It's called prison.
> This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.
Prison (and convictions generally) shouldn't follow folks forever because it disincentivizes rehabilitation, it incentivizes recidivism, it labels someone based upon behavior 20 years ago but not necessarily since, etc.
The victims are not morally obligated to forgive anyone. As a society, it's more beneficial to legally and morally treat offenders as having paid their sentence.
Please explain how prison enables someone to make amends and get a sense of closure.
The idea that most incarcerated people pled not guilty, were tried and found guilty, and are now incarcerated is not true in the US.
Many of incarcerated are still awaiting trial. The DOJ reports that a quarter of those in US jail and prison are awaiting trial [1]. I suspect most of those cannot afford bail.
In terms of after trial, npr reports, "98% of criminal cases in the federal courts end with a plea bargain" [2].
[1] https://www.ojp.gov/files/archives/pressreleases/2022/us-jai....
[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim....
> It's called prison.
No.
Prison (and the threat of it) accomplishes a few things:
It's punitive, which allows people who enjoy retribution to feel some satisfaction at their idea of justice being carried out.
The threat of prison theoretically prevents some people from inflicting some societal harms on others.
And it keeps dangerous people away from the general public.
It also has the consequence of lining the pockets of the people running for-profit prisons (this is actually really really bad for society though), and also costs taxpayers a ton of money.
And another nice benefit of adversely affecting minorities, poor people, and otherwise marginalized people disproportionately.
It largely is not successful at rehabilitating people. Maybe some people, sometimes, but in the U.S. at least, there are more people who come out of prison more broken than they were going in, and also have fewer options for living an ethical life coming out. They fall in with gangs for protection, and those networks extend back out of the prison. The money spent imprisoning people (especially for things like nonviolent, victimless crimes) could likely do much more good to society if it was used differently.
If someone theoretically did something bad, and was remorseful for their actions, and we could say with a degree of certainty that they were no more likely to commit the same act again than any random person on the street, I think it would be better to not imprison them, and spend that money on, say, social services instead.
If you're looking for models of actually allowing people to atone and work towards improvements in their future behaviour, we'd do better with a restorative justice model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
Sometimes you hurt someone and you should feel bad about that. Deal with it. It's a part of life to be an imperfect human and this should help you keep in mind that EVERYONE IS AN IMPERFECT HUMAN.
I was not intending to argue that he should be pardoned.
This is generally unpopular among liberal and left leaning spaces, and is only marginally popular in right leaning ones.
I dont think he shows real contrition either. After that Times article he backpedaled on the pardon request and told an interviewer months later that he was “pushed into it.”