Lensman

Blimey, this is getting serious!

I’m not a fan of “jail is porridge, water, and chain-gangs”. Making jail hard time certainly does zero in terms of rehab. If you take Turks point that a large number of criminals actually don’t reoffend (or at least, don’t get caught), then the system must be doing something right for some people. You can’t lose that.

Jail is not easy as it is – face it, your basic liberty is taken away. All the other flog’em advocates are after is revenge. That’s not rehab.

The critical bit is in not making release too easy – somehow you simply have to stop the people who have a history of taking or threatening to take life, or who exploit innocent for their own gratification.

Adn I’m not particularly pro death penalty either. As a society we place huge value on life – much more so than many other societies in the world. And so taking life by the state should not be a thing taken lightly.

But rehabilitation – or rather lack of – has serious consequences for some types of offender. If someone breaks into a house, gets jailed, released, and does it again in a couple of years, then there’s not a huge amount of damage other than material.

But if someone does a sadistic murder, molests kids, or rapes women, and gets a 20 year sentence, they get out after 20 years whether or not they have been “rehabilitated”. They have a personality type that at some point made a concious decision to commit such a crime that they absolutely knew was wrong. Neither threat of jail nor threat of execution would have stopped that. Whether that is “illness” or not is immaterial – how can you know they really won’t repeat?

We’re all aware of the recent headlines on repeat offences when someone like this is released. Irrespective of whether capital punishment is right or wrong here, something is seriously amiss that results in another poor kid getting attacked by some sick pervert that has absolutely no place in our society. Top him or lock him up until he dies – same difference.

Sorry for sounding like a hard arse 🙂

@airmessy wrote:

One of the biggest arguments against capital punishment is that they might be innocent.

But in case like this when its cut and dry. When there is absolutely no doubt at all that they did it then they should be fucked over.
Ill say again.. Something that’s long, slow and so painful that they pass out as many times as they can before death.

I would happy do 20+ years for that.

There are no degrees of guilt as far as the law is concerned. You would never be sentenced because, well, you might not have done it. Guilt is beyond reasonable doubt, irrespective of whether the state supports capital punishment or not. *Any* conviction right now is based on whether it is “cut and dry” – if it is not, then the verdict cannot be guilty.

Also, if you did do what you said, you too would get what you suggest – a long slow death.

I’m not against capital punishment, btw – I think there is a class of crimes for which is is applicable. These bastards are just a waste of resources.

@=XDC= MadHippy wrote:

Is that the real Lensman????

Of course not!! Apart from having absolutely no inclination to do so, I also would not have a bloody clue how to hack.

I’ll fetch my coat…..