Reply #35: It's revenge and not punishment! [View All]

[Liberaler]

The idea of a penitentiary system is to punish and rehabilitate. Unfortunatly, USA forgot rehabilitate and have today the worlds largest prison population and the largest portion of it's citizens behind bars. I refuse to believe that it is something genetically in each and every american that makes them more prone to become criminals than people in other countries.
More than 2 million people in US prisons, that is insane and says more about the medival and cruel and inhumane legal system this country has. Add to that the death penalty only kept by the most underdeveloped countries in the world and in this case, USA is a 3rd world country.

Death penalty is disgusting and nothing but pure revenge. But on the other side, locking someone up for the rest of their life is also inhumane and borders to torture. You wonder why there is so much problems and violence in US prisons? Well, when the only thing you have to look forward to, is to leave this place in a wooden box, then you really don't care what happens and violence becomes an expression of hopelessness. The Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen deals with this topic in The Wild Duck, the whole play is available online at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/IbsWild.html. You can not take away the hope of the future, what do you have left then? Nothing and you life becomes meaningless and that is what happens in US prisons due to the extremly long sentences passed.

Bottom line for me: Death penalty is revenge and not justice!