Norway Killer gets 21-Years

[shoju]

I must have misunderstood you. I thought the idea was to simply dispose of him, Scott Evil style. If all you mean is it's cheap to kill him, I assume there are plenty of lethal instruments available to Norway - no need to buy anything. Push him off a fjord, maybe.

Nope. I just simply mean that offing him is the cost effective measure.

Looks to me like there are three options to kill him.

1) Kill him without legal process.
2) Legalize the death penalty, then kill him.
3) Create a special law for his case, then kill him.

Both of the last two options involve passing a law, somehow. The first violates due process. (Well, they all involve ex post facto justice, which is dodgy in any country.)

And my point is, if the death penalty were already on the option, there would be a legal process, and they wouldn't need to pass laws, because the laws would already have been enacted.

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.

You aren't following me. You are trying to make this about a separate "type" of crime. You can't possibly think that some gang banger who accidentally kills an "innocent bystander" in a shootout has the same mentality as someone who orchestrates a "terror" style plot do you?

Both Crimes are heinous, I wont argue that. But I (personally) look at the example that you put forth, and think there is possibly a chance at rehabilitation.

I look at a person like I laid out in my examples, and don't feel there is a chance of rehabilitation. Someone like Breivik isn't going to sit there in that cell and wake up one day and realize what he did was wrong. He isn't going to look at this, and say "MAN! I MESSED UP!" He thinks he is a martyr for his cause, He isn't going to be able to join the population again. He isn't going to be able to be a "normal functioning member of society" or even a "fringe member of society" He has no remorse, and there isn't much likelihood that he will ever have remorse for it. At that point, locking him away is just tossing the skeleton in the deepest darkest closet, and hoping that no one remembers it, or that he goes on and does something else.

Why are they there?

Because society / lawmakers / judges / etc... decided that their actions were a crime, and that there was a debt to society involved.

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

If you look at it all as vengeance, then why bother locking them up in the first place? Why not just slap the backs of their hands, and give them a stern talking to. OH right. That doesn't work.

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.

I care, Because they are wasting our money sitting there and doing nothing? I guess it's one of the things that I grew up with. Punishment was always equal parts removal from society (grounding, not allowed to attend something), and "punishment" (working during the time that I should have been doing what I wanted to).

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.

I disagree. "Chain Gang" and "Hard Labor" provides a service. Consider it their employment that covers things like "Preparing them to return to society". Again, I'm not saying that the US system is "right", but I'm not saying that it's wrong either, because I don't look at it as vengeance. If I were looking at it as vengeance, I would hand over the prisoner to those who they wronged, and let them decide the punishment.

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.

It's a metaphor, I think that might have been lost on you. No. They haven't lost all freedom. Solitary Confinement is about the only place in a prison where a prisoner has lost "All" freedom. There is the illusion that they have lost all freedom because they are behind walls, and live in a cell, and wear clothing we find to be degrading as a society, and they have a very regimented lifestyle, as though they where they were children. Almost similar to Boot Camp in some ways.

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.

I wont argue that enough isn't invested in rehabilitation, or that the justice system as currently is, struggles to "work". But I bear issue with the idea that prisons are just these holes we throw people. Maybe they get better, maybe they rejoin society, maybe they don't. You put them to work, you put them to task. You give them goals, including rehabilitation (when it is applicable).

I keep seeing arguments like this - how costly it is to keep these psychos in prison for the rest of their lives versus how cheap it is to just kill them.

I have a few issues with that line of thought, but the main one is this - is it really cheaper to administer the death penalty than it would be to house them in prison forever? It's not like they build special prisons for these guys with specially trained and equipped guards, Magneto-style. Find a dark cell in the basement of an active prison and remember to feed him (or her, must not discriminate) some gruel once or twice a day. The main costs the taxpayers pick up when dealing with these monsters is more due to the legal system. The millions spent on them is actually prosecuting them, which is going to happen regardless of whether the death penalty is applied or not. After that, things get relatively cheap no matter how you decide the fate.

As Kandrathe points out, the average prisoner in California is $47,102 per year. In other states (North Carolina).

The actual "Cost" of putting a person to death under current laws is hard to quantify, because most of the "statistics" that you find point to the overall blanket costs associated with the death penalties including appeals processes, Death Row, and the like. Like I said, The US System isn't "right".

And if I can add to that. These things like the Breivik case don't happen a lot in Norway, so spending some crazy amount of money once isn't as bad as changing the whole ethical basis of your country.
Also, the money spend, is mainly manpower I guess so it is not like it is thrown away.

The fact that Breivik deserves the death penalty is a whole other discussion than the one of having the possibility of giving the death penalty in a country.

I agree with you on both points. I may not... "Like" the idea of it not being there (death penalty), but your reasoning makes sense.

In California, $47, 102 per year. Versus the risk of recidivism...

I'm willing to pay that to keep an axe murderer locked up. I have issues with the crack and pot smokers getting locked up.

I don't have an issue with it. Rarely, is the sole reason they are being locked up because they smoked crack or pot. There are normally other charges that are put forth with them.

I see your point though. I don't think Drug Abusers are helped in Prison. My son's mother didn't kick her drug problem until she went to rehab. We're still waiting for her to kick the "I'm a terrible human being" problem that the drug abuse made worse.