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If I murdered someone out of curiosity and in doing so realized it was not fun at all should I be allowed to go free immediately since I will not murder again?

• JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  There's also 'fairness' in law - so you have to serve a sentence similar to others guilty of the same offense. And yes in this strawman case your sentence should perhaps not be a long one. Except the sociopath angle - a person who commits crime for fun is quite likely to find another fun crime to commit.
  • bobthechef 9y ago
    Retribution is inherent to punishment and by extension justice. It simply makes no sense to claim otherwise. Mercy makes no sense unless we accept that. A judge cannot show leniency or mercy unless it is, first, acknowledged that the criminal deserves something commensurate with the crime, and second, there is a real, deserved possibility (at least in principle, even if never realized) of receiving one's just deserts. Premeditated murder deserves the death penalty as a matter of principle, though we can decide legally never to manifest that as punishment. Punishment has three purposes: retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. We seem to be suffering from a contemporary bias against retribution [0]. However, these three purposes are intimately connected. When a punishment fits the crime, we communicate the severity of the crime to the criminal. In that way, we help facilitate rehabilitation by making it clear how grave his offense has been. Deterrence is facilitated by the same token. Obviously, these are not absolute measures. For example, a criminal may be unrepentant, but then rehabilitation is not possible. In any case, adequate remorse does not remove the possibility of retribution (though a sincerely remorseful criminal would accept that he deserves commensurate punishment), but it does allow for mercy. [0] A common confusion here is that retribution entails hatred of the punished. It does not.
    • kup0 9y ago
      Yes, but in America, a hatred of the punished is common regardless of whether you tie that to "retribution", and likely one of the many reasons rehabilitation is not a focus and/or strong outcome of our prison system. And even if they do rehabilitate, our society is not properly set up to help them come back, so the retribution often outweighs the crime. They do their time in prison- but essentially they do time the rest of their life, because when they come back, they aren't treated as if their retribution is complete.
    • abiox 9y ago
      in your description, what is the actual distinction between "retribution" and "deterrence"?