[Fat1Fared]

Originally Posted by HolyShadow

I agree that some people can't be saved. I don't agree that they make up half the people in prison.

While I accept that there be exist people for whom rehabilitation is not the answer or the best option, I will not accept that we should not give people a chance just because we think they are no hopers. I will go more into this later.

If there is an extraordinarily negligible chance of their rehabilitation and the crime they committed is heinous, then the death penalty is better than a lifetime sentence, both for the families who suffered and for the state.

You know, about 100,000 people in the UK signed a petition to bring back the death penalty for certain crimes such as pedophilia - and lets face it, pedophilia is about as abhorrent as a crime can get due to the valuable nature of the victims.

Do you also know that most pedophiles hate themselves and there is currently a very successful programme in the UK where pedophiles live very productive lives in their own community. Many of them even choose to take the sip, so as to destroy any chance of them falling to temptation again.

I am not saying this programme will work for all or that every pedophile will be repentant, but this shows that everyone, even those who commit the worst of crimes, deserves some sort of chance at this, at least.

Moritz College of Law published a paper which has also shown that most victims of crime actually feel far more justice at the criminals showing remorse for the wrongs they have committed against the victims than they do at seeing criminals publicly humiliated.

A thief, perhaps, but aren't you also dehumanizing the thief you seek to rehabilitate? In america most people in prison are blacks. This thief is, statistically speaking, most likely black. Their kind of background is likely lower-class with all the cultural problems that modern lower-class african-american communities have, or he most likely wouldn't have ended up in prison in the first place. He has friends, a family, and a poorly-thought-out reason for having stolen what he did. Most likely he's just a punk that doesn't pose much danger if you teach him what the right thing to do is and give him the tools to deal with that. The victims most likely only suffered a loss of a few thousand dollars, so punishment in itself doesn't fit the crime.

In this situation, obviously, rehabilitation is a better choice. But what would you do for a murderer, or as biggles said, a mass-murderer? Teach them the folly of their ways by making them dig ditches and paint fences? I'm sorry, but that's going easy on them. They deserve to suffer for their crimes. They deserve to die if they cannot be rehabilitated.

The point of rehabilitation is ultimately to help them fit in with society as a whole. Practically, that means helping them get a job, since having a job is likely going to integrate them back into society in the fastest manner. It'll also raise their income level to lower the chance they'll commit any crime involving money at all. Some people deserve this help. Other people clearly don't, and not offering the death sentence for those most heinous of criminals is a simple act of mercy.

Secondly, I was referring to thieves and other low-level criminals, so to attack me on the murderer front seems to be attacking me for a point I never made. I never said that I would have murderers painting fences; clearly any rehabilitation order given for them would need to be vastly different to one given to someone charged with thief - this is so blatantly obvious, I am amazed I need to make it explicit.

That being said, I actually do believe there is a fair debate to be had for whether rehabilitation is suitable for murderers and other high-level criminals, so I will address it in due course.

So, as I said previously, while I would hesitate to refute the point that there will be people who do not response to rehabilitation, I will not accept the idea that there are those who do not even deserve the chance and that we should just give up on people before we even try.

One of the most famous criminals ever executed was a prostitute was spent her whole life being raped, beaten and abused before she finally went insane and became a mass-murderer. This is someone whom had been destroyed and forsaken by society and then that same society which failed to protect her had the gull to judge and even execute her. I believe she was not evil or 'beyond saving', but the problem is society was so busy judging her that no one ever even tried. If me believing this makes me a soft-touch, then so be, at least I am strong enough to admit when society - and myself as a part of it - failed.

Her execution was not an act of mercy, it was a final act of mockery at the sick and twisted joke which had been her life - a life which we had been all too willing to waste.

As for your idea that they are 'better off dead than in prison'; well, you may believe that, but that is not a judgement call you can make. If society wishes to have a moral compass and deem that taking the life of another is wrong, then society must live by that rule, as well, otherwise we become the very thing we are trying to protect ourselves from, as the case above shows.

Furthermore, as I have shown, even the most heinous of criminals can show remorse and turn their lives around - if we want to live in a right-minded and free society, then we must give them the chance. We probably cannot undo the wrongs they have committed, but us committing an equal wrong is not going to in anyway make the previous better. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Either way, my point here was to attempt to dispel the absolutist theocracy that punishing criminals is somehow bad in every way. There is a group that benefits from it, albeit in an intangible way, so it is not inherently bad in every way.

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I see that now and it is a concept I can empathise with, but I feel that while there may be a truth to the idea that rehabilitation will not work for all; it would we a great atrocity for us not to try.

QUOTE]
AllisonWalker, quit talking out your ass. I read what you said about social disorders and it sounds almost completely like bullshit. I'm not even going to dignify it with a specific response. Don't play with the big boys if you can't hit the ball.[/QUOTE]

Indeed, my sister and a chief psychiatric nurse of 7 years experience in some of the UKs most famous prisons for the criminally insane, with a host of psychological training under her belt and a masters to come thinks she talking out of her arse, so there we go.

The only statistic which comes anywhere close to agreeing with her is that about 60 per cent of those with criminals records are diagnosed with 'mental illness'; however, the majority of these have things such as depression, so I would hardly call them 'sociopaths'. :P