Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, killed 13 women and attacked five others after claiming to have heard voices ordering him to kill prostitutes. In 1981 he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison and was placed in Broadmoor Hospital, a prison for the criminally insane, after a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
This week his lawyers won a ruling from a high court judge that a hearing should be held to set the length of time he should serve before being eligible for parole armed with the ringing endorsement from the hospital doctors that Sutcliffe is fit to be freed from Broadmoor and 'is effectively cured as long as he never stops taking his medication.'
The decision leads us to an uncomfortable appraisal of just what we expect from our prison system.
When a judge sentences a members of society who break the laws of the land to be jailed, is it as punishment, in order to be rehabilitated or just as a place to send them to remove them from Society for a length of time?
Is the 15 to 30 years of a life sentence the amount of time a judge considers long enough for a criminal to 'repay his debt to society' or is the thinking that this is the amount of time that a certain prisoner would take until he is suitably ready to rejoin Society and not be a liability?
If you see prison as a punishment or a rehabilitation centre, then at some point we are going to face the same decisions as we do now with Peter Sutcliffe who has almost served the minimum period and who doctors say is 'cured' of the illness that made him a killer.
If we see prisons as a place to hold the unsavoury members of society until they are deemed fit to rejoin the rest of us, then we still face the same problems when the time imposed is up.
There are advocates of restoring the death penalty and i would strongly suggest that if there were a referendum on the subject in Britain, hanging would be quickly restored to the list of possible punishments which explains why we would never be given the opportunity to vote on it.
As two thirds of prisoners re-offend once released, we are blatantly not rehabilitating prisoners correctly or enough. The punishment is obviously not severe enough to act as a deterrent and it shows we can only remove them for a short time but at some point we have to cross our fingers and put them back into the mix again.
I don't know a solution but i am very uncomfortable with the idea of releasing anytime soon a man who is only a missed dose of medication away from returning to his old murderous ways.
7 comments:
I've always thought that in times of prison overcrowding, that non-violent offenders should be released first (drug offenses, white collar crime, listening to Phil Collins, etc.)The first order of business should be protection of society.
The question regarding the release of this man is not whether he is rehabilitated or cured or any of that.
The question is whether he has found his savior in Jesus Christ.
If so, let him free. If not, well, after 30 years he should be used to his life as it is and able to continue it til his death.
I think we are far too quick to sentence some people to prison and i agree with you that those guilty of non-violent crime should be dealt with in another way.
Phil Collins listeners should have their ears removed with rusty hacksaws for example. That'll teach 'em.
I don't know if he found God Nixon but a few years ago he found a cell mates pencil in his eye.
Daniel, I thought you were an atheist?
There are a few options here:
->"Kill the bastard"
->Use him as slave labor
->Go medieval and cut his hands off
->Continue as usual
But to be slightly more serious, if you don't think that the man is ever going to "get better", perhaps killing him or using him as slave labor would be the most logical thing to do with him...
--Nog
Lucy,
i'd run over him with my car and maim his legs... oops that might backfire since cars kill more people that even guns... i guess to be safe i'd have to shoot him in the legs... regardless i wouldn't kill him because i oppose the death penalty.
q
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