stevie_d_64 wrote:I am wondering, (actually, I am not), if the assumption is that these criminals are going to assimilate back into society and become employed, law-abiding, tax paying, members of our community now???
Well that's the big question on the whole crime and punishment thing, isn't it? What do you do? Seriously, if you take a 25 year old man and put him in prison for 40 years, what is the purpose in letting him out? If prison is to punish only, then you have to accept that you're going to have a significant recidivism problem, and go with it. You're simply going to have a large number of institutional criminals... and if you let them out, they're PROBABLY going to come on back. Rehabilitation is up to them, and precious few will actually go straight.
If prison is for rehabilitation, then egregiously long prison terms are counter productive. You can't put a man in prison until he's 65 then let him out without making a social security welfare issue out of him. He doesn't have TIME to be a productive member, he can't build a retirement, etc.
Mind you, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, I'm just saying... what do you DO with these guys? Frankly, I think we would be better off if we upped the executions... But change it around a little bit. For example, someone who's an aggravated rapist should be executed. Their recidivism rate is so egregiously high that they're neigh on impossible to rehabilitate. But if someone commits murder in the heat of the moment, maybe letting them out in 10-20 years serves justice and rehabilitation. The problem is that crimes don't fit into pigeonholes all that easily, and our justice system has tried to codify and categorize everything... Well maybe some judicial latitude would better serve. Of course, judges are people too, and we know how insane some judges can be.
It's a really tough thing when you get down to analyzing it. It's simply a terrible balancing act and we don't do it well at all...and probably still better than most of the other countries in the world.
