A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
I’d say that’s pretty close. I’m not going to take an “all-or-nothing” approach and say prison can’t rehabilitate, but I would say it’s mostly to punish criminals so fewer people commit crimes.
It depends on the crime and the criminal.
I’m referring to people who don’t understand that not everyone is good. There are bad people out there with no hope of rehabilitation and will just take advantage of any opportunity to receive a lesser punishment for their bad deeds.
You’ve reduced the argument for less severe punishment in favor of rehabilitation to:
This is a horrible argument. No one is saying that there aren’t some people who can’t be helped. However, should all people be damned because a few can’t be redeemed? In a system that prioritizes rehabilitation, you’d review the prisoners progress occasionally to see if they’re problems are being solved. If they aren’t, they’ll serve a full lengthy sentence. If they are then they can stop being a burden to society and instead benifit society. What’s not to like about that? We waste so much money on holding people in cells and not even trying to fix them. Why do you want your taxes spent for that?
The thing is, all people aren’t damned. There are plenty of options for rehabilitation in the US for prisoners who have the capacity for it and haven’t committed crimes so heinous they don’t deserve it. Those options should remain there and we should always be looking for ways to improve and expand upon them.
Still, what deters people from committing crimes isn’t ‘going to rehab.’ It’s going to prison where they lose their freedom and have to live in worse conditions than they would on the outside. If prison becomes an ‘adult daycare,’ then criminals would be less deterred by punishment and more willing to commit crimes as a result.
I think your confusing what in saying. I’m not saying send them to some rehab center. I’m saying change prisons to allow for rehabilitation. We can provide more and better education opportunities and ways to improve. We can provide options for them to seek therepy and medication. We can allow them to work towards becoming a better person. They’d still be in prison without their freedom. It’s still a punishment. It’s just a punishment that you can come out of better, rather than one where you come out worse with little to no prospects of legal work.