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Originally Posted by Ranger
The purpose of most prisons is rehabilitation as much as punishment, I think, after all. If somebody truly has been rehabilitated (or has been returned to sanity) then where do you stand, morally, if you desire to just continue to punish them forever anyway? That's not right, either. Personally, I think that anybody that just gets off on punishing others relentlessly or in seeing them punished is a little distrubed too, if you ask me.
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I agree totally. There is nothing to gain from keeping a rehabilitated man in jail. But how can we tell the diference? I think the current legal system is very conservative in its apraisal of a manīs rehabilitation. The legal system prefers to hold and maintain a possibly rehabilitated man in custody, than to release a likely and still criminal element into society. :rolleyes:
But thatīs not the question here.
I have a hard time believing even the craziest of persons would actually be listening to "voices". I think these "voices" are actually part of a lawyerīs strategy, and part of some urban folclore. Itīs common knowledge that lawyers will use any and whatever means necessary to get their client off, including staging a theater for the juri to see. What better to convince a juri than claiming that "i hear voices"?
Honestly, i have yet to come across a genuine case of "voices". Itīs the oldest trick in the book. I imagine that if the "sniper" had pleaded not guilty and claimed hearing voices of Allah, he wouldnīt be sitting in deathrow (if he isnīt dead yet). And you know what separates one from the other? You know what stands between a lifetime in jail or deathrow, and a life in a mental hospital with much better conditions and a pretty good chance of getting out? Itīs simple: all it takes is for you to be a good actor. Wich means, those who suck at acting will suffer in the electric chair, lethal injection or the gas chamber. And those with a "shakespearian" vein in them will get a fair chance of getting away with murder...
Just as she can very well spend her entire life in the mental hospital, she can also get out in a few years. It all depends on wether she really is crazy, and what the hospital board thinks.
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This woman didn't act out of anger or rage, greed or jealousy, or for any personal gain - none of the "normal" motives for murder. She heard voices in her head, and from an "authority" she simply wasn't able to resist. She's obviously crazy.
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So she says. But how can you tell? You will have to rely on her word, the word of a woman on trial for murder, fighting for her life! She will say anything, if she thinks it will help her cause. And how do we know she didnīt kill them out of anger? Because she told us so?
As opposed as i am to the death penalty, i cannot help wondering what else can be done in such cases. I believe that a man who kills another in self defense, or in particular circumstances should be given a second chance in life, and the oportunity of rehabilitating himself. But what can society do with a serial killer? Is there any chance of rehabilitation at all? Are we wasting our efforts on such people? Can we call, having a person commited for life in a mental institution and chemically lobotomized, can we call that "rehabilitation"? I think the Law books are in need of a fundamental change:
If found guilty, the defendant should have the choice to end his own life, instead of spending the rest of it locked up in jail or in a mental hospital. It would be economically advisable, and it would allow the convicts a final choice.
The chances of having a hard criminal rehabilitated after decades in jail are nill. Our current legal system is only capable of punishment, not rehabilitation. The individual will come out of jail as law abbiding as he went in. There is no attempt made on reeducating him, or rehabilitating him to live in society. All they can expect from jailtime is raw punishment, and nothing else...
