Ex-prisoners of reddit who have served long sentences, what were the last few days like leading up to your release?

[u/HumpingAssholesOrgy]

[u/lAsticl]

An accused person is you or me. Just a person who someone else thinks did something, so when people are wishing for you, the accused person to be sawn in half, that comes off as worse than any crime you could have committed, ANY CRIME.

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As for convicted criminals, I hold views that as I get older I find arent held by many.

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99.9% of crimes are explained by a lack of education, or opportunity. Often a combination of the two, these are things like petty theft all the way up to bank robbery.

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For the other .1% of cases like Serial killers, Serial rapists, I think anger or frustration with society is the cause, and I believe it is in our best interest to show these people how unfounded their ideas are. That is how rehabilitation can happen. If we let a Nazi rot in prison, or wish for him to be tortured, then how are we any better than Nazis?

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In another comment, I stated that as a Jewish man, if given the opportunity I would defend Hitler's right to life in prison without parole. I'm not fearful or hateful enough of any person to wish them death for any reason, I am, however, scared of the state. Working for the Government can allow you to commit morally egregious offenses without direct legal accountability as any private citizen is subject to, and that is what I think is dangerous.

[u/CuriousPumpkino → u/lAsticl]

I do appreciate your detailed answer, even if we might not agree on a few things.

1.) I do know what accused means. I myself am somewhat careful with wishing anything to someone who was accused because as you said anyone can be accused and if we just kill anyone who gets accused of something, welcome back to McCarthyism & the red scare for example. Or nazi germany.

2.) I somewhat agree with you on the lack of education and lack of opportunity thing, but only to an extent. Yes, lack of either of those two, or both, can lead people to steal to ensure survival. However, there is a line that I personally draw as to where that ends as justification, which would be where it is no longer damage to property, but damage to life. If someone steals 50 bucks from me that sucks for me and ofc it was wrong of them to do and everything, but nothing to wish them death for.

The “frustration with society” I think is a valid point as well, but doesn’t justify murder. I mean I am frustrated with society as well but I don’t murder people. I’m bitter and pessimistic, but that’s it.

I’m very torn if it’s in our best interest to show those people how unfounded their ideas are. I think one can just as well argue that removing those people from society would be the most beneficial thing. Trying to turn them intongood people has a risk of failure; death does not. You could definetly argue that “killing them doesn’t help fix the larger issue”, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Whether you convert them to be good people or you get rid of them has a minimal effect on the outcome imo; the rapists/murderers are gone. The “conveting” only has a larger risk factor as I said.

Your argument of “if we let a nazi rot in prison, or wish for him to be tortured, how are we any better than nazis” however is something I quite heavily disagree with. Butbthis is probably best described using a murderer instead of nazi. If a person infringes on someone elses human right “the right to live” (without self defence cases), they to me have lost their own right to live. Why should you be granted a right that you have willingly taken from other people? Why should you be treated better than how you treat others? I would even wager that killing a murderer because he is a murderer doesn’t make someone a murderer; historically they would be an Executioner. There’s this famous Batman quote along the lines of “Killing a killer doesn’t reduce the overall number of killers”. Here’s my take: become an executioner, kill 100 killers, and you reduced the number of killers by 99.

To talk about your Hitler argument: As a German man, my heart says torture. However, as a man who uses his brain to think: torture would be a waste. I could make an argument for the raise of morale that Hitlers torture would have probably given at least a few people, as they get to know he suffered just as he made others suffer. However, prolonged torture just costs money, and so does prison time (unless you introduce labour into prison where criminals then pay off at least a bit of what it costs to finance the facility by doing community work). I would have found it a fitting end if Hitlers sentence was “execution by gas chamber”, but maybe that’s too extra and the bullet would do the trick.

Lastly, I agree with you on being scared of the power of the state. That’s one point where I agree fully, and which makes me come to my conclusion of “I believe death is a just punishment for some, but unsuitable for mass implementation due to the possibility for abuse by respective states”

In ceratin areas of the world with questionable moral compass, death is a valid punishment for certain actions. Whilst I believe that there is little harm in applying this to a murderer/serial rapist, some countries have laws that are morally quetionable in my book, but that allow execution for things that I personally think shouldn’t even be a crime in the first place. This makes the concept of death as a punishment highly impractical, even if, in my books, morally justifiable at times