I don’t view it as “harm” to keep her in prison. After considering all the arguments for prison being reform or punishment, justice or vengenance, I personally go to the basic. By taking someone’s life, you forfeit your right to be in society. That person is gone, never again to be in anyone’s life. I ask nothing less for the muderer. (Contrarily, I’m against the death openalty, not because it’s cruel and/or unusual, but because it’s permanent. No chance to correct mistakes.)
Justice is imperfect, society is imperfect. Locking someone away for life is also an imperfect solution. But I’m comfortable with it.
I’m quoting this in the vain hopes that people will actually read it. Too many people here have a mindset that is actually irrelevant to this case in particular.
Plus mistake after mistake after mistake.
She didn’t participate in the Tate murders. What Polanksi thinks shouldn’t matter, legally.
She assisted in the murder of Rosemary LaBianca. A terrible crime. But not a life sentence crime. Nor a 45 year sentence crime. (Why is this latter fact news to anyone here?)
Prisoners almost never maker reparations for their crimes. Hardly any thieves return the stolen property to their owners. And yet we let thieves out of jail all the time.
The purpose of prison isn’t to put things back the way they were. I have no idea at all, none whatsoever, why people keep bringing up that dead people aren’t coming back to life. It is completely illogical and contrary to the way out criminal justice system works.
That’s emotions.
Emotions steered by incorrect information.
Emotions stirred up by press hysteria.
I’d plea for emotions to be left out of this thread, but I know it is completely hopeless.
So, express your emotions. Just don’t pretend for one second that they have anything to do with facts or logic.
Your post is the most emotional of all. This woman participated in a random, brutal and senseless murder. If her crime isn’t a life in prison crime then no crime is.
That’s not how the law works. A “life in prison crime,” to the extent there is one, is a crime in which “life without possibility of parole” is one of the possible sentences, and is the sentence handed down. AFAIUI, that’s not the sentence handed down in her case; it is the sentence handed down in other cases. Therefore, her case isn’t a life in prison crime, but other crimes are.
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However, you seem to believe that Leslie’s continued imprisonment does serve some purpose here–what is it?
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It keeps her confined in a place where she will never, ever have the chance to murder again. They could just put a bullet in her skull and achieve the same goal.
As I’ve said, it’s about emotions. Things like justice and mercy and fairness are emotional issues not topics subject to logical analysis.
From a strictly logical standpoint, there was no justification for putting Van Houten in prison for even a single day. Imprisoning her didn’t accomplish anything. But society has the collective emotional belief that people should suffer a penalty for committing a crime.
If you don’t believe that, then as I said there was no point in putting Van Houten in prison at all. But if you do buy into the idea that crimes deserve penalties then the issue we’re discussing is how big the penalty should be.
Trying to argue that a 45 year prison sentence is logical but a life prison sentence is irrational is just nonsense. You’re just trying to claim your own emotional opinion of what is appropriate is somehow factually based.
Society does. People shouldn’t be allowed to murder other people, even if the murders and/or the victims are prisoners. If murder is wrong outside a prison then it’s wrong inside a prison as well.
Well, I suppose this is where we diverge. The idea that prison is there to somehow “fix” things is an utterly alien concept to me. Especially as you acknowledge that it doesn’t actually fix anything. It just looks like a kind of magical thinking to me; the idea that if you can’t fix something, you can at least do something to the proximate cause of your woes.
Surely, though, you can see that at least one purpose of prison is to keep dangerous people away from others. There are in fact some people too dangerous to ever let roam free–Manson himself appears to be one. And since we don’t have magic brain scanners to determine if a person is safe, the best we can do is lock people away until some time has passed, and keep an eye on them to see if they are a continued threat.
So of course I don’t believe that we shouldn’t bother arresting murderers. I will say this, though: suppose that one day we have perfected the “implantable parole officer”. It’s a device which can not only perfectly enforce parole conditions, but actively prevent the commission of any crime. Touch a gun and it tases you from the inside. Etc. It’s been shown to work 100% of the time, and no one (aside from the parolee) has ever been harmed by someone under the control of this device.
If such a device existed, I’d have no problem with having very short prison terms, even for the worst offenders. It simply doesn’t matter to me if murderers and rapists are enjoying life. All I care about is that they can no longer harm others.
Of course it’s harm. Surely you agree that it’s harm to imprison an innocent person. Well, that harm is the same for a guilty person. Now, you might well say that for the guilty person, that harm is vastly outweighed by the benefits to everyone else, and therefore a valid exchange, but it’s still harm.
I agree with your first sentence. But I don’t believe the second follows.
A basic principle in justice is that of proportionality–that punishments shouldn’t vastly exceed the crime. Although it doesn’t have a strong logical justification, I have no real problem with it, since when you think harder about particular ethical problems, the principle doesn’t really break down much. In this sense, I do not have a general opposition to locking away murderers for life.
However, proportionality only gives an upper bound to our punishments. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, imply that we always give the maximum punishment. Because punishment has a cost to everyone, not just in dollars but in many other ways, I think we should generally give out the minimum punishment that doesn’t put others in danger.
I’ve never met Van Houten, but from the articles I’ve read, she appears to be no threat to anyone. I’d prefer her as my neighbor over many, many free people (maybe even my current neighbors…). It’s not that I have a particular problem with her continued imprisonment–as I said, I agree that she forfeited her right to be in society–but nevertheless, I think it serves no purpose. And if it serves no purpose but has a cost to everyone else, it should end.
She was sentenced to death, not life. And a normal life sentence can actually be life. There is no guarantee of parole. If there were, Manson would have to be released too.
But many of your fellow citizens do see a purpose, and do not want this (or any) murderer among them. We think releasing her has a cost to society, and serves no purpose.
I mean an actual cost, not one that exists solely in the imagination of various people. This is why we have a justice system based on rational, carefully applied laws and not one based on mob rule. I defer the decision to a team of experts, not laypeople whipped up with emotion.
If you’re imprisoning people on this basis, aren’t you imprisoning people for crimes they might commit in the future? Crimes which they never actually committed? Imprisoning people on the basis that you feel they are potential criminals seems wrong to me.
Suppose you could determine that somebody currently in prison for murder would be ninety percent likely to commit another murder if he was released. I’m assuming from what you’ve said that you would feel that is sufficient grounds to keep this person in prison.
Now suppose you were able to make the same determination on some person living out in the world. This person hasn’t committed a murder but you’re able to determine that he is ninety percent likely to commit a murder if he remains out in the public. Should we lock this person up now in order to avoid the likelihood that he will commit murder in the future?
We do this already. When someone is psychologically disturbed, we put them in a mental institution for the safety of themselves and others. We don’t necessarily call it prison, but we take away their freedom of movement so it amounts to the same thing. We know that people with certain cognitive defects are prone to violence and lock them up on that basis.
Well, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to predict people’s behavior with that accuracy. In principle, I’ll answer yes, but I think it’s quite a stretch for a hypothetical.
Also, if we did have that level of technology, we would have far better solutions than prison. I suspect that Van Houten–and in fact a large segment of the population (probably 10+%) is what one might say “susceptible” to cult programming (particularly at the age she was at). Without a charismatic cult leader controlling her, I doubt that she was any more dangerous than anybody else. This isn’t to excuse her actions but just to say that they were dependent on certain circumstances, and those circumstances can be controlled with a less blunt instrument than prison.
If we have the tech for a magic brain-reading device that can detect murderous intent, then we certainly have the tech for a “cult susceptibility detector”. So all that’s needed for the likes of Van Houten and people like her is to keep them away from cults. That’s a much less invasive solution than imprisonment.
There have been cases, one I recall in my own state, where a fellow was paroled and soon killed someone else. What should the justice system do in that case?
This seems like an odd case. The parole timeline:
1990: Governor Bill Clinton overrides parole board recommendation to commute DuMond’s sentence.
1992: Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker reduces DuMond’s sentence from life plus 20 years to 39 years, making him eligible for parole.
Aug. 29, 1996: The Arkansas parole board votes 4–1 to deny parole.
Sept. 10, 1996: The board votes 5–0 not to recommend commutation or pardon.
Sept. 20, 1996: Governor Mike Huckabee announces his intent to commute Wayne DuMond’s sentence to time served. This initiates a period of 30 to 120 days for comments on the decision, culminating on Jan 20th, 1997. The public reaction is not favorable.
Oct. 31, 1996: Huckabee enters executive session with the parole board.
Nov. 29, 1996: DuMond submits a request for reconsideration.
Dec. 2, 1996: The parole board receives his request for reconsideration
Dec. 19, 1996: DuMond is transferred from the Varner prison facility to the Tucker facility. The reasons given for this vary.
Jan. 9, 1997: DuMond is interviewed at the Tucker facility.
Jan. 16, 1997: The parole board votes 4–1 in favor of probation with the requirement that DuMond leave Arkansas.
Jan. 20,1997: The comment period for commutation would have expired, had DuMond not already been paroled.
Oct. 1999: DuMond is released.
So there was some bizarre political interference there, apparently initiated by Evangelical Christians. The parole board initially denied the request and changed their minds after a meeting with Huckabee. There’s nothing defensible about that; the parole board should be free from that kind of interference. I suppose that they thought parole was preferable to commutation or pardon, and Huckabee was threatening the latter.
Also, he apparently only served around 14 years, and was a repeat offender even prior to his arrest.
All I can really say is don’t listen to the mob, whether they are asking for the prisoner’s release or the prisoner’s head.