Yes. (Extremely Pro-Life). I believe no one (NO ONE) should be in prison for the rest of their lives, I enjoy the quote from the Norwegian Prison Warden who said "It is not only my job to reform these criminals, it is my duty to my family and my neighbors. We have no death penalty and they will all get out of here, so I must make sure they will never commit their crimes again for not only the betterment of society, but also for myself."
I think our goal has to be complete rehabilitation. I think we get caught up in punishment and that only supports criminals committing crimes more and more if released. When given life sentences they have NOTHING to lose and are much more likely to cause riots, kill other prisoners, etc.
Our current prison system is Mesopotamian/Hammurabian; we must focus on fair treatment or else we become no different than criminals.
I wholeheartedly agree.
This country has been obsessed with punishment for far too long. There is very little focus on true rehabilitation. We just shove our undesirables into cages and forget about them, then when they get released from prison after years of only knowing the mundane, highly-controlled environment of prison, we label them felons, greatly hurting their ability to find places to live and work, and then we blame them for screwing up again.. As if we expected some other result?
Life in prison is cruel and unusual punishment. Why don't we actually try and rehabilitate these people? Treat them fairly in prison while trying everything we can to actually change them and prepare them for life again on the outside. Do we do that? *@(! no. This country is hyper-focused on retribution/revenge against criminals. In what world is sentencing, say, a 25 year old to life in prison better than death? You've sentenced a young adult to live in a violent environment / a cage for the next 50 - 60 years of their life. That is insanely cruel, especially considering how liberal this country is with handing out long/excessive prison sentences.
Honestly, and I don't care how mean this sounds, but I don't really buy it when people tell me they are against the death penalty but fine with life in prison, because execution is cruel and evil or whatever. I think they are against the death penalty to make themselves feel better for any number of reasons, because life (or close to it) in prison is far worse in terms of suffering. Perhaps such people think they are being merciful, but they are not.
The counter to that is that it is possible for people to value and find meaning in their lives even in the midst of suffering. So there is more suffering involved in life in prison, but the death penalty could be considered a greater, ultimate deprivation. That suggests of course that we need to make prison a place that while not easy or desirable to go to, a place where people can live out there lives in some meaningful fashion. I imagine we could design and run prisons in a way that is much more conducive to peace and productivity and personal development. But that would require a lot of changes, which means a lot of money. And as long as we locking up so many people, we are stuck in a more short-sighted cycle in terms of how we have to fund criminal justice.
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