Rumpole has a pretty moving post about the Lady Jaguars here, about a group of girls sent from juvenile court to play basketball together.
Here's another emotional story about a debate between D.C. jail inmates and JMU students about whether life without parole should be abolished:
Cunningham, who had returned to the correctional facility to await a posttrial motion, stood in a blue polo shirt and khaki pants and argued for the abolishment of life sentences without parole.
“You are looking at the representation of everything that this debate is about,” Cunningham said as people in the overflowing courtroom cried. “All Americans should stand for rehabilitation, not retribution.”
8 comments:
Let's look at the flip side of this argument. I am 7 years old. I come home one day after school and find out my mother was murdered at work. She managed a bank and was shot dead during a robbery. I adored her as she taught me a lot. I am now 35. I went the rest of my childhood without a mother. I grieved every day and still do. It is like emotional torture but I have survived. Now I walk into a federal courtroom and see the person who destroyed my life and murdered my mother standing there pretending to be Oliver Wendell Holmes arguing that he should be let free to enjoy the freedoms that he stole from my mother. Excuse me while I vomit.
There is nothing that will make that little boy whole whether the man who killed his mother is released, held for life, executed, or otherwise. In the meantime, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matthew 5:7).
Just because you think "there is nothing that will make that little boy whole" does not mean that letting the perpetrator go is morally irrelevant or neutral or that the release of the perpetrator won't aggravate the pain already felt by victims and victims' families.
The murder of a loved one may cause irreparable pain, but that does not therefore mean the victims or families should be totally okay with the murderer being let go. That adds insult to injury.
And what about serial rapists and molesters like Larry Nassar? Should his victims feel totally content and pacific if he argues he doesn't want to molest anymore and deserves another chance?
At some point, the crime committed outweighs and forecloses any potential redemption of the perpetrator. Or at least, any redemption or rehabilitation will have to happen within prison walls.
@9:11 clearly you don’t understand the concept of redemption and rehabilitation. If the boy carries your attitude he will be miserable forever, much like you. Read some literature, compassion actually heals. Try it.
The only truly healed victims I have ever met or read of are the ones that find some form of forgiveness and realize that the perpetrator in a cage is not the answer.
And I've met victims who have healed and recovered, but who still find satisfaction and closure in the perpetrator being justly punished for the crime and loss inflicted. You do not have any monopoly or authority to define what counts as "healing" or to decree how victims or victims' families must feel in response to a crime inflicted upon them.
@12:40
Read this article about a family who attempted "restorative justice" and tried to forgive the person who murdered their wife and mother. It did not heal. It made things worse.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/21/they-agreed-to-meet-their-mother-s-killer-then-tragedy-struck-again
“The way we look at it,” she told me, “restorative justice is what killed our dad.”
@9:11
You would probably feel as disgusted and outraged as the family of Claudia Maupin and Oliver Northrup. They were brutally murdered by Daniel Marsh, a teenager who wanted to become a serial killer. Years later, Daniel Marsh appeared in a TED Talk video in which he gave some unctuous overwrought self-pitying speech about how he realized he's not "evil," but he thinks he's just "damaged" and is entitled to sympathy and pity and freedom. Of course, the families of his victims were unsettled and disgusted to see this murderer given some platform to aggrandize himself. TED took down the video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Claudia_Maupin_and_Oliver_Northup#Aftermath
https://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/davis-double-murderer-gives-the-ted-talk-a-new-twist/article_273b2708-b345-5b1a-8662-4644a21d7339.html
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