sapphi_snake said:
rocketpig said:
sapphi_snake said:
rocketpig said:
sapphi_snake said:
rocketpig said:
If we give up on the idea of rehabilitation, our entire concept of justice and imprisonment may as well be thrown out the window.
What those kids did to that toddler was terrible but it must be kept in mind that they were children themselves. Advocating the murder of children in response to their misguided thought processes is just as repulsive as the atrocities they committed.
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So what if they were children? They behaved worse than adults, and they still continue to behave that way today. Maybe killing them is too much, but a lifetime of solitary confinement is ver appropriate I think. Got any better solutions?
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Any attempt to rehabilitate a ten year old mind is always a better option than locking it up and throwing away the key. Ten year olds can't fully distinguish right from wrong and do not have the emotional capacity to fully understand their actions. These children were obviously disturbed but that doesn't give a self-proclaimed "progressive" society the right to just cast them aside and try to forget about them.
If we stop trying to rehabilitate the causes of criminal activity, there's no point in continuing down this path. Just shoot everyone who commits a crime in the head and be done with it.
I, for one, would like to think that in the year of 2011, we're better than that as a people.
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I think it's one of the self-proclaimed "progressive" society you talk about's faults that they think "rehabilitation" is a solution to this. It's a typical situation of turning the bullies into victims, and abandoning the real victims.
Those two knew very well what they were doing. They never to this day shoed any remorse for what thety did. One of them is even back in jail for peadophilia activities. The only thing these two deserve is to be punished. "Rehabilitation" should be reserved for the situations where someone who commits a small crime (like someone who steals because they come from a poor background) can be brought on the right path and prevent them from commiting bigger crimes. Someone who cold kills an infant in cold blood doesn't deserve "rehabilitation". All they deserve is punishment, not a pat on the back for their acts, like these two got.
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Yes, because punishment works so well. It's been tested time and time again how well difficult living conditions, unsafe environments, and punishment squashes the impetus for future criminal activity.
Oh, wait. No, it doesn't.
You can go ahead and believe in your Draconian prison policy but it's been done that way since the beginning of recorded human history and has proven time and time again that it doesn't appear to deter criminal activity in the slightest bit.
They were. ten. years. old. Should they have been locked up for longer? Sure, that's a possibility. Should they have received better psychological treatment and evaluation? Almost assuredly. But to advocate giving up on children and throwing them in prison for life is a rash and emotion-driven response to what could be a fixable problem.
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They did something terrible. It can certainly be labaled an "atrocity"They don't deserve a second chance, and no one who does what they did deserve a second chance. They weren't children, they were monsters. Their existence isn't encessary in society, quite the contrary. So locking them up in sokitary confinement isn't a problem.
I'm pretty sure you think pampering criminals and spitting in the face of their victims and in the face of law abiding citizens, will definately fix things. I mean just look at how well that worked out: one of them has physically assaulted several people sicne he's gotten out, and has been caught with child pornography on his PC. And who knows what the other one has done, but has managed to cover up (he was the smart, cold and calculated one of the two, so he probably does his best to not get caught).
Maybe you'll wake up one day, though I think you'll have to learn a lesson the hard way.
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Yes, I'm the one who needs to wake up. Obviously, this was a failure on the part of the state... or maybe you missed my point that it's pretty obvious those kids needed better psychological evaluations before being released into public. I'm not even against stricter punishment than what they received (especially when coupled with their obvious lack of quality psychiatric care during imprisonment). What I AM against is locking them up and throwing away the key without ANY attempts to understand WHY they did what they did and what environment led them to such an act.
It's very possible that they were just sociopaths without any kind of empathy or regard to human life, in which case they should be in a secure mental institution for the rest of their lives, not prison. Either way, they shouldn't be released back into public. On the other hand, they could have been abused badly as children and there could be hope of rehabilitation there and someday, they could become a productive member of society. I don't know the situation and you don't, either. The difference between us is that I think it's the state's job to find out and you think it's okay to either lock them away or just kill them outright without trying to find out WHY this happened. Progress is made through attempts to understand why things happen and how to prevent them in the future, not by playing the role of ostrich and hiding away all the bad things in life.
Then again, after reading your bizarre arguments on gun ownership, I'm not quite sure you have that solid a grasp on reality and feed off emotional responses and knee-jerk reactions to complicated situations.