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I know people serving life without parole. One of them especially I'm fond of. One of the funniest, nicest people I've met. Two people were killed. Did he do it? I couldn't tell you. I've read his entire case file multiple times and I can't say for certain if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was arrested at 19 and will never see the light of day unless the law changes. If he had a lot of money for a lawyer he could probably get his sentence converted to a fixed duration, since there is now case law saying those under 21 should not be given indefinite sentences due to the undeveloped nature of their brains.

I'm actually amazed at the statistic that only 3% return to prison. There are actually very little resources for those getting released, and if your entire family and friends are gone, you have no support network to fall back on. Perhaps getting out above retirement age gives you access to more charities and a small state pension that will allow you to find a place to live and buy food.

One of the saddest cases I know of is a man who did 50 straight years then needed money when he got out, so his daughter persuaded him to go shoplifting with her and he got arrested immediately and sent back for another three years.

If this person was freed from prison and then the relatives of the two dead people killed him in retaliation, how much prison time do you think it would be just for them to receive? Deterring this kind of informal retaliatory murder is one of the jobs of harsh sentences in the formal criminal justice system.
The relatives of the dead people could probably have the convicted murderers dealt with in prison if they cared enough about it. They did sue the murderers (and likely won by default) for $10m for each of the two murdered men. As the convicts have life sentences and no income they will probably never even earn back their legal fees.
I think it is harder than you think it is for people who aren't already connected to the criminal underworld to order a hit on someone in prison. But I think the desire for revenge is muted if a person is being legally punished for their offense by being locked in prison at all, as opposed to being free in public.
>I've read his entire case file multiple times and I can't say for certain if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Surely there would be an indictment alleging what he did?

Well, indictments are kinda muddy in that they just say "this person killed this person" without going into any details. There were two couples (four people) and two (other) dead people. Even if only one of the four people killed the two people then all four can get charged and convicted if they are shown to be involved in any way.

In Illinois they call this "Accountability for conduct of another":

https://www.srhunterlaw.com/Criminal-Code-of-1961-Article-Ar...

> As many of them acknowledge, they have been rightly punished for a long time. But, ask yourself as you watch the video, how long is long enough?

I am of the opinion that incarceration should be "for the benefit of society"; that the person should be behind bars because because they are a threat to society. If they're done with thing because, they may do it again. And that incarceration should be working helping that person become one that would _not_ repeat that crime. Life sentences should only ever be the case for someone that will always be a threat to society.

I get that people want closure/revenge, and understand that. I'm sure I would feel the same in many cases. But ... it just doesn't help anything. And sure there's an argument for it being preventative (don't do the crime or you'll do the time), but lots of studies have shown that's has little validity.

> None of us want to be defined solely by the person we were in our youth, or by the worst thing we ever did. The men serving life without parole feel the same way.

Fair, but if it's likely that you're the type of person that _will_ do catastrophic harm to society again if you get out, then there's a fair argument that you should not be out.

> I am of the opinion that incarceration should be "for the benefit of society"; that the person should be behind bars because because they are a threat to society. If they're done with thing because, they may do it again. And that incarceration should be working helping that person become one that would _not_ repeat that crime. Life sentences should only ever be the case for someone that will always be a threat to society.

Sure, but general deterrence benefits the society, too. Case in point: for many years, California effectively decriminalized petty theft, and it caused a lot of grief to normal people. That's an argument for harsher punishment: even if most shoplifters / porch pirates / smash-and-grab people are not hardened criminals, you want to send a message to anyone contemplating that lifestyle.

To give another example: almost no one gets behind the wheel with the intent to kill. But if you severely punish drunk / negligent driving, more people will pause before doing it.

That's a fair statement, and I agree in general. I guess my stance is more that "more time" time not really help much with that. I'm sure there's a connection, but it's not linear.
>I am of the opinion that incarceration should be "for the benefit of society"; that the person should be behind bars because because they are a threat to society. If they're done with thing because, they may do it again. And that incarceration should be working helping that person become one that would _not_ repeat that crime. Life sentences should only ever be the case for someone that will always be a threat to society.

How do you know whether a murderer won't be a repeat murderer?

> How do you know whether a murderer won't be a repeat murderer?

I don't know. I just don't believe "but he hasn't paid for his crime _enough_" isn't helpful.

>I just don't believe "but he hasn't paid for his crime _enough_" isn't helpful.

No, there are justifications/benefits to keeping people imprisoned beyond "paying for his crime". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incapacitation_(penology)

Thank you for... agreeing with me?

I didn't say there weren't reasons for imprisonment. I said that "he hasn't paid for his crime enough" is not a good reason.

> then there's a fair argument that you should not be out.

Better kill them, then. Their stay in prison will not help them, and there will be less costs and risks.

There seems to be a great variance here. Maine, for example, has been making available computers and educational assets and as a result some prisoners have become quite technologically adept and left prison as skilled technologists.
60 Minutes - The German prison program that inspired Connecticut [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOmcP9sMwIE

> As many of them acknowledge, they have been rightly punished for a long time. But, ask yourself as you watch the video, how long is long enough?

according to the date: "until death" is enough.

society is not well served by releasing them.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/returning-prison-0

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/sex_offense_recidivism_2...

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-common-is-it-for-released-...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3969807/

https://ciceroinstitute.org/research/the-case-for-incarcerat...

https://bjs.ojp.gov/topics/recidivism-and-reentry

"I make sure that my life is purposeful. Every time I invest myself into someone else, I free a part of myself. A part of me will leave here with you. I'm going to love people so passionately until a part of me will always live outside of the gates of Angola."

Wow.

The thing in the back of my head is that everything they say is tainted by the crimes they committed

How do you empathize, or trust that it's not just a ploy to try to get out?

If you're flipping the burden that way, I challenge you: flip the burden that way on everyone around you. "How do you empathize, or trust that it's not just a ploy to try to pay rent?"

I think you'll find that you're making assumptions that it would benefit you to avoid making.

The stakes are very different, both for themselves and society at large if they're set free. They're fighting for their life and freedom, not just a relatively small rent payment

These people have also already shown their character, at least at one point in their life. They're capable of heinous acts and being deceptive is pretty in line with that

It's a much higher bar for them to clear than everyone around me needs to

This is a real, hard question. Two things are true:

1. Most people are generally good and while some have made catastrophic mistakes, those tend to be outliers over generally decent behavior.

2. Some people are consistent predators who have no compunction about harming others for their own benefit.

The people in set #2 really want to appear to be in set #1. It's good to be mindful of that fact. At the same time, set #1 is an actually much larger set of people.

Navigating this is probably one of those things where there's no perfect solution, just very difficult compromises.

Life without parole. Letting them out when they are elderly. What do they do for care?

It's not like they'll have a retirement fund.

Probably the same as other elderly with no assets. Public housing and other welfare.
After graduation my high-school-best-friend and I took different paths. He got heavily into partying and drugs, and started doing crimes to pay for his addictions. First major conviction was for stolen credit cards. Second conviction was for check fraud. His third major conviction was for breaking into rich people's houses and stealing loose crap like golf clubs, power tools and bicycles. Missouri had just passed its version of the then-popular Three Strikes law, and this latest conviction was his third strike. He was fast-passed to a 20-year sentence, no opportunity for early release.

I'm not going to preach about my friend being a victim of a cruel system or whatever. He deserved to be punished, no doubt about it. He committed crimes; there were victims to those crimes. My feeling, however, is that the people of Missouri are the victims, the taxpayers. They had to pay to jail a dude for 20 years (they paid for his college education, too, through some sort of convict-college program). I'm confident there's a better way to punish/rehabilitate non-violent offenders that doesn't cost the tax payers 20 years of jailing.

Funny-not-funny tidbit: My friend was released in early-2021. He was released after serving 20 years, only to be "locked down" on the outside because of Covid.

Some people would say that murder is the worst crime, but I disagree. A murder done in anger, or to get revenge, or for money, or is otherwise a personal thing is one thing. But there are crimes against society - like the Boston bombers, and the school shooters, and the people who deliberately drive into crowds, or poison the water supply. Those disrupt society, and the cost of them goes far beyond the people killed.

Those criminals need to be in jail for life.

Mass murder being worse than a single murder seems self-evident. I don't want people who have done either to be roaming free in society. Granted a killing may be a crime of rage or passion and not methodically planned, but generally that would be charged as manslaughter and so the difference in motivation and effect on society is already recognized.
US prisons literally are a source of slave labor. If you support them, you stand for slavery.
Because it is enshrined in the 13th Amendment:

     Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, *except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted*, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Probably an Amendment that needs amending.

It was used en masse with turn of the century vagrancy laws to arrest Black people who didn't have enough cash on hand, then send them to other states to work and/or die in coal mines as essentially slave labor.

Even happened to children who committed minor crimes.

The 13th Amendment provides incentive to incarcerate, and with private prison industries existing period, that incentive probably should not exist at all.

> Probably an Amendment that needs amending.

Good luck, the US is still trying to get the equal rights amendment (which everyone basically agrees with) ratified for going on 54 years now.

I cant imagine the process gyrations and political wrangling it would take to convince our political leadership in congress and basically every red state legislature to take on a new amendment specifically tuned just towards prisoner’s rights.

If you commit a crime tough it out and dont do it again lol.
>Because it is enshrined in the 13th Amendment:

Permitted, not "enshrined". It doesn't mandate it, it allows it. And despite being allowed, all US convicts are paid wages. No one is sentenced to labor, hard or otherwise.

The "wages" are typically something like 25 cents per hour, often much less than that. The work is mandatory, and sentences can be extended if you refuse to work, so they effectively are sentenced to labor.
Simply wrong and dishonest, yet so easy to google.

https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/work_programs.j...

I suppose you could consider 15 cents an hour “paid wages”, but to me that’s just a bad veneer for what our system truly is.

I stand for anything that permanently keeps murderers and rapists away from polite society. Label me as you please.

This is what you stand for, if you want them out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska

https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/12/17/murder-suspect-releas...

https://nypost.com/2026/02/11/us-news/dhs-slams-activist-jud...

I never said I want them out. I just don't support the prison system in its current form, or any excuse for slavery. Meanwhile, the root causes of the violent crimes go altogether unaddressed which is not appropriate either.
Sure, address them ... AFTER providing for safety of the public. Only after the innocent can be worry-free that do the guilty get ANY consideration.
As long as there's a decent internet connection ...
I've thought about being a von neumann probe, if I could take the entireity of the internet and generative models.
This is basically the plot of the Bobiverse novels. They're a fun read.
I would say that this is the _setup_ for the bobiverse novels, not the plot. The plot is a whole hell of a lot larger at this point.

> They're a fun read.

Strong agree.

Yeah I have read them all, great books

Moot

Edit: We've got a Project Hail Mary movie how about Bobiverse

Too bad you cannot buy it as a "standalone" for desktop . . . the way it was originally intended.
Is this comment misplaced?