Originally Posted by Chula Vista

Bard, unprovoked, stabbed a dude 37 times and then stomped his head in while he lay bleeding to death. And he showed zero remorse about it.

He served a total of 9 years in prison?

Like I said, messed up IMO.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I disagree. The percentage in America of former prisoners relapsing into their old ways and ending up back in prison certainly isn't an argument in favor of our way. I don't agree with the concept of an eye for an eye and punishing criminals just for the sake of our own sense of revenge. It doesn't do us any favors as a moral society, and it doesn't seem to help deter crime.

Prison centered around rehabilitation is the way to go as far as I'm concerned. Think of criminals as dysfunctional elements of society. We expect our citizens to act in ways that accord with society's goals and values (in a more human and less clinical way of course, but I'm just using stark terminology to take distracting, emotional associations out of the equation), but a criminal isn't acting in a desirable way. Whether it be gang-related activity, murder, rape, financial fraud, etc, these people are introducing stimuli into our society that we deem harmful and counterproductive.

Rather than deal with them emotionally (i.e. vengeance), I think it would make more sense to rationally consider what stimuli to introduce to them to bring them in line with our current concept of a functional member of society. Giving prisoners access to education, reasonable living conditions that don't give the impression that society is dehumanizing them, fair treatment that likewise doesn't dehumanize them, individualized rehabilitation methods (i.e. don't treat gang bangers with the same rehabilitation methods you would a serial rapist or a Wall Street insider trader).

I guess what I'm saying is to approach your attitude to criminals with compassion, but treat their rehabilitation with dispassion. It'll take trial and error and learning to figure all of this out, and sometimes individuals just can't be helped and really do need to be kept from society, but in the long-term this approach will make far more sense than just throwing criminals into overcrowded prisons to make them even more hardened criminals.