re: #242 Dark_Falcon

The problem I see with that is that there are people who are not hopeless, but are violent enough that they need to be locked up. A guy who pulverizes someone in a bar fight may well not be hopeless, but they do need to go to jail for having done so. In a similar vein, I’ve seen employers of mine (when I worked retail) uncover some pretty sophisticated theft and kickback schemes. The architects of those schemes were entirely non-violent, but nevertheless were deservedly jailed for them.

I’d even say deservedly punished (heh… rehabilitated). Doubt that jail is the best possible way. Jack Abramoff or Bernie Madoff needed to be made very sorry for what they did, but they were probably wasting a cell. Young criminals need to be isolated, dissuaded, educated, and given a reasonable chance at an alternative approach to life. For some of my daughter’s students crime is a rational adaptation, allowing them to live a little before they die. She keeps a number chalked in the upper left of her blackboard—it’s the count of her teenage alumni known dead since she started teaching there.