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Originally Posted by patsylimerick
The latest figures I can dig out at a quick glance show rescidivism at 40% in the UK. Four out of every ten prisoners take what the State will give them while they're inside and come out and offend again. Until there is proof that rehabilitation is working FAR more comprehensively than this, no, this child should not be released to potentially kill again. (I know he's in the US but I think the UK rescidivism stats are more relevant for this discussion.) I'm just wondering if those who are on the liberal side of the argument believe that any individual is ever inherently bad, wired wrong and incurable? I do. Firmly. And I think that they should never, ever be left loose on the public again. I'm not in favour of the death penalty but I think that life should mean life and, in the case of adults, murder - intentional, pre-meditated killing - should ALWAYS result in life without parole. The problem is identifying those who are just wrong 'uns. Someone said ^^^^ that no-one's born evil. I don't agree. I wouldn't necessarily call it evil, but I certainly believe that there are aberrations completely devoid of empathy and desensitised. And I think that, while this is often the result of circumstance or trauma, sometimes its innate. So we have to be cold and removed when we look at this and we HAVE to decide that these people should be kept away from the rest of us - permanently. I think that case where the 17 year old girl stamped on a guys head and neck while he lay unconscious and bleeding to death is another example of someone who should never see the light of day again. She was 'ha ha'ing about it on Facebook. Throw away the key; bury it. I do think that, often, becoming a parent is the deciding factor in how you see this kind of thing. I'm a parent and I guarantee you that if anyone harmed one of my children the ONLY thing that would stop me from killing them would be the fact that I would sacrifice my liberty and be unable to look after the rest. And I used to be quite liberal when I was younger.
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Excellent contribution Patsy. I have to agree.
A few years back ('a few' being around ten!) - I worked at Carstairs - in a senior positon and part of Board Meetings with full access to case records / medical records of all of the patients (as they are classed patients rather than inmates).
I can categorically say here and now, that a high majority of those incarcerated there, were viewed by the Medical Directors as being likely to reoffend - so much so, that it was often extremely difficult to have them moved on from the State Hospital and for the most part, the hospital was full to capacity - because very few other prisons were adequately equipped or had trained staff to deal with these type of people, and any psychiatric hospitals that they could have been introduced into, were not of the opinion that they were safe enough to be transferred to mainstream psych units.
Regardless of the PR - facts like that speak for themselves. Are some people inherrantly evil with little remorse iwth a willingess to continue to reoffend? Yes. As you state, stats do show that prisons house a very high percentage of reoffenders, than first offenders - that shows that rehabilitation means very little, and has very very limited success.
To me, the success rate is too low to take further chances with those who have shown that they are able to kill /murder or be part of manslaughter.