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This kid has no conscience

Cainkane1 said:
Well it does make me feel safer when the murderers of this country are placed behind bars for life. This punk killed two innocent people and here the punk is smiling about it??? How could society actually help this little monster and keep its innocent citizens safe? Lock him up for life.
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To be fair, we have no idea what he is smiling about. Maybe he's freaking out and thinks this will look cool. Maybe from a different angle it would look like he's also trying to hold back tears. Maybe one of his guards just farted, really loud.
 
Screw parole. Scumbags like this need to be locked up for life. I couldn't care less about helping this piece of ****. Protecting society is the first concern and the best way to do that is to make sure he will never get out of prison. I don't really care if he is sick in the head. If he is given a chance of parole it is certainly possible that he will convince the parole board that he is no longer a threat and then do this again when he gets out. Better to just be sure. It is a too bad that it is unconstitutional to apply the death penalty for crimes committed while under the age of 18, however.
 
Mirrorglass said:
It wasn't intended to be so much a strawman as hyperbole, commenting on certain attitudes. It always bothers me when people speak of cases like this as if everything went well; the evil murderer will be punished, and justice will have been done. No thought is spared for the situation of the obviously mentally unstable perpetrator, and on whether he could have been helped (or god forbid, whether he still could be).

To put it simply, when I look at this case, I don't think "Good, justice was done" but "Man, why did no-one predict this"? And it pains me to see people take glee in the future suffering of the perpetrator, never stopping to consider whether the society has any responsibility for not preventing the crime in the first place.

And lastly, it really annoys me when people say this person should be locked away for life, no chance for parole. The kid is seventeen, and totally messed in the head. With therapy, in 20 or 30 years he could be fixed. He also might not be, but I don't see taking away all chance of freedom, no matter what, as anything but cruelty in the name of a flimsy concept of justice.
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How would you predict that a specific individual would do something like this? And what specificity would you do to prevent it?

It's easy to talk about how society is responsible in some vague indeterminate way. But don't you think that society also has a responsibility to people that manage to run their lives without murdering convenience store clerks?
I don't think it's fair to others in the society to roll the dice and hope if you turn him loose he doesn't repeat something similar. The reality is, that if you permanently lock this person up, this specific individual can't be a danger to others.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Well it does make me feel safer when the murderers of this country are placed behind bars for life. This punk killed two innocent people and here the punk is smiling about it??? How could society actually help this little monster and keep its innocent citizens safe? Lock him up for life.
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If only life was really this easy. Multiple times now it seems you're preoccupied with "those punk kids these days", as if this is a generational issue and you did not have sociopaths when you were younger. The media has influenced the way people see the world to a disturbing degree.

I empathize and agree with Mirrorglass, the way we view justice and the idea that people "deserve" anything is founded on primitive emotional responses we need to out grow. At least people are beginning to realize it more and more. Hopefully we out grow these petty ideals, just as we out grew rulers claiming divine appointment and slavery.
 
Halfcentaur said:
If only life was really this easy. Multiple times now it seems you're preoccupied with "those punk kids these days", as if this is a generational issue and you did not have sociopaths when you were younger. The media has influenced the way people see the world to a disturbing degree.

I empathize and agree with Mirrorglass, the way we view justice and the idea that people "deserve" anything is founded on primitive emotional responses we need to out grow. At least people are beginning to realize it more and more. Hopefully we out grow these petty ideals, just as we out grew rulers claiming divine appointment and slavery.
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What do you have to say against the fact that if this monster is in prison for the rest of its life it cannot murder any more convenience store clerks for a little bit of money and some cigarettes again?
 
dtugg said:
What do you have to say against the fact that if this monster is in prison for the rest of its life it cannot murder any more convenience store clerks for a little bit of money and some cigarettes again?
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It's clear we don't have a perfect system. I am not sitting here proclaiming a better way of doing things, step by step, or addressing this specific case. There is no point in asking me "Do you have a better idea?" I fall victim to primitive desires just like any animal, but it's thinking outside the box of instinct and behavior I am alluding to. It needs to be said, especially given the context of this discussion. While some people have no hope of co existing with society, some people simply make a bad choice in a time when any one of us could have made a bad choice. The way we look at people as forever being tainted by their sin is a primitive relic, left over from our past. It was necessary at one time, but now we understand psychology and logic more.

We think about these things all wrong, but we're only building on the culture and system we were given. I am not assigning blame for why we do things the way we do them. There is however a definitive need to be addressed, we need to look at these things and ask ourselves why it is that we do them.

It's not as simple as "bad person does bad things and they go away forever". Or "bad person does bad thing and deserves bad thing to happen to bad person". It's easy to get frustrated when trying to reason out why these things happen, and how to improve the current system. There's really no such thing as "blame", and "deserving". These concepts are about emotional indulgence.
 
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Halfcentaur said:
It's clear we don't have a perfect system. I am not sitting here proclaiming a better way of doing things, step by step, or addressing this specific case. There is no point in asking me "Do you have a better idea?" I fall victim to primitive desires just like any animal, but it's thinking outside the box of instinct and behavior I am alluding to. It needs to be said, especially given the context of this discussion. While some people have no hope of co existing with society, some people simply make a bad choice in a time when any one of us could have made a bad choice. The way we look at people as forever being tainted by their sin is a primitive relic, left over from our past. It was necessary at one time, but now we understand psychology and logic more.

We think about these things all wrong, but we're only building on the culture and system we were given. I am not assigning blame for why we do things the way we do them. There is however a definitive need to be addressed, we need to look at these things and ask ourselves why it is that we do them.

It's not as simple as "bad person does bad things and they go away forever". Or "bad person does bad thing and deserves bad thing to happen to bad person". It's easy to get frustrated when trying to reason out why these things happen, and how to improve the current system. There's really no such thing as "blame", and "deserving". These concepts are about emotional indulgence.
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You act as though putting pieces of crap in prison forever is a purely emotional response with no rational basis. That is clearly not true. The fact that pieces of crap get what I believe they deserve is purely incidental. If you can't think of a 100% rational reason to keep pieces of crap in prison forever, I will give you one right now: if they are in prison forever, they are not a danger to society anymore. While it is true that some pieces of crap would not hurt others again if they got out of prison, it is impossible to be sure who they are. So better to keep the murderers, rapists, child molesters, ect, locked up forever. Don't want to be in prison for the rest of your life? Well, not murdering people would be a good way to prevent that.
 
No, I don't act like it's purely an emotional response at all. If you read what I said, I clearly state this is the system we've inherited. This is 100 thousand years at least of conditioned behavior and reason. You're creating an argument I have no interest in addressing, because I don't disagree with you at all that something needs to be done with the people doing the things you're alluding to. It's sort of a red herring response to what I am talking about to suggest otherwise. I am not saying it's an easy thing to reform, I am not offering a better way to do things, I am stating that there is a need to look at these things and reform what we are doing by reexamining things from the ground up. I am asking that we examine the foundations of these responses we have, and imagine a different way of doing things. I am not advocating that we do nothing or allow molesters and murderers to go free. It's easy to turn this into "pieces of crap versus normal people", but unfortunately it's not really that easy. I am more concerned with reality and what is actually happening, than what seems to work the best right now and offer me the the most solace.
 
Halfcentaur said:
No, I don't act like it's purely an emotional response at all blah blah blah blah blah
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That is certainly what your post made it seem like.

And frankly, as far as I am concerned, if you (or anybody else) cannot think of a better way to do things, there is no reason to believe there is anything wrong with the way things are done now.
 
dtugg said:
So better to keep the murderers, rapists, child molesters, ect, locked up forever. Don't want to be in prison for the rest of your life? Well, not murdering people would be a good way to prevent that.
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The problem with this is you have wait until they actually murder, rape or molest somebody. Wouldn't it be better if you could stop them before they did the deeds?
 
Roger Ramjets said:
The problem with this is you have wait until they actually murder, rape or molest somebody. Wouldn't it be better if you could stop them before they did the deeds?
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Sure but since nobody has psychic powers this is not always possible.
 
dtugg said:
You act as though putting pieces of crap in prison forever is a purely emotional response with no rational basis. That is clearly not true. The fact that pieces of crap get what I believe they deserve is purely incidental. If you can't think of a 100% rational reason to keep pieces of crap in prison forever, I will give you one right now: if they are in prison forever, they are not a danger to society anymore. While it is true that some pieces of crap would not hurt others again if they got out of prison, it is impossible to be sure who they are. So better to keep the murderers, rapists, child molesters, ect, locked up forever. Don't want to be in prison for the rest of your life? Well, not murdering people would be a good way to prevent that.
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Sentencing inevitably has two aspects; a penalty for the crime, and a period for rehabilitation. Different countries place different emphasis on each - the Scandanavian models discussed by other posters previously tend to focus on shorter sentencing, even for serious crimes, with considerable emphasis on rehabilitation. This, they suggested, resulted in lower overall crime rates (specifically re-offending).

I must admit that I have some discomfort at relatively modest (20 year) sentences for murder and similar crimes in the UK, although I note that there are those who committed particularly heinous crimes who are sentenced for much longer. On the other hand, I've not had sufficient time or inclination to look at the Scandanavian evidence and decide whether they might be correct or not.

What I likewise find uncomfortable is the apparent US tendancy to throw away the key at an early juncture, to focus almost exclusively on the penalty aspects. There seems to be no recognition in your post that rehabilitation and re-education might be suffuciently successful to minimise the risk of reoffending for certain crimes (note the caveat) and hence permit release perhaps 30 to 40 years hence.

If the US had low crime rates, of course, then I might see an argument that a very robust sentencing regime had advantages. Alas, this simply doesn't seem to be the case although I'm sure we can expect lots of references to Mexican drug gangs and the like in the imminent future.

On a final note, we also have to remember that crime is very often a symptom of underlying problems. This is not to excuse individuals from their actions, but we have to recognise that - across the industrialised west - we are left with major social inclusion issues, challenges around the breakdwon of the family unit, the "call of the street", and major challenges around poor education. If we are to be successful in reducing crime then we need to look not just at our sentencing and rehabilitation regimes, but also how we stop them occurring. Otherwise we're shutting the gate after the horse has bolted - and perhaps giving it a good whipping to teach it a lesson.
 
Architect said:
What I likewise find uncomfortable is the apparent US tendancy to throw away the key at an early juncture, to focus almost exclusively on the penalty aspects. There seems to be no recognition in your post that rehabilitation and re-education might be suffuciently successful to minimise the risk of reoffending for certain crimes (note the caveat) and hence permit release perhaps 30 to 40 years hence.
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I don't think it is possible to be certain if a given person is indeed rehabilitated. For some criminals it is worth the risk to release them. For others such as murderers and rapists, nope. Better to keep them in prisoner forever just to be safe.
 
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Spindrift said:
When does life without parole not mean life without parole?
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When a court or governor later decides to reduce it to life with parole or less. We have several people in KY who had life without parole reduced to 20 years by the governor, after the maximum penalty for rape was lowered in 1974.
 
dtugg said:
I don't think it is possible to be certain if a given person is indeed rehabilitated. For some criminals it is worth the risk to release them. For others such as murderers and rapists, nope. Better to keep them in prisoner forever just to be safe.
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Why is it worth the risk? As a society we gain nothing even if they commit no more serious crime. If released they will, at best, produce no benefit and likely reproduce. I see only harm to society even if they are rehabilitated. We don't have a people-shortage.
 
Halfcentaur said:
If only life was really this easy. Multiple times now it seems you're preoccupied with "those punk kids these days", as if this is a generational issue and you did not have sociopaths when you were younger. The media has influenced the way people see the world to a disturbing degree.

I empathize and agree with Mirrorglass, the way we view justice and the idea that people "deserve" anything is founded on primitive emotional responses we need to out grow. At least people are beginning to realize it more and more. Hopefully we out grow these petty ideals, just as we out grew rulers claiming divine appointment and slavery.
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Not once have I used the term "these punk kids these days" I'm not talking about teens in general I'm talking about a multiple murderer who killed two people for no good reason and is seen here smiling. He should never be released.
 
brenn said:
Why is it worth the risk? As a society we gain nothing even if they commit no more serious crime. If released they will, at best, produce no benefit and likely reproduce. I see only harm to society even if they are rehabilitated. We don't have a people-shortage.
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So you think all criminals should receive a life sentence? I dunno, that is pretty extreme even for me.
 
dtugg said:
I don't think it is possible to be certain if a given person is indeed rehabilitated. For some criminals it is worth the risk to release them. For others such as murderers and rapists, nope. Better to keep them in prisoner forever just to be safe.
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With respect, that's a gross over-simplification.

One might point out, for example, the distinction between murder and manslaughter. One might observe that after (say) a 40 year sentence, the chance of reoffending would be minimal due to age. One might point out that on this basis we should never allow a convicted drink-driver to get behind a wheel again....

brenn said:
Why is it worth the risk? As a society we gain nothing even if they commit no more serious crime. If released they will, at best, produce no benefit and likely reproduce. I see only harm to society even if they are rehabilitated. We don't have a people-shortage.
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I see. Well let's leave to one side the human rights issue in framing your response there, eh? How does a rehabilitated person cause "only harm to society"?

Incidentally it costs a lot of money to keep people in prison. Your precautionary approach isn't exactly cost neutral.
 
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