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So 5 years for premeditated murder?


Yep! What do you gain by having it be longer? What reform happens in 10, 25, 50 years but not 5?

You can add on non-prison sentencing if you must but I very much don’t like wasting people’s lives by holding them in a box.

And again, if you can make a case that the hypothetical murderer will immediately do it again if let out you can hold them longer.


Some people simply can’t be reformed; keeping them in prison for life is the only option.

In other cases, most violent criminals seem to be young men, so there’s some value in running out the clock so they aren’t young men anymore by the time they’re released.


Even if you are right, there is also therapy, house arrest, 24 hour monitoring, etc.

Prison is not the only option by a long shot.


I strongly agree that prison isn't the only option. At the same time, I can't support the notion that Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should all be free men today.


Be that as it may, and maybe they shouldn’t be free. But I don’t think they should be in prison either. You can have your freedom punitively stripped away from you without being held in prison.


I agree they shouldn't be in prison. They should be dead. One of them is.


The problem with capitol punishment is that it's irrevocable. Even though we know these people committed these heinous crimes, there's going to be a line for where it's not ok to sentence someone to death because the proof is not airtight. When cases are close to that line, there's always the chance that they weren't actually guilty. I believe this will be the case no matter where that line is.




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