| The Great Debate - Should Life Mean Life
To the members of KYN and the judging panel, I am here to lay down my preliminary arguments as to why I feel that a Life Sentence given in the courts of Law should not mean life.
The outline of my argument is such
1.) Why should the hard working taxpayer pay for a person to be behind bars when there are plenty of uses for him int he outside world, where they can be productive to society. Imagine, if lifers instead of sitting behind bars doing nothing (under supervision of course) cleaned the dirt from our streets, helped build our schools, hospitals, or joined our armed forces. Surely this would be a much more productive way to treat murderers, make them do the jobs that no one else wants to, and make them do it for free??? Surely that is a more severe punishment than letting him rot behind some bars watching some TV and shooting some pool?
2.) What comes of a life sentence? It keeps killers off the street, I hear you cry, but for how long is someone a killer. We all make mistakes, all of which are on a different magnitute, but some murders are a mistake. If you kill someone in an armed robbery when you where a young 18 year old, then are you still a killer, when you're fifty, when the best parts of your life are gone and you have nothing. SHouldn't a second chance be given?? In the case of Serial Killers i Can see your point, but surely a scenario such that described in section one would be much more appropriate then him checking out the Hockey from his cell no????
3.) Also think of the drain on resources a permanent life sentence would cause for our prisons. The lack of space is already obvious to house convicts, imagine if we kept everyone sentenced to life for life. The jails would be brimming and there'd be no room for the other scum in society which would lead to them getting either a paltry stint in jail or no going at all, leaving muggers, rapists and drug dealers on the streets, while keeping frail 60 year old men behind bars.
There shall be further arguments put forward at a later date, Simon I await your response.
Thank You |