For me I tend to favor rehabilitating the criminals, then again I am biased, having discovered I have a couple mental issues that weren't highlighted til this year (less serious, more debilitating) I'm in a way myself being rehabilitated and I can tell you it could mean something to someone to be shown a kind of investment like that.
In regard to the "worse of the worse", I could never condone capital punishment even in the most clear cut cases, instead experimentation with theories that could lead to advancements in medicine or psychology. Killing them can't be relied upon for satisfaction due to fact that there could be circumstances where the process of acquiring a personal justice or vengeance on behalf of the victims or the victim's friends and family becomes contradictory. Say for instance where a Serial Killer believing he's gotten himself a ticket to Heaven in his mind, looks forward to dying and reaping his reward and depending on the state, he's being put to sleep essentially. The suffering isn't equal (if it's about making them suffering) and if the choice is then picking a more painful execution then I would point out that it eventually ends, because it's an execution. With a program to take drugs or to experiment on theories with extensive care therapy and treatment, you could break their legs to then help mend them or use a drug that hasn't been approved yet (though it's promising) and albeit not being a substantial sample group to work with.
In the end I'm not even big on that idea either, but to return to rehabilitation, I think it's key to remember that our laws are the reactive side of a continued struggle to come to terms with what humans can be. The greatest thing to have begun coming to how we deal with breaches of each society's social contract has been our proactive approaches and understanding of the variables at play and in my eyes rehabilitation is the more optimistic nature of humanity refusing to ever give up on itself. Losing one person in a manslaughter case with a petty thief turned reckless driver, sees another life on the line, the thief is about to spend time in a worse place he has ever seen, but this prison has just given a green light for an rehabilitation program aimed at a mix of therapy and skill exploration. That man and another could find an idea there that promises something more potent to them then maybe just going back into the same cycle, a sense of freedom or hope even if no one other than the counselor and program organizer believes they deserve it, because they are still a sample of humanity hanging in the balance.
A life still not lost, does not replace the life lost due to it and that is why we bring them to answer for it and declare it a crime. If the person is a Serial Killer, we still witness a human and no, we don't get the luxury to paint a picture of ourselves that suits our image, but see what could be a grandson, a granddaughter, a brother or a sister (given a genetic disposition to a mental illness, or a life that lead to a disorder). Now if one day after the hard work that we humans do, for the things that stem from a passionate place, leads to a treatment that puts empathy in a Serial Killer, then we have saved 1 of possibly 6 lives lost. Not just that either, but the lives that could be lost but saved with the preventive therapy as well if just before the breach into the unreturnable lives lost.
In closing someone might want to put me in the shoes of a person who would lose a loved one and have me reflect on the comfortable position I'm speaking high and mighty from and if their goal was to have me see that I'd want that same justice I am so keen on taking away from real victims ... well they would be right... I would want that Killer dead, except ... why do i want him dead? He wanted my love dead, but unlike me, he wouldn't have the blessing from society to do it. Saving a Serial Killer, is saving the serial killer in ourselves, humanity ... we have all of history to know we know how to punish, but rehabilitation we have only begun to take a crack at. Rehabilitation is us saving ourselves from ourselves. I think humanity needs that. We then paint our image.
Damn dexedrine .... I went and wrote an essay.
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