Sometimes there are not a lot of other options. What’s the greater wrong: locking someone up forever, or letting them go when they’re still dangerous and having them harm even more people? In the first case you’re restricting one person’s rights as a reaction to his behavior; in the other you could be ignoring the rights of someone (or multiple people) who hasn’t done anything wrong.
That’s not Charles Manson. He’s taken every conceivable opportunity to remind people that he’s not sorry, still a threat, and not particularly interested in getting out of prison. In dealing with people who have actually changed and don’t appear to be a danger to anybody - some of Manson’s followers would qualify - I’m not opposed to releasing them.
Nobody’s talking about punishing anyone “forever”. Manson won’t be in prison a thousand years from now.
But punishing somebody for the rest of their life? Yes, that seems fair to me. I feel it’s just for the magnitude of the punishment to equal the magnitude of the crime. Some would argue that means murder should be a capital offense. But I’ll settle for imprisoning somebody for the rest of their life. The rest of their lives is what the murderer took from the victims.
Must the magnitude of the punishment always fit the crime? Must a sicko torturer be slowly disemboweled and allowed to die of starvation and gangrene if he did that to his victim? How far is too far for us to go? Where is our moral superiority over these criminals?
Manson isn’t being punished. His incarceration isn’t about him, it’s about us. He’s dangerous and needs to be segregated from the rest of us so he doesn’t kill any more of us. Manson isn’t being tortured, he is treated exactly the same way any other dangerous prisoner is treated.
If there was a way to cure him such that we were sure he’d never be dangerous again, then we could talk about letting him go. But he isn’t cured. So now what? Either we keep him locked up, or we put him to sleep like a rabid dog. We don’t shoot a rabid dog to punish the dog, and euthanizing Manson wouldn’t be punishment either.
I agree completely. I’m arguing with people who don’t think we should talk about freeing him no matter what.
For myself I see little difference between locking people up for the rest of their lives and killing them. In both cases we have taken away the rest of their lives. The main difference I can see is that with LWOP we can change our minds later whereas we can’t resurrect executed criminals. I believe that punishment should have a purpose other than to make us feel better. It should serve to reduce the crime rate. It seems to me that a person who would not risk a life sentence in prison would be equally deterred by a long prison sentence. How do you judge an appropriate punishment?
If inmates pose a particular danger to society then they should remain incarcerated.
Reasonable people can be deterred by reasonably long prison sentences. Unreasonable people cannot be deterred.
I’m a little surprised by you saying you see no significant difference between life imprisonment and execution. I think there’s a major difference. I’ll admit I have no moral certainty on the issue of capital punishment - I can’t honestly say I’m certain it’s always wrong or that it may sometimes be right. But the fact that I have these doubts cause me to feel that there isn’t enough moral clarity on the issue to go ahead with capital punishment. I wouldn’t want to execute anyone unless I was certain it was the right thing to do.
Fortunately, there is a ready alternative - imprisonment. I feel it is possible to be morally certain that imprisonment is a just punishment (and I have a personally informed opinion on the subject). You have agreed that imprisonment is an acceptable punishment in some degree so the only issue on which we differ is how long it should be.
On that issue, I think I’ve already answered your question here. I feel an appropriate punishment is one which is equal in magnitude to the crime and, for reasons I’ve given, I feel life imprisonment is the appropriate punishment for murder.
Who says we have, or even claim moral superiority? Who says we want it? We have an established society, and we have rules that we have decided are workable. Laws that keep Manson are not to establish/showcase moral superiority. They are for sequestration, punishment, prevention, for the good of society. Moral superiority is only smoke and mirrors in this equation. Irrelevant.
Normally I’d agree that the answer to a question like this is obvious. But as this thread indicates, there are people who think that Charles Manson should be paroled.
And as facts indicated, there was as much chance of that happening as there is of the U.S. opening Christian concentration camps, with approximately the same percentage of supporters for either in real life.
