Norway Killer gets 21-Years

[kandrathe]

I'd rather the government didn't have the power to kill it's citizens. Mistakes happen, and also abuse of power. There are sensational aberrations, like this case, which give one pause. But, justice means they get an appropriate punishment. There is little hope for rehabilitation, so this guy is just warehoused human garbage.

Of course mistakes happen, of course there can be abuses of power. It's one of the reasons that I'm not in favor of the Death Penalty as currently legislated in the US either.

This, is the type of case, Timothy McVeigh, Jeffrey Dahmer, These cases where there is no debate, there is no question, These "Sensational Aberrations" as you called them.

There are thousands of hum drum murders every year. Most are gang related, drug related, or domestic violence. Only a few get sensationalized. With serial, or mass murder, you quickly reach the limit of what justice is possible. If a drive by shooting kills a baby sleeping in a house, how is that more or less heinous than a bomb blast killing dozens. How do you punish the murderer? Kill him? Kill him 300 times? Or, do you put them in a cell and make them think about why they are there every day.

Even adding "chain gang" or "hard labor" give the state too much power to abuse it's citizens. It says more about us as a society that we don't kill the killers.

Why? What should they do? Sit there? Do NOTHING?

And I'm confused. Are you saying that it somehow says something "better" about us because we don't kill the killers? That we are somehow... a "better" society, because we stuff the killers in a concrete cell, behind razor wire, in a hole with armed guards? That makes us a better society?

Why are they there?

If it's to punish them, or make them suffer, then why would that do anything other than to provide vengeance?

Is it to remove them from the society to protect the society? Then, sitting in a cell, behind razor wire, with armed guards serves that purpose. We might even let them watch TV. Who cares as long as they are removed from doing harm to us.

If it is for rehabilitation, then who determines what is needed, who does it, who measures it, and ostensibly it is to prepare them to return to society. In that end, providing vocational training, or "work" for them is for their benefit, and ours once they rejoin us in the *real* world. The concept of chain gang, or "hard labor" is Gulag, or vengeance related, and we don't really want the government meting our vengeance to citizens any more than we want them meting out death to citizens.

Minnesota is more like what Deebye described. Violent sociopaths get life long prison terms with little hope of release in their lifetimes. Sexual predators get civilly committed, and so they don't get free ever, unless they serve their lengthy sentence and convince a panel of psychiatrists they are safe to release.

That doesn't make us any better than using the death penalty. Life in Prison without the possibility of Parole, or some such "sentence" feels the same to me as "skeletons in the closet" that we don't want anyone to know about, or see.

It's not a closet. It's prison. A place where they've lost all their freedom, and must do as they are told by prison guards every day.

Most importantly, they are not in our society. To answer my own question from above, the answer is #2. We don't invest enough to rehabilitate, and we don't punish them. The only purpose prisons serve in our society is to separate those who victimize others from our more peaceful society. Our justice system, like most things that the government is involved with, barely works and costs too much.

Which is why we are so confident about them taking on more work.