Comment by rustcleaner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rustcleaner | Hacker News Reader

Life sentences should be capped at a decade, and all charges related to an incident must always be concurrently served (discourages charge stacking). Criminal records should also ghost after 10 years from release (like a credit report).

The death penalty should be abolished; outside of war the state should not possess the legal ability to execute anybody. Reason being is the state screws up; just because the state can pass a law doesn't mean those it victimizes under said law deserve it. Homosexuality and cannabis are great examples of this dynamic. You cannot give back years taken, you can only make them very wealthy and cost taxpayers for continuing to elect unrepentant jailers.

None of these protections should apply to oath-taking elected office holders convicted of treason or other high crimes against the people. Other than for said oath takers: criminal punishment should be made optional, with the other option being expatriation from the nation with the punishment on pause in the event you return. The fact we have a system which acts to make the 'offender' actively miserable, rather than separate the 'offender' but otherwise treat them with dignity, shows we are still a very barbaric society in the West.

There are some seriously deranged people out there. You cannot just release them into society. I think you're looking for solutions to problems caused elsewhere.

The most deranged people should be in well regulated mental hospitals, not for profit prisons. It's insane to acknowledge that there are people too maladjusted to operate in society, then send them to the one place where you know they'll get no help.

The vast majority of prisons are run by governments, and even private prisons are regulated. Using hospitals as a substitute for prisons will result in harm to treatable individuals, as well as more stigmatization of mental illness.

As well as treating mental hospitals as potentially permanent prisons even if the crime itself has a finite sentence. In a world with no bad actors it might make sense but it only takes one bad psychiatrist (or psychiatric facility) to punish a perfectly sane individual indefinitely (or drive them to actual insanity after prolonged confinement and unnecessary psychiatric treatment)

If they are deranged, they should be able a secure mental facility. Right? Derranged is a medical term.

That's far too lenient. I think our current sentences are fine other than the death sentence which is too final. Our prison system needs a complete overhaul and steered towards rehabilitation for those who will be getting back out. However, the criminal punishment time, "the sentence", for most crimes is quite well planned out. The information should never leave your record though.

They might be fine if they were like Norge prisons. Is it really humane to keep someone in normal US style prisons for decades? Really?

Also if you were the victim (or adjacent) and you really think 10 years is too lenient... you're welcome to exact your vigilante justice and eat a potential max of 10 years yourself. :^)

Would be interested to hear what constitute 'high crimes' that should allow more than ten year sentences? On repatriation, I don't know who's going to want to accept each others' criminal exiles. Though perhaps there would be, we do have armies promising freedom in exchange for conscription.

FWIW, Banishment is unconstitutional; from one supreme court decision:

> It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights, and presumably as long as he remained in this country he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so because he is stateless. Furthermore, his enjoyment of even the limited rights of an alien might be subject to termination at any time by reason of deportation. In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.

Not sure how the same argument doesn't apply to the death penalty given that a dead person presumably has also "lost the right to have rights."

>Not sure how the same argument doesn't apply to the death penalty given that a dead person presumably has also "lost the right to have rights."

Precisely. It is a back justification for a religious notion that universal/cosmic justice is actually a thing and not a product of human psychology in groups. Karma is one example of this pernicious religious thinking. Supreme Court can't come out and say that though or else the magick trick of governance and statehood falls apart. It relies on both your consent and your belief in its inevitability to maintain its existence and influence.

Allowing for banishment will teach the other animals on the farm that the farmer is not god. Separation of church and state is impossible as statism is itself a religion with a god (the state, maybe in proxy for the ephemeral We The People); all the separation accomplished was plastering a neutral color wallpaper on the old system.

Agreed on abolishment of the death penalty. A life sentence can be overturned, death cannot.

Since I don't think anyone can agree on a definition of "high crimes against the people", 10 years is far too little if we're referring to convictions of mass murder.

Seung-Hui Cho who went on to commit one of the deadliest mass shootings in the US back in the mid 2000s killing 32 people (assuming he hadn't taken his own life) would have been out of prison at the relatively young age of 33.

What about justice for the shooter then?

You believe [some] people are born fundamentally evil, I believe such people are sick.

I can think of two systems which are arguably more humane than decades in concrete cages or death:

1) Caste system, so you can create restricted high caste areas where non-criminals can be safe from criminals (with concrete caging in lieu of obeying these laws, so long term imprison is more of a last step than a primary go-to). China is kind-of doing this with social credit scores, I do not like this as it relies on automated surveillance and it is not a replacement for their cages and labor camps. Societies are by nature prisons already, I am advocating the lowest caste (imprisoned criminals) be given much more open access and normalized living conditions in large legally/materially walled off county/parish-size (or larger) Australia-like areas where they can live normal lives with other high risk individuals and away from the high trust low risk individuals. High caste can enter low caste areas, but not vice versa (without a visa and sponsorship, think gated HOA guests).

2) Expatriation with threat of long term caging, hard labor, or death upon return.

We don't do either because statists rely on the fear of the future generated in you when you believe the state is inevitable and omnipotent, and not in any way shape or form a voluntary relationship.

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