programs to be truly effective, there would have to be massive budget increases. Current programs are usually run by an over-worked staff person with no psychological training lecturing from a “teacher’s guide” while the inmates fill out their own workbooks. The inmate is given credit for completing it, but what he actually gets out of it varies widely. What is needed to make rehabilitative programming effective is intensive one-on-one therapy with a trained psychologist, but that’s unlikely to happen because of the expense involved. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/31 "2006-06-07T16:12:36Z")
**Lissa** , lots of problems could be solved by throwing large sums of money at them. I’d personally like to see the money spent on efforts intervening before people end up on prison (not that I could begin to tell you how to get the best bang for the buck). My rant was about, I guess, ‘truth in advertising’. If you give a guy (Son of Sam) 365 years in prison as a sentence, the fact that he even comes up for parole bothers me. The OP subject is serving two or three life sentences (the article said two, but a US Marshalls release says 3), plus had previously escaped, yet he was soon to have a parole opportunity. I know we may not have heard the actual sentence (e.g. 10-to-Life) nor can I find it in a quick search. Still, this is a man who confessed to shooting one man in the back several times, reloading and shooting another in the face 5 times during the commission of a felony. This we want to give a parole opportunity? ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/32 "2006-06-07T16:21:17Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > That is the problem. We expect prison to rehabilitate people. Prisons are what they are: Penal institutions. Punishment for screwing up royally. You may want them to be such, but that ain’t the charters given them by the justice system, decrees. ---
**Author:** ![Bertie\_Wooster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/58f4c7/32.png) [@Bertie\_Wooster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bertie_Wooster)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/33 "2006-06-07T16:27:21Z")
I am neither a lawyer, nor a prison guard, nor a felon, but I always understood a life sentence to mean that for the rest of one’s life, one is under the supervision of the state. If one does well in prison, one may evetually earn the privilege of living outside its walls, but with many restrictions, the violation of any of which puts one back in a cell. And, I might add, once outside, one has to feed, house, and clothe oneself. So it gives society a way to deal with those felons who really do reform, with the benefit of saving money. ---
**Author:** ![Chanteuse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de053/32.png) [@Chanteuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chanteuse)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/34 "2006-06-08T07:54:55Z")
I support the DP, but I gotta admit that I rather liked a sentencing idea I heard once in a movie (_High Strung_). To paraphrase: Say Jane Doe is murdered. Lock up the murderer and place the key to his cell in Jane’s hand before she’s buried. Then when he asks if he’s ever going to be released, say, “Sure, no problem, just as soon as old Janie walks in here with the key to your cell, you’re outta here, twenty-four hours, max!” Now THAT would be a true life sentence! ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Clam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/35 "2006-06-08T11:49:15Z")
Can I turn the question back on the OP? What is the point of continuing to incarcerate someone who shows every sign of having reformed, especially if they are highly unlikely to reoffend (very old, under parole supervision, whatever)? All it does is cost the state a lot of money. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/36 "2006-06-08T12:34:39Z")
> [@Happy Clam](#): > > Can I turn the question back on the OP? What is the point of continuing to incarcerate someone who shows every sign of having reformed, especially if they are highly unlikely to reoffend (very old, under parole supervision, whatever)? All it does is cost the state a lot of money. Depends. Incarceration, among other things, is punishment for committing a crime. The unarmed note-passing bank robber is different from armed robber who kills in the commission of his crime. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz killed at random and terrorized a city. Even if he will no longer reoffend, his crimes were of a nature that he should never be a free man again. How do you tell the victims’ families, “Hey, he’s all better now, probably won’t do it again, so we’re letting him go?” I don’t buy that. When the victims go free, he can go free. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/37 "2006-06-08T15:28:30Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > Depends. Incarceration, among other things, is punishment for committing a crime. The unarmed note-passing bank robber is different from armed robber who kills in the commission of his crime. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz killed at random and terrorized a city. Even if he will no longer reoffend, his crimes were of a nature that he should never be a free man again. How do you tell the victims’ families, “Hey, he’s all better now, probably won’t do it again, so we’re letting him go?” I don’t buy that. When the victims go free, he can go free. By that logic, rapists and child molesters should never be freed, either, because of the fear their victims may feel. I’m sure a lot of people would agree with the above statement, but our criminal justice system is not set up to incarcerate such huge numbers of people permenantly. The prison in which my husband works has a population of over 2,800, and about half of them are incarcerated for sex offenses. (Remember, too, that sex crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute, with the vast majority of cases being plead-out. Harsher sentences would likely result in less convictions.) Our justice system isn’t supposed to take in account the emotions of the victim, especially once the offender has served his time. Hell, probably, if asked, most victims of crime would say that they hope the offender never gets out and they’re afraid of him/her. If that was the standard, no one would ever be released. Many people in corrections have spent sleepless nights because they are compelled by law to release someone they _know_ will re-offend, but can do nothing about it. But that’s the way our system works, especially now that parole is being phased-out. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/38 "2006-06-08T15:53:33Z")
**Lissa** , the legal system could probably weed out _(no pun intended)_\* a number of people serving hard time for non-violent drug offenses to make room for rapists and child molesters. But that’s just one voter’s opinion. There is a number of people whose greatest benefit to soceity can only be achieved by being permanently separated from it. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/39 "2006-06-08T16:53:23Z")
> [@OtakuLoki](#): > > **D\_Odds** , you do realize that you can’t take the words “Life Sentence” as meaning anything specifically, without knowing what state one is talking about, I hope. > > For example, the Son of Sam Killer, here in NY, is going to be up for parole, soon. (I seem to recall he would be first eligible for it come this year, but I can’t say for certain.) What’s fascinating is when one considers that he was sentenced to **seven** consecutive life sentences. > > This is not to say that I expect he will be given parole, but he is going to be eligible for consideration. > > There is something to be said for the people pushing for truth in sentencing laws. > [@D\_Odds](#): > > David Berkowit[z] (Son of Sam) was first eligible for parole in 2002. He was sentenced to 365 years. I don’t ever expect him to be freed; I’m just a little confused as to why we (society) even bothers with the paper shuffling. Lock the cell door and lose the key. Common misunderstandings. Berkowitz was sentenced to SIX sentences of 25 years to life, to be served consecutively. “Consecutively,” however, does not mean that he doesn’t receive timely parole hearings after the first 25 years – that would be against New York law, and may be unconstitutional. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Clam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653/40 "2006-06-08T17:30:13Z")
I agree with **Lissa**. While the state should of course show every concern to the families of victims (or victims themselves) as far as treating them with compassion goes, they should not submit to their wishes or fears over how to punish the offender. That way, we’d have a hell of a lot of death sentences. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/define-life-sentence-for-me/359653.md?page=3)