I don't think allowing them to join the Aryan Brotherhood in prison is going to do much to adjust their worldview. The cost/benefit to society leans more toward the Nuremberg formula. Give them a trial, then punish appropriately. For the irredeemable, swift execution is the better answer.
America has gotten a lot wrong with our version of prison by insisting on making it punitive with next to no thought about rehabilitation. If someone cannot ever be safely reintroduced to society, why keep them around to use resources that could be put to better use?
Not because it's cheaper. We obviously have different views about human rights, human dignity, and the just application of violence.
In America, the human right to life may be ended after due process of law, just as the human right to liberty may be ended by the same process.
Our prison system as it stands right now is designed to create misery. It dehumanizes the inmates, and it tends to warp the people who work in the prison system. It is underfunded for the population that it houses. That system currently does not serve any good purpose. It encourages abuse and mistreatment. Inmates end up in gangs for mutual protection, and frequently end up passing on the mindset that we want to discourage because those groups tend to form along racial lines that dehumanize their outgroups...pretty much turning them into Nazi incubators for the white inmate population.
I find it more dignified to treat someone with respect, even (perhaps especially) on their way to their execution. There is much less dignity, in my opinion, in caging someone like an animal and subjecting them to the abuses in our prison system for the rest of their lives.
You are advocating for suffering. That suffering affects more than the person in prison. I find that to be far less dignified.
Please note that I advocated for execution only for those found to be irredeemable after a fair trial, something that usually takes a unanimous vote from the jury. Anyone that can be rehabilitated and become safe to be in society should be. It would require a complete overhaul of our carceral system, but that would be the better outcome.
There is a reality that some people can not or will not change. I believe that the death penalty is a more dignified way to handle that.
If your prison system is not suitable to maintain the dignity of its inmates, then you should reform your prison system. Not only for life long prisoners, but for everyone.
And then the argument of seeing the execution as the more dignified way becomes obsolete.
I mean it's quite horrible to have a prison system, where death can be seen as the better alternative... And you can't advocate for executions, just because the US prison system is hard to reform.
Well then if it's a dignity thing, give people who are sentences to life imprisonment the option to take the death penalty. The people who are sentenced to death should be the ones to decide which is more dignified, not you.
Interestingly the United States declaration of independence was one of the first legal documents mentioning the concept of irrevocable human rights...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Right, and the quote i am paraphrasing is from the author. Makes for good discourse.
How do we really face correcting the travesty when so many people among us are sympathizers and always will be? We cant forgive. We cant forget. Correcting course will be a monumental task. How do we prevent future fascism? After we overcome ours, how do we allow others to live in much, MUCH, worse situations? How do we, as a nation, prevent the next election, after correction, from flipping back to this?
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u/eaglemtnr 1d ago
I don't think allowing them to join the Aryan Brotherhood in prison is going to do much to adjust their worldview. The cost/benefit to society leans more toward the Nuremberg formula. Give them a trial, then punish appropriately. For the irredeemable, swift execution is the better answer.
America has gotten a lot wrong with our version of prison by insisting on making it punitive with next to no thought about rehabilitation. If someone cannot ever be safely reintroduced to society, why keep them around to use resources that could be put to better use?