[Ammi]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

This is a good issue Ammi, and is linked to certain of my controversial views on terrorists, in that here we have a man whose atrocious acts of evil justifies him being classified as a ‘monster’.

However, unlike some criminal ‘monsters’, Van Den Bleeken clearly possesses a sense of moral ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but by his own admission is unable to resist his deep rooted psychological compulsion to commit the violent rape murders he is incarcerated for.

This is so very important.

A) Someone who makes a conscious choice to commit a crime acts through ‘free will’ and in spite of his own internal voice of morality which counsels against such an action.
B) Someone who commits a crime through psychological compulsion is not acting through ‘free will’ and has no ‘choice’ in the matter.

Category A) can be helped. Category B) cannot.

Van Den Bleeken knows himself better than any Psychiatrist, Psychologist or Criminologist, and when he tells us that he is beyond salvation, beyond ‘repair’, beyond ‘fixing’, then we should listen to him.

I have a feeling that because Van Den Bleeken has refused parole and freely confesses that he cannot fight his evil compulsion and so will forever remain a danger to society if freed, then he has spent years living with remorse for his crimes, but the futility of knowing, that despite his shame and guilt he will carry on committing those crimes, is behind his request.

He should be allowed to have his life ended by euthanasia if that is what he wants and the only reason not to allow it, is if his reason for wanting it, is that he simply cannot endure being imprisoned and wants an easy way out of his punishment. The fact that he has elected not to be considered for early release via parole, however, would seem to preclude this.

Western society hypocritically continues to maintain that ‘imprisonment’ of offenders is both to ‘rehabilitate’ and ‘punish’, yet modern penal institutions do neither; modern prisons are little more than ‘holiday camps’ and apart from the ‘deprivation of total liberty’ element, any ‘punishment’ aspect is nonsensical.

Does a modern prison with its sports facilities, library facilities, warm, centrally heated, comfortably equipped cells, TV’s, Laptops, phones, and four square meals a day, truly ‘punish’ the average repeat offender drug addict whose ‘civilian’ life consists of living in squalid bedsits in flop houses, existing on an ‘if and when’ diet of rubbish food?

As to the ‘Rehabilitation’ element, true rehabilitation is effected from within by the prisoner himself, rather than any external programs or devices. Whether it is an aversion to prison itself, guilt and shame driven realisation of how wrong his crime was, or some other reason, it is invariably only when a prisoner himself determines never to reoffend that he will not do so.

Van Den Bleeken is beyond any hope of ‘rehabilitation’ and after already spending 26 years in prison and refusing to be even considered for parole, is beyond any ‘punishment’ value that incarceration might hold, and the state should allow him his request.

For the state to refuse his request, then they are truly committing him to prison for life and punishing him for the wrong reasons - vengeance and control.

....hmmm, the thing is though Kirk..if his mental health is such that he can never be in society again then he's not mentally capable of requesting euthanasia...I mean it wouldn't be granted to someone 'not of sound mind..' who wasn't a convicted rapist/murderer...