Sendraks wrote:

Fallible wrote:Again, you're just assuming that giving someone the possibility of parole is the same as inevitably letting them out of jail at some point.

I think that perhaps part of the problem that Lak and Coastal are getting at, is about a lack of confidence in the parole system in determining with any sort of accuracy whether someone is suitable for parole. I agree that this is a definite weakness in the system where little or no rehabilitation takes place.

But then, why have any sort of system of parole if you're not actually going to do anything meaningful to rehabilitate someone?
It makes no sense and instead you get prisoners being taught, by other prisoners, how to get round a parole board. Amazing how many prisoners, in the US at least, seem to "find God" in prison and that becomes a tool for securing parole. Which goes to show how fucked up parole boards can be.

Yeah - and that would be an argument for a better system. Certainly in my view it falls some way short of being a point in favour of life without parole (or CP).

Fallible wrote:Yeah - and that would be an argument for a better system. Certainly in my view it falls some way short of being a point in favour of life without parole (or CP).

There are no points in favour for life without parole that I can see, especially in the case of someone as young as 16. LWOP is just a cop out or conscionable alternative to CP. Even though no one is being killed, their life is still being taken away.

And I've yet to see anyone magically return from the dead as a result of someone being LWOP'd.

Just another life wasted.

Yup.

Sendraks wrote:And I've yet to see anyone magically return from the dead as a result of someone being LWOP'd.

Does this mean you have seen someone magically returned from the dead as a result of something?

colubridae wrote:

Sendraks wrote:And I've yet to see anyone magically return from the dead as a result of someone being LWOP'd.

Does this mean you have seen someone magically returned from the dead as a result of something?

Sendraks wrote:
If all you're going to do is lock someone up, then to realistically expect them to be much different at the end of the duration with zero interventions intended to benefit the individual have occurred, is madness. Sadly, so many people out there think that being in prison will magically change a person.

Particularly in most U.S. prisons, hellholes that they are. European penal systems are often held up as exemplars of modern, rehabilitation based penology, particularly the Nordic countries. But is this true? Recidivism rates are the most common metric used to judge the success or failure of a particular correctional philosophy. In Florida, recidivism rates for violent crimes varies from 26% for murder to 39% for robbery. Non-violent offenses vary between about 20 to 34 percent. So the overall 36 month recidivism rates vary between 20 and 39%. From what I know about the Florida penal system, rehabilitation and education are pretty far down the list of priorities.

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/recidivism/2012/

Contrast this with Norway, which is usually held up as the best European system. I can't find the same statistical breakdown but their overall rate is about 20%. Looking at all Nordic countries together, their recidivism rates vary between 20 and 34 percent.

http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/space/publications/recidivism-studies/

You can't draw any hard and fast conclusions from this data, there are too many variables in statistical methodology. However, it certainly isn't a clear cut win for rehabilitation versus punishment.

Perhaps there is a subset of the population that are not good candidates for rehabilitation?

laklak wrote: However, it certainly isn't a clear cut win for rehabilitation versus punishment.

I see your point, but I don't consider the European system to do anything more than scratch the surface of rehabilitation. The money is just not there to deliver it. So I don't think any valid comparison between rehabilitative and punitive systems exists, because the former hasn't been delivered in a meaningful way anywhere yet.

And even if rehabilitation were to be delivered, that effects of that still have to weighed against the sort of society an individual is going back into. If the social issues of deprivation are not being tackled, then an individual returning to their old social group is going to find pressures towards criminal behaviour.

laklak wrote:Perhaps there is a subset of the population that are not good candidates for rehabilitation?

I think this is probably true, but there simply isn't the information to determine with any accuracy who those individuals are. But I concur that they probably exist.

In an attempt to halt the derail, I'm simply minded to note at this juncture, how the attempts on the part of numerous posters here, to arrive at humane solutions to complex problems, drives a tank battalion through the duplicitous and defamatory assertions the OP wished to hurl at atheists, using tiresomely familiar apologetic fabrications and insinuations that anyone not treating his pet mythology as fact must somehow be some sort of recrudescent monster by default.

By contrast, here's the sort of "solution" to problems all too often arising from Christofascist fundamentalists ...

Zadocfish2 wrote:
And spear-thrower, I was about to get out into argument mode until I actually read your post. Funny how you can take one bit of a comment out of context and get an entirely different impression its meaning, huh?

Aye, that was rather my point in making it, to adopt the methodology Carl has used.

Zadocfish2 wrote:
Just throwing this out here. I am pro-life and pro-capital punishment. I think babies deserve a chance, and people that have taken innocent life for no good reason do not. (Well, not really. I'm pro-life because I lost a potential sibling that way, and given the circumstances I was likely a hair's breadth away from the same fate. And I'm pro-CP because I know of at least one case where CP being bigger in the 40's saved the life of my great-grandmother.)

Regarding this, I think you've bought into an extremist position.

No one serious is ever suggesting the killing of babies. A baby is a fully functional, potentially independent human.

A foetus depends on the mother entirely - it is a part of her body, for all intents and purposes

No laws allow the termination of a foetus (except in medical circumstances) which is 8 or 9 moths old, because the state recognises the potential independence of that infant.

Presumably, there must be a time during the development of the foetus when you would agree that terminating it is not taking a life of a human. Whether that be after 1 week, 1 month, or whatever. Certainly, you can't hold a position that a zygote is a human. A sperm / egg is not a baby and it's not alive. A zygote is not a baby, and it's not alive. Somewhere between conception and birth, we can agree on a point where the foetus can be considered sufficiently independent to be considered human and to be accorded the rights of an independent human.

Whichever grading you come to in the end, you'd find that your position isn't the extreme one you've capitulated above.

The term 'pro-life' is a label designed to appeal to idiots who can't think for themselves.

I saw a gaggle of atheists brutally murder a keg of beer and a stack of pizzas once. Bastards!

Sendraks wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Sendraks wrote:Better to let a guilty man walk free than put an innocent man to death.

With the former option, you have the opportunity to correct the error. With the latter, you don't.

Absolutely. So many in favour of capital punishment are utterly indifferent to the consequences of putting innocents to death. They only care about retribution and justice plays a distinct second fiddle to that.

I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that anyone is suggesting that forgoing Capital Punishment we just release the person.
It is entirely possible, and does happen, that someone guilty is found not guilty and goes out and kills again.
Life Without Parole at least covers for those people, whch seems to be not uncommon, who are put on death roe and found innocent.
No, it doesn't restore the time lost, but when found innocent they do have a life.

KeenIdiot wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

Sendraks wrote:Better to let a guilty man walk free than put an innocent man to death.

With the former option, you have the opportunity to correct the error. With the latter, you don't.

Absolutely. So many in favour of capital punishment are utterly indifferent to the consequences of putting innocents to death. They only care about retribution and justice plays a distinct second fiddle to that.

I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that anyone is suggesting that forgoing Capital Punishment we just release the person.
It is entirely possible, and does happen, that someone guilty is found not guilty and goes out and kills again.
Life Without Parole at least covers for those people, whch seems to be not uncommon, who are put on death roe and found innocent.
No, it doesn't restore the time lost, but when found innocent they do have a life.

Too right cobber, I prefer my caviar fresh also.

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

KeenIdiot wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:



With the former option, you have the opportunity to correct the error. With the latter, you don't.

Absolutely. So many in favour of capital punishment are utterly indifferent to the consequences of putting innocents to death. They only care about retribution and justice plays a distinct second fiddle to that.

I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that anyone is suggesting that forgoing Capital Punishment we just release the person.
It is entirely possible, and does happen, that someone guilty is found not guilty and goes out and kills again.
Life Without Parole at least covers for those people, whch seems to be not uncommon, who are put on death roe and found innocent.
No, it doesn't restore the time lost, but when found innocent they do have a life.

Too right cobber, I prefer my caviar fresh also.

Zadocfish2 wrote:I am pro-life and pro-capital punishment.

You're pro-life and pro-death?

Still working on where the tipping point for that change of opinion lies. Currently: around birth.

Whenever the subject of capital punishment crops up I always trot out the aphorism: Killing people to show people that killing people is wrong, is wrong.

Of course, killing someone is wrong, except when it isn't--which is simply a way to acknowledge that its not easy to declare all killing axiomatically immoral--but when killing someone forms a portion of any state-run justice system it places an undue and unattainable burden on that system: it requires the system to be functionally flawless if it is to remain, or at least stake any reasonable claim to being, a just system. The very real possibility of error forecloses, at least for me, on the possibility of killing people forming part of any just system.

Having said that, even if a justice system were flawless, and prosecutions could be secured incontrovertibly and without error, I'd still maintain that killing someone for killing someone is wrong, because not only does it contradict itself at a fundamental level but it also runs the risk of foreclosing on other contributory factors, such as personal, situational, and social circumstances, being taken into account.

Additionally, if the State, through the offices of the law, is to say, "If you kill then you will die," then the resultant executions necessarily entail delay and premeditation, two features of killing which distinguish killing in self-defence (which I would say is justifiable, depending on the circumstances) and murder. In these circumstances the State cannot secure a claim that it is acting in self-defence (of society), that is; that it is engaging in a justifiable killing, as the State already has the custody and control of an individual it needs in order to carry out the capital judgement; which now becomes little more than a state-sanctioned murder.

In effect, these elements of delay and premeditation not only make the State complicit in murder but, by extension, as the State administrates justice on behalf of society as a whole it also makes all those who are involved in the justice system, and all of society, complicit in murder.

As an individual who values and aspires to a free, fair and just society I do not wish to see the whole of a society made accomplices to murders carried out in its name, in circumstances where society is necessarily not at risk of further harm from convicted individuals in the custody of the State.

I do not hold with those who say that there is a distinction between 'killing' and 'murder' where killing is justifiable in law and murder isn't, and I particular do not hold with those who say that that the institutions invested with, or in whom we invest, authority can simply declare their killing justifiable, either in law or by edict or fiat, if and when it is carried out on behalf of, or at the behest of, that authority.

Sendraks wrote:

colubridae wrote:

Sendraks wrote:And I've yet to see anyone magically return from the dead as a result of someone being LWOP'd.

Does this mean you have seen someone magically returned from the dead as a result of something?

Why are you facepalming?

Your statement:-

And I've yet to see anyone magically return from the dead as a result of someone being LWOP'd.

Brings nothing to the argument.
LWOP won’t magically return anyone from death.
CP won’t magically return anyone from death.
Rehab and Counselling won’t magically return anyone from death.
Correcting societies’ ills won’t magically return anyone from death.

No-one suggested that LWOP (or anything else) would return anyone from the dead.
It doesn’t count for or against LWOP (or anything).


So why say it?

And why facepalm my sarcasm?

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

KeenIdiot wrote:

Sendraks wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:



With the former option, you have the opportunity to correct the error. With the latter, you don't.

Absolutely. So many in favour of capital punishment are utterly indifferent to the consequences of putting innocents to death. They only care about retribution and justice plays a distinct second fiddle to that.

I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that anyone is suggesting that forgoing Capital Punishment we just release the person.
It is entirely possible, and does happen, that someone guilty is found not guilty and goes out and kills again.
Life Without Parole at least covers for those people, whch seems to be not uncommon, who are put on death roe and found innocent.
No, it doesn't restore the time lost, but when found innocent they do have a life.

Too right cobber, I prefer my caviar fresh also.

Well done.

It was late and my brain gave me the wrong word.