Note: this article deals with my personal moral ideas about life sentences in prison. It doesn't go into whether or not the European court of human rights has any right to involve itself in Great Britain's legal affairs.
Yesterday, the European court of human rights ruled that life imprisonment without any prospect of release is inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. And I was glad they did.
I have never agreed with the death penalty. Firstly, I don't want to be part of a society that makes me responsible for the death of anyone, and if I am part of a society that condones the death penalty, I am by extension responsible for the death of anyone to whom it is applied. Secondly, a worrying amount of innocent people have died due to the death penalty. This second argument, unlike the first, is less ideological than purely practical: if someone is to be punished, they should be punished in a reversible way, after all, there's always a sliver of chance they may not be guilty. However, for a long time, I agreed with life sentences in prison.
Yesterday, however, I realized my views had changed. I heard what the European court of human rights' ruling had been, and I couldn't help but be happy. Because deep down I am an idealist, and I believe in second chances. But that's not the only reason.
This morning, I was listening to the news, and they were discussing the ruling. Someone said "what about the rights of the victims?". I may be wrong about this, but usually, life sentences in prison are reserved for killers. The victims are dead. They don't care about their rights. Some may argue that the dead people's families are the "real" victims, or at least, the suffering victims. While I may agree with this view, the crime committed isn't causing a family pain, it is killing. No, the victims of murder are dead. They don't know about their rights. Others will say, "but what about their rights when they were alive?" and they would be right. Their rights were violated. But nothing we do after they are dead will fix that, nothing we can do will bring them back, or make up for the fact that they are dead. That is the first reason why I don't believe in life in prison.
The other reasons are more idealistic: I believe that the prison system exists to isolate dangerous people, "retrain" them, and reinsert them into society. I believe the main aim of having a judicial system is not punishment, but reinsertion. In short, as I've said before, I believe in second chances. Why? There are many reasons. One could be the fact that even psychopaths can lead happy and productive lives without killing anyone (famously, James Fallon, a neuroscientist in the University of California, Irvine, found out he was a psychopath when trying to ensure that no one in his family had inherited the traits from his father's side of the family), even though this could be of course due to different degrees of psychopathy. Another is that if I don't believe in restitution for killers, why should I believe in it for anyone else? I am not saying all killers are psychopaths, but I suspect that psychopaths are the most likely to kill again. My last reason is this: if full prison sentences are served they are usually long enough to have taken away a huge chunk of someone's life. This means that by the time they leave prison, people's lives are at a restart, and I believe that this gives them the chance to start anew.
So, I don't believe in life sentences. What I do believe in is in people spending their lives in jail. This may sound contradictory, but it isn't. I grew up in a country that was terrorized by the group ETA. When I was a child I was occasionally scared of going to the capital, or leaving my own (small) city, where I felt safe, it felt unlikely anything would happen there (and yet, there was an explosion in a café I visit relatively frequently). When members of ETA were caught, they were sentenced to thousands of years in prison, however they couldn't serve more than 40 years, because in Spain prison sentences are served simultaneously. I found this degrading, scary and horrible. Some of these people had killed tens of people. They didn't feel remorse. If asked, a lot of them would say they would do it again. They would threaten politicians, they would blackmail businessmen, they would kidnap and kill people, and they would blow up bombs. A thousand years in jail should be a thousand years in jail.
The point mentioned above regards terrorism or genocides however. Acts of violence that involve many deaths, that try to push an idea as more important than lives. And I still don't think a single prison sentences should be a life sentence.
Last of all, the European court ruling has a caveat (or I like to think of it that way). It says "life imprisonment without any prospect of release". I think that if there is a life sentence (and I believe there shouldn't be), there should be at least a chance to be heard. To have a hearing every few years when criminals could say "I was wrong, I have changed, I won't do it again, let me out". They don't need to be released (necessarily), but there should be a chance of release, some hope.
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