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Rehabilitation or Execution
- Death of justice
A terrific letter in last month’s Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners, carried a pathetic plea from a life-sentenced prisoner. “Rather than plod on as one of the ‘walking dead’, or further fuel for the retribution brigade, I offer, as others have done, just kill us outright. Make it voluntary, after the tarrif is served.” Fair play to “name supplied.” He’s had enough of the game playing and cod psychology of life as a “lifer” and wants a more honest situation. He wants the right to volunteer for euthanasia. Or, “return to the spectacle of a good hanging… in public…”
It is no surprise to me that many people on death row in the US “volunteer” to be executed after suffering years in limbo – neither alive or dead – just waiting for the needle - or the firing squad. In Utah last month, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was asked how he would like to be executed after 25 years on death row he said, “I would like the firing squad please.” Bless him. You’d have to have done a few years as a lifer to really appreciate the humour in that request.
Lifers are the highest suicide risk in UK prisons, especially in the months after conviction and sentence – or during the first twelve months of release. Lifers in the UK have become the forgotten few – other than those close to them few outside care if they live or die – in the system they are treated with contempt and disdain – most of them are murderers, so why not? Except the sentencing procedure operates with an assumption that almost all “life sentence” prisoners will one day be released – once the “tariff” has been served for the purpose of “retribution and deterrence” - the only reason they should be kept in is if they present an ongoing risk to the public. How do the professionals figure out the risk? Educated guesses is the the answer – for nobody can see inside anyone’s head, not even prison psychologists…. though how they would love to.
Instead of working to get lifers out and functioning properly in the community, they keep them in, by default – playing them along, do this course or that course, then do them again and again and again – nobody outside cares that these forgotten men and women are being subjected to distressing and damaging mental pressure – they are murderers or rapists, paedophiles or arsonists – they deserve all they get. That’s how the system gets away with abusing them. Victims, I guess, wouldn’t care too much how the perpetrators suffer, just so long as they do which is completely understandable.
But I think it is about time we had some honesty in the life sentence – either let lifers out with a realistic chance of living again and attempting to make some ammends; keep them all in until they die – or bring back the death penalty and publicly execute as many capital convicts as the viewers can stomach. The latter would be an undisguised blessing for many more than you might imagine.
An excellent insight. I have always felt that life sentences are woefully misnamed; if someone is sentenced to twenty years, spend some of those years preparing them for their release, their reintegration to society. Turning them out – sometimes at very short notice – with no preparation to live outside the institution is no help to the individuals, nor to the society that receives them. I abhorr the death penalty, as taking a life for a life is a primitive and brutal approach (perhaps heightened by the atheist in me, who does not envisage any kind of afterlife) that the world should have left behind long, long ago.
Yet the neverending uncertainty created by the ambiguous life sentences is a horrendous thought. Little wonder that seeing one’s future decided, even if that future is death, is more appealing than wasting away unknowingly, ill-prepared for release; unsure if it will even come, or if their cell might be their last home in life. The unknown has long been regarded as both life’s joy and its curse, and in this situation, it’s quite obvious which of these paths comes to the fore.
In my opinion (as though the past two paragraphs weren’t?) ‘life’ should be a sentence handed out to very few, based on years of assessment as to the perpetrator’s mental state and likelihood to reoffend. Sociopaths, for instance, can make great (if vastly unpleasant to work with) company executives, but for the few who become serial killers, they have yet to be successfully rehabilitated. Give them life, and let it be a sentence that means ‘for life’. To all others, given ‘life’ that means unstated decades, teach them. Give them a chance and a choice. To let them linger on, their future a painful question mark, is a thoughtless cruelty that should be beneath us as human beings.
(/soapbox)
I fully support the death penalty. I also think that you, James Monahan, should have been one of it’s recipients.
Being able to write with a degree of eloquence doesn’t absolve you of the fact that you took two lives in the furtherance of theft. You murdered two people for material gain. Time does not diminish your actions, no matter how educated or worldly you become, the deaths of those two men are still at your hand.
The mindset of ‘lifers’ is of no concern to the majority of the populance. By the very fact that they are incarcerated for such a period shows that they have shown scant regard for the laws of society, such as yourself holding the lives of two of your fellow man in such low esteem as to murder them.
Redemption and Rehabilitation has to be earned. I would suggest such a cold blooded act such as yours sets a worrying precedent for your abilities to transgress strong social barriers at will. I would also suggest that this may well be true for many other people convicted of similar heinous crimes.
Thankfully, the UK is waking up to the fact that imprisonment should be about retribution as much as retribution, with a slant to the right that we haven’t seen for some years. Across the oceans, the Japanese and US still execute. Canada now denies clemency to those facing the death penalty.
“It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of a life we affirm our value of human life”
“In this world everything changes except good deeds and bad deeds; these follow you as the shadow follows the body” – Your shadow has a long reach, it will follow you through this world and beyond.
I find this a very sobering and thought-provoking article. Of course, I think that a prison sentence is the only appropriate punishment for many crimes, particularly where no reparation is possible. But the offender is still a human being; and to follow Mr James’ argument – if they cannot make reparation or be rehabilitated, should they be killed?
The justice system in civilised societies must work towards rehabilitation, not only for ideological but also for economic reasons. I know that the rehabilitation of ex-offenders is possible. Several of my colleagues are ex-offenders, are genuinely sorry for their past crimes and are making better use of their lives than are their critics. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
The most prolific killer of the twentieth century says all I need to hear on this issue:
“It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men and grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder. And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any … capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.”
Albert Pierrepoint, British hangman from 1932-1956, who put to death more than 400 fellow human beings.
I agree that there should be more honesty in the life sentence, but was shocked at your mention (Erwin James) of bringing back capital punishment. Were you serious? Sadly, I have no doubt there would be plenty of people willing to view such a spectacle (Dave, above, for one). Surely it is imperative to call for changes in this area without resorting to such morally indefensible suggestions. Be careful what you wish for. I suggest.
…that should be ‘or suggest’, rather than ‘I suggest’!