Is America set to join the rest of the civilised world???
5 decades too late.
Didn't Breivik get about 20 years paid vacation in a comfortable and well furnished "cell"? Perhaps America is better off not joining this.
One can still retain the death penalty for exceptional cases or (unlike Norway) retain the option of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Well yeah, I wasn't defending the American system, just the assertion that all of Europe is "oh so enlightened" on the issue. Of course, people that argue for abolition of the death penalty aren't all extreme cases such as Norway.
I'm not completely against the "rehabilitation" model, and I actually think it should be applied to a lot of American prisoners. The problem with a one size fits all approach is that you end up babying mass murderers, terrorists, and people who are pure evil and will never change. These kind of people deserve the current American justice system. Conversely, the American justice system's one size fits all approach ends up brutalizing young single moms who accidentally carry guns into a different state and people who smoke weed. A poll just released shows that even Massachusetts supports the death penalty for Tsarnaev 62-29. I'm of the opinion that the death penalty should certainly be kept around for cases such as him.
If one accepts that the "worst of the worst" deserve the current American justice system (a proposition that may be true in some cases), wouldn't it still be fair to say that far more non-serious criminals are subjected to wrath of the American system than mass murderers (and other "pure evil" criminals) get off relatively easy in Norway? (Which isn't exactly true either, seeing as Norway likely never will release Breivik, for example).
Of course, basing a justice system entirely on what people "deserve" is already a mistake. But that's a different debate.
