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chaosmage  11mo ago (text post)   2196 thread views

Should lifetime prisoners be incentivized to kill themselves?

The death penalty has various serious problems and lifetime imprisonment is really really expensive.

I guess we should be happy every time someone so thoroughly bad we want them out of society forever (like a serial murderer) does us the favour of killing themselves. Nothing of value is lost, and the justice system saves money. Right?

It seems to me it logically follows that we should incentivize such suicides. Like: 5000 dollars to a person of your choice if you're dead within the first year of your lifetime sentence, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

It feels very wrong and is clearly outside the overton window. But is there any reason to expect this wouldn't be a net benefit?

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I'm coming to the conclusion that we're doing it all wrong.

The current U.S. system seems to imprison to few people (yes, too few) for too short a period of time, but it makes the experience hellish.

We should have more people in prison and longer sentences as well. This is the best and maybe only way to reduce the amount of violent crime to tolerable levels. It worked in the 1990s and it will work again. To make this politically palatable we should make prisons as humane as possible. This would also reduce the damage of false imprisonment. I don't care if violent sociopaths are pampered as long as they are removed from society.

The cost of this proposal? Nothing compared to the savings from having a drastically lower rate of crime.

All the data I’ve seen says prison sentences are far too long. I’ll mostly reference Tabarrok who’s done a lot of work there. Simplistically people age out of crime. And criminals generally respond better to more consistent policing and punishment than less consistent and longer.

We can both be right. I'd agree that a 50 year sentence or whatever is too long for all but the most heinous of crimes. There is no need to keep old men in prison. I'd also agree that people who commit non-violent offenses should be given swift, sure, but not too severe punishment.

It's also clear to me that under no circumstances should a murderer or a person with multiple violent crimes be released before age 35.

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