Life sentence long enough

[Yzerman]

Just read a post of cints

Originally Posted by Cintaria

according to my girlfriend and her grandparents, a 'life sentence' is only 25 years!!!
I think a life sentence should be till the prisoner died =/

and got me thinking sbout other peoples views on life sentences. should they be there for 13 years or should life really mean life?

I thinik most prisoner should be let out and given a chance to change or you might aswell use the death sentence as live in jail all your life. i know after 13 or more years in jail i would think twice about going back to jail

[emma roids]

life in jail should mean just that, life in jail.
you only get to come out when your in a body bag.

why is it called bloody `life` if its not life??

they should rename it to summin like `life of a dog`

[Puratech]

Life sentences dont have any predetermined length, theyre just supposed to mean youre not coming out anytime soon and youll be there for the rest of your life, unless parolled early.

People are usually given "life" with a minimum sentence, like "Life serving a minimum of 25 years", which should restrict how early theyre let out of the life sentence. Its not everyone, some people get no chance of being let out early and will rot in jail serving all of their life sentence.

Pretty much every prison sentence is subject to appeals and such, its not only life that people are often let off early. IMO its just an out of date system, where the judge sentencing the defendant will know when he says life with minimum 15 years that the person will probably only do that 15.

Its more of a misunderstanding the naming convention, than people getting off easily as it is still possible for people to get full life sentences and it does happen to those serial killer/child killers.

[Seth]

Life in jail should mean precisely what it says, like emma roids posted. I don't, however, see capital punishment as a quick cop-out of keeping criminals in cells for the rest of their natural lives.

With a life sentence, if new evidence turns up 20 years down the line say and the prisoner is proven innocent of the crime, they can be released. I don't believe that they should be in any way compensated for the time they "wrongfully" spent in jail, as at the time a jury of their peers were presented with evidence against them and ruled how they saw fit.

If you execute them, then you find out you were wrong, what're you gonna do? Nothing. Except apologise profusely...

[Harv]

Life should mean life not a few years till you can manage to con your way out on parole.

I also think they should make jail conditions harsher. Not enough places in prison for all the criminals easy stick twice the amount of criminals in each cell and give them all half food rations till some of the lifers die off and make it so the food can be increased again.

I will never understand why criminals are allowed any rights in prison, they are in jail because they committed a crime which in the majority of cases left victims who have suffered in some form or other.

Why should they not be given a hard time....

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by emma roids

life in jail should mean just that, life in jail.
you only get to come out when your in a body bag.

why is it called bloody `life` if its not life??

they should rename it to summin like `life of a dog`

About says my exact sentiments.

Of course, they'd never make life actually mean life simply because it means having to feed, home and entertain the prisoner which costs money, so they'd prefer the prisoner to be out on the streets keeping the population in check with the occasional murder.

[Mankind]

Originally Posted by Seth

With a life sentence, if new evidence turns up 20 years down the line say and the prisoner is proven innocent of the crime, they can be released. I don't believe that they should be in any way compensated for the time they "wrongfully" spent in jail, as at the time a jury of their peers were presented with evidence against them and ruled how they saw fit.

lol, are you serious?

[Puratech]

The fact life doesnt last a lifetime is irrelevant, its just terminology. All youre asking for is Life with no parole, which does happen, I believe thats what Harold Shipman got.

If life meant life with no option for parole, almost noone would get it, instead theyd get 15 years, 20 years, 25 years sentences. The naming is irrelevant to you thinking people dont get long enough terms.

Prisoners like everyone else have to have basic minimum of human rights. You cant group everyone in the category as dirty scum who destroy other people, there are many crimes such as Fraud which lead to massive "life" sentences, and corporate liability type crimes which arent quite in the same category as someone whos gone round killing children premeditatively. I agree that prisoners shouldnt have it like disneyland, but i also think its fair to remember that some crimes are unfortunate circumstances that many people could find themselves doing if given the same sequence of events, not all criminals are crazy serial killers and some people will be rehabilitated, as bad as that may work at present.

As for not compensating people wrongly imprisoned for 20 years... wtf? Right now you get minor whiplash in a car crash and you get compensation. The judge/jury shouldnt be reprimanded, but the person who was made to spend 20 years in prison, possibly at the expense of his/her marriage and missing their children growing up, best years of their life, coming out unable pick up their career and more than likely very mentally scarred from it, should just be told sorry mate and kicked out the prison back door?

[Sabretooth]

Like Pururura said, If they only used life to represent a full life sentence it wouldnt effect anyones time, They would just be given '30 years and eligable for parole in 15' etc instead.

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by Puratech

Prisoners like everyone else have to have basic minimum of human rights. You cant group everyone in the category as dirty scum who destroy other people, there are many crimes such as Fraud which lead to massive "life" sentences, and corporate liability type crimes which arent quite in the same category as someone whos gone round killing children premeditatively. I agree that prisoners shouldnt have it like disneyland, but i also think its fair to remember that some crimes are unfortunate circumstances that many people could find themselves doing if given the same sequence of events, not all criminals are crazy serial killers and some people will be rehabilitated, as bad as that may work at present.

I disgree with this, as i'm sure you knew I would with the way I feel about criminality. In my mind a criminal IS a criminal and they have taken a decision to commit a crime and taken away someone elses human rights, therefore they do not deserve to enjoy the privilidge of human rights themselves. Whether it is fraud, a crime of passion, blatent wanton hooliganism, basic robbery, rape, murder or any other crime, to me that is irrelevent, someone else if not many others have suffered at their hands, whether in a physical, mental or material way. Crime IS crime and the individual has a choice whether to commit that crime or not. I choose to live my life within the law, therefore have no fear of becoming a criminal, I consciously choose to not break laws, if I can do it after all the crap that's been thrown at me during my life, then I have absolutely no sympathy at all for those that feel they know better and who decide to break the law.

Remember, a criminal is only classed as a criminal because they were caught and convicted of a crime.

Rehabilitation for most, is nothing more than the criminal learning to say the correct things often enough to the correct person in order to make themselves sound remorseful, in a blatent attempt at getting parole. A bit like a scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor is trying to get to visiting rights to see John. The only thing most criminals are sorry about, is that they were not more careful and that they were caught.

As for not compensating people wrongly imprisoned for 20 years... wtf? Right now you get minor whiplash in a car crash and you get compensation. The judge/jury shouldnt be reprimanded, but the person who was made to spend 20 years in prison, possibly at the expense of his/her marriage and missing their children growing up, best years of their life, coming out unable pick up their career and more than likely very mentally scarred from it, should just be told sorry mate and kicked out the prison back door?

I think firstly we have to look at the film 10 Rillington Place, based on a true story, which chronicles one of the last hangings in this country, where an innocent man is hanged only for the real criminal John Christie to then admit he had commited the murders all along. I don't suppose Timothy Edwards the hanged innocent had much use for compensation, what with being dead and what not.

That changed a hell of a lot of the procedure to the criminal system in this country, to try and prevent that kind of thing from ever being able to happen again, as well as being used venomently by groups in trying to get hanging stopped and in the end it actually worked and hanging was abolished and in a large part thanks to the Christie/Edwards wrong hanging case. However, in the meantime, just because people were no longer sentenced to death, people were still and will for the foreseeable future still be wrongly charged and imprisoned for crimes they never committed, the system is not perfect and is certainly not corruption free and until such point where there can not be mistakes, it will continue to happen.

Therefore, after rationalising my opinion, I feel that people who are imprisoned wrongly, without having ever commited the crime, where evidence beyond any doubt can prove their innocence, should in my opinion be compensated for their false imprisonment and for the many other losses they endure during their prison sentence, as has been dialogued by Pura in the above extract. However, in cases such as the Birmingham 6, where their prison sentence was actually overturned due to incomplete evidence, fineprint or wrong procedure, but without them actually being undoubtedly innocent, those people should recieve absolutely nothing at all, because what their legal team has done is simply nothing more than finding loopholes in the legal system to attain their freedom, they have not proven their undoubted innocence and therefore in my mind, remain guilty as charged.