So, imagine a violent crime; a robbery attempt goes awry, and a convenience store clerk is killed. The murderer (in a perfect incarceration system) is "rehabilitated" in a year. Should he be freed after 365 days?
> So, imagine a violent crime; a robbery attempt goes awry, and a convenience store clerk is killed. The murderer (in a perfect incarceration system) is "rehabilitated" in a year. Should he be freed after 365 days?
I read about a case like this in Sweden. Kjell-Eric Eliasson, who was a soldier at the time, was sentenced in 1986 for a sadistic murder of a young single mother. He butchered her and dumped the corpse into a well outside his mother's farm.
The man was sentenced to a mental institution. He was treated for a single (1) year and then released to as "cured", much to the horror of the relatives of the murdered woman. Some 25 years later, in 2010, he lost his job as a highly paid government official, when the truth about his dark past hit the internet.
Was it right to release him? It seems he lived the next 25 years well, with a great career and paying his taxes. So society didn't need to be protected from him any more. But was it morally right? There is a perceived need of revenge, of punishment. Of some justice.
Justice is just a fancy word we use to mask that what we really seek is "eye for an eye" retribution. We can and should attempt to move to a more enlightened view. Society should definitely not be meting out retribution.
Because rehabilitation is a very nebulous concept. Does it mean having employable skills? Being nice to a parole board? Being apologetic? The reason many in the US are very skeptical about rehabilitation is because there's not a strong link between rehabilitation efforts and recidivism rates. There are far too many factors involved than whether the prisoner was treated "well" while incarcerated.
And if "rehabilitation" is all that's required for freedom, it shows a disconcerting lack of value for the victims of crime.
> there's not a strong link between rehabilitation efforts and recidivism rates.
[citation needed] for that claim.
I'm friends with a woman who works with prisoner rehabilitation and treatment of violent prisoners and sex offenders, and the work they do is scientifically sound, using evidence-based methods. There are very strong, proven casual links between the rehabilitation and recidivism.
Have you ever seen Shawshank Redemption? Sometimes you can tell when someone is truly rehabilitated. Yes, it is a hard problem, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to employ a system more just for all involved.
I think basing our ideas about incarceration on a Stephen King movie and novella isn't the wisest strategy, any more than using The Silence of the Lambs would be.
Imagine a violent crime: A person takes some medical drug which this time causes a psychotic break wherein he kills a store clerk. How long should he be locked up? Clearly he's pretty much "rehabilitated" as soon as he's of the drug.
Imagine another incident, a careless driver who runs over someone at a stoplight because they're texting. How should this manslaughter be treated? With a remedial driving course?
Of course in the real world this can't be proven, which is exactly why a one year sentence for murder is also purely a hypothetical. The point is that if we had perfect knowledge into the mind of an individual that could prove they have been "rehabilitated", why on earth would you keep them locked up? There's just no rational reason for it.
In practice judging rehabilitation with perfect knowledge is impossible, and so are one year sentences for murder. In the real world we would balance out the likelihood of actual rehabilitation with concerns regarding public safety.
