LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksWith the crimes getting worse and the crimnals getting younger, is it time now to have a life meaning life sentence? If so, for what crimes? Should more jails be built anyway so as to avoid overcrowing?
Any posts would be helpful.
With the crimes getting worse and the crimnals getting younger, is it time now to have a life meaning life sentence? If so, for what crimes? Should more jails be built anyway so as to avoid overcrowing?
Any posts would be helpful.
"Sea! Is féidir linne freisin!" Eamon Gilmore
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: from -4.38 to -6.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: from -4.05 to -3.74
Murder and Attempted Murder, no exemptions.
Life should mean life. It should be meted out to sociopaths who have never any hope of peacefully returning to society. Having said that, not everyone who gets "life" under the current system should automatically get the new life. If fifteen years is just, they should get it, or 25 and so on. For example, a twenty year old who gets "life" will probably be out by the time their forty. We should just call a spade a spade and give them twenty years if thats all their going to get.
Proper life sentences should be handed out to rapists, child abusers & serial killers. Everyone else has at least a reasonable chance of rehabilitation. Then you get in to the whole "why don't we just kill them" debate but my response is that I don't believe in a an eye for an eye, and keeping them rotting away on my dime is a fair price to live in a society that is better than them. Death is too good for them. Demons can only torture you while your alive.
Michael Courtney
Lusk
I can never understand why these debates are so overwhelmingly focussed on the time component of sentencing.
I'd like to debate the merits of mother************************************ backbreaking hard work for these heavy offences. Is that still un-PC ?
I mean chain-gang hard labour, for it's own sake. I don't care if that is digging big holes and filling them back in again. The pain, the tedium, and unfamiliarity with actual work would be some punishment for a lot of these tools.
And if they're in the fields for twelve hours a day, they're not going to have a lot of energy left for trashing cells and hijacking whole wings. Or calling Liveline.
In addition, I have to say that any proposals for a system that has no prospect of redemption, is inhuman. Capital punishment would be a no-no for me too. Although if it was by the inmate's own request, no bother.
Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?
When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it.
- Luke Kelly
I don't believe life should mean life. Almost everybody has the possibilty of rehabilitation, given the chance.
I agree with "the impossibilist", that more use should be made of our inmates. Not only does work have the potential to tire people to the point where they are not scheming to disrupt the prison, but it also provides a structure and purpose to the life of a person who may never have had that structure. In itself that is a form of rehabilitation.
If a random stranger entered your house, stabbed a member of your family to death, stabbed you nearly to death, and had done it simply because he was in a bad mood, would you agree to his release on grounds of rehabilitation 15 years later?Originally Posted by rightsofman
If the random stranger gave the reason for his actions to be simply "being in a bad mood", then of course I would be very hesitant to ever believe he could be rehabilitated, that person would have serious psychological problems, I wouldn't be confident that they could realise the effects of their actions, even after 15 years of imprisonment. I wouldn't be confident of them not re-offending.If a random stranger entered your house, stabbed a member of your family to death, stabbed you nearly to death, and had done it simply because he was in a bad mood, would you agree to his release on grounds of rehabilitation 15 years later?
However, if the person had the capacity to show genuine remorse, and had used those 15 years to prove beyond doubt that they had changed for the better, then yes I would agree to their release. Of course the release would not be unconditional.
There are circumstances where a person can make a terrible mistake, and there are people who are capable of rehabilitation.
Perhaps then categories of homicide, including differentiation between types of murder, would be helpful. Life is much too cheap at the moment, murderers do not fear the consequences of their actions.
I would agree with you about the need for categorisation but I would extend a whole life sentence to crimes of a sexual nature and organised criminal offences where their is no chances of rehabilitation, and ofcourse terrorism.Perhaps then categories of homicide, including differentiation between types of murder, would be helpful. Life is much too cheap at the moment, murderers do not fear the consequences of their actions.
But then again I would support the death penalty for most of those offences.
Liquidate labour, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.
[quote=Defeated Romanticist]I would agree with you about the need for categorisation but I would extend a whole life sentence to crimes of a sexual nature and organised criminal offences where their is no chances of rehabilitation, and ofcourse terrorism.Perhaps then categories of homicide, including differentiation between types of murder, would be helpful. Life is much too cheap at the moment, murderers do not fear the consequences of their actions.
But then again I would support the death penalty for most of those offences.[/quote:3egscrt6]
Depends how you define 'terrorism', I would not include all political violence, guerilla warfare, etc., but would include deliberate targeting of civilians. I oppose the death penalty in all cases, I do not admit the right of anyone to take life other than in the extremely limited circumstances of self- or mutual-defence.
Reply With Quote