[Hellzed]

In many countries, it's now illegal to even sentence someone to life in prison without a possibility of parole or revision. And in most countries which have abolished death penalty, it's also illegal to literally leave people to die in a jail (that's why in most european countries time in prison is limited to 30 years and do no cumulate).

Not a bad thing for human rights, in my opinion, especially if we consider that prison is a way to ensure public safety and not some kind of "public vendetta" against what some people consider to be monsters. Destroying human beings should not be, under any circumstances, a goal for a liberal state, and leanings towards barbarity shall be crushed before it's too late.

[MP-Ryan]

Actually, most people are simply incapable of consciously killing another human, regardless of circumstances.

* MP-Ryan tosses BS flag.

Show me the most mild-mannered woman in the world who can't even kill insects, and I promise that in less than 10 minutes she could demonstrate the capability to kill another human being with her bare hands, if necessary.  Every human being is physically and psychologically capable of killing another, given the right (or rather, wrong) set of circumstances.

In many countries, it's now illegal to even sentence someone to life in prison without a possibility of parole or revision. And in most countries which have abolished death penalty, it's also illegal to literally leave people to die in a jail (that's why in most european countries time in prison is limited to 30 years and do no cumulate).

Not a bad thing for human rights, in my opinion, especially if we consider that prison is a way to ensure public safety and not some kind of "public vendetta" against what some people consider to be monsters. Destroying human beings should not be, under any circumstances, a goal for a liberal state, and leanings towards barbarity shall be crushed before it's too late.

There are a number of reasons I disagree with both those laws and your opinion of them.  This is one:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Olson

There are certain individuals which, once removed from a society, should never be permitted to return to it.  I don't necessarily favour the death penalty (certainly in practice it is much more cumbersome than life in prison), but life in prison remains an option in most countries and should continue to do so.

[666maslo666]

There are certain individuals which, once removed from a society, should never be permitted to return to it.  I don't necessarily favour the death penalty (certainly in practice it is much more cumbersome than life in prison), but life in prison remains an option in most countries and should continue to do so.

If your only goal is to keep society safe and not to punish them, then thats what high security psychiatric institutions are for, not prisons.

[MP-Ryan]

Psychiatric institutions are for treatment.  Prisons have multiple goals, in order: rehabilitation, deterrence and punishment, public safety.

At any rate, I think you missed my point precisely because I was saying that certain individuals should be placed in prisons for the remainder of their lives for the protection of society AND punishment, as in the example.  Olsen was likely diagnosable with some mental disorders, but not of the correctable variety and certainly not of a type that would have rendered him not criminally responsible for his actions.  He knew what he was doing.  The appropriate response - which our system allows - is an indefinite prison sentence.  The man was always going to die in jail from the moment of his sentence.

[BloodEagle]

As much as I recognize where it comes from and why, and as much as I agree that some distasteful things have to be done in order to keep society orderly, I always feel disturbed as Hell when people are cheering for torture as a form of justice or are just tickled pink at the prospect of another human being dead.

Well, I don't see a problem here. We're talking a monster, not a human. It might look like one, but things often look like something they're not.

Dehumanization arguments aside (because that's bull****), I would still feel disturbed with the same circumstances involving a deer or a pig.  The reaction of glee over suffering and death is ****ing disturbing to me.

Actually, most people are simply incapable of consciously killing another human, regardless of circumstances. In most cases, it takes about six months of brutal conditioning to change that in a military boot camp. And even then, half of it is convincing a recruit that the enemy isn't human. To be able to kill and rape "just like that", one must be dehumanized, as those things go against everything the civilized society conditions us not to do. It's impossible to operate in a human society while completely rejecting this conditioning. [...]

If this were true, the world would be a very different place.

--

If I think he is no longer human, I'd toss him into a tank full of sharks or a cage of tigers.

That's rather recursive.

[General Battuta]

I'm with most of Dragon's sentence. I'd just change the 'regardless of circumstance' to 'except under specific circumstance'.

[redsniper]

muricans know how to imprison people, we are the best in the world in this regard.

Boy howdy...

[AdmiralRalwood]

Well, I don't see a problem here. We're talking a monster, not a human. It might look like one, but things often look like something they're not.

One of those most dangerous things you can do when looking at the perpetrator of some sort of heinous act is to convince yourself that they're not human. It's perfectly understandable why the brain does this, of course; if they're not human, you don't have to agonize over trying to empathize with them. You don't have to worry about whether or not you might be capable of doing something like that; after all, you're human, and they're not... right?

The truth is, you are capable of doing exactly the same things. You probably won't, but that's not the same thing as saying you are mentally incapable of performing them. Humans are all capable of doing horrible things. Convincing yourself you're not capable sounds like a good way to just stop paying attention to your own behavior... after all, you aren't capable of doing something like that, so why should you monitor yourself to make sure you don't?