I've seen this exact same pattern way too many times from these same ranters to make any such naive presumptions. And again, note that I already challenged certain of them to learn and address the history and reasoning behind the Norwegian jurisprudence in question - did you notice the response I got?
I'll have to go through it again, but I'm assuming you're talking about no more than one or two people.
Every human being is redeemable. It's an inherent property of being human. If you're saying that someone is iredeemable, then you're saying that he is somehow subhuman.
Not at all. The only way your theory holds is if we are all cut from the same cloth, and aside from the insulting and ridiculous implication that we are therefore all capable of doing what Anders did, there is evidence that psychopaths and sociopaths suffer from physical deficiencies in the brain, which indicates that we are
not all the same, and therefore saying that someone is irredeemable is not at all saying that someone is subhuman.
And at any rate, I'm not simply saying that it's impossible for one to redeem themselves from such an act, but also that they shouldn't ever have a chance to. Some acts simply need to be punished, and some types of people need to be eliminated when they do these acts. Whether that's life imprisonment or the death penalty, a person capable of such an act is not one who should be among the general public.
That isn't the same thing as saying that he could ever, say, make true reparations for his crimes. But that's a different story.
Then what would be Anders' redemption, exactly? And I don't want to hear "he'll never kill again," because that isn't good enough when he's already snuffed out 77 people.
None of the answers make me uncomfortable.
Which is precisely what troubles me. Your answers should appall you.
I can't say the same about people who are in such a rush to declare some guy they've never met an irredeemable monster who must be disposed of.
I'm sorry, do I need to have met a man who gleefully murdered 77 innocent people (all while filming his exploits for posterity, of course) to know that he's a monster? Since when aren't a man's acts and motives enough?
Your suggestion is that, in spite of his actions, meeting him could potentially change my mind about him. So, what, if he turns out to be charming and witty and clever, then he's
not a monster? You value someone's social aptitude over their actions? What the hell does that say about
you?
Most people never commit prison-worthy crimes at all. The prison system isn't for dealing with "most people," it's for dealing with people who commit major crimes worthy of prolonged imprisonment.
That's a subjective statement, and one I'd personally disagree with. Not all laws are just, nor are all sentences, primarily the egregious mandatory sentences attached to many nonviolent crimes. There are something like a million nonviolent offenders currently incarcerated in US prisons. Now, that's not to say they're good people, but certainly one can draw a general distinction between nonviolent offenders and, say, a mass-murderer.
And that means that rehabilitation and correction have ceased to be the "primary focus" of your system. They've been demoted to an ancillary consideration, applied only to people whose crimes are "not too bad." The really serious offenders, for whom things like life-sentences are a consideration, are apparently to be exempted from such considerations entirely.
You're misrepresenting my position. The number of offenders on a par with Anders Breivik is low, therefore rehabilitation and correction would be the goal for most of the prison population. But for some--people who commit truly atrocious crimes--there would be no such program.
Also, it does not follow that the program most prisoners would be enrolled in is somehow "ancillary" while the program the minority of prisoners are enrolled in is somehow "primary."
Nobody. What I said was that a "primary consideration" necessarily needs to apply to the type cases that the system is designed to deal with. If it's only used for easy cases, then it necessarily is not "primary."
Again, you have to misrepresent my point to make yours. You have it backwards, as the only
easy cases are the ones with people like Anders Breivik at the center, and those are the ones that would be exempt. The rest of the prisoners--a wide variety of criminals--would be enrolled in the program.
If you'd like to re-word your earlier statement down to exclude the "primary" qualifier, then we'll likely have no dispute here.
We have plenty of disputes here, not simply your incorrect understanding of the concept of primacy.
Of course not. But nor am I intellectually flexible enough to twist the definition of "primary" into something with an exception the size of all capital crimes. Every prisoner is subject to retribution in your system, and only a subset are subject to rehabilitation - that means that retribution is the primary factor, and rehabilitation is a secondary one.
I did not say all capital crimes. Not all murders are irredeemable.
And that's without getting into the practical objections that you've offered no realistic way for your system to discriminate between the redeemable and the irredeemable, which is to say that it invites exactly the primarily-retributive system we currently have
(i.e., everyone who commits a serious enough crime to even warrant an actual prison sentence is largely written off as a lost cause).[/QUOTE]
Another gross misrepresentation of my position, as well as a gross misunderstanding of what qualifies people for prison terms. Did you realize that 63% of State prisoners are in for drug-related crimes? No, clearly you didn't, because your assumption here is that most people in prison would fall into the capital offense category.
