this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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You're correct, but anyone from the US, whether they're on the furthest right or the furthest left, is going to have an incredibly hard time understanding why. Their country is deeply indoctrinated with this notion that anything less than the death penalty is basically a slap on the wrist, and even the progressive segments of their populace have mostly failed to ever meaningfully address or deconstruct this sentiment. Left/right disagreements over justice in the US tend to look more like disagreements over which things you should get put in prison for life for, rather than positing that such extensive prison terms being normal across the board might not be healthy for a society.
What this couple did is horrific, and it deserves a very serious penalty, and the problem then becomes that because the bar for "Very serious penalty" is set at "Spend most of your life in prison", arguing for anything less than that feels like siding with these monsters against their victims.
I'm an American though, and many of my friends agree with me on the topic of prison reform
American here as well. Prison reform is needed, it's modern slavery. But these people are Nazis and I do feel no remorse being intolerant of their actions in society. Rehabilitation or exile I do think are appropriate ways forward. It's not the people that aren't reasonable, it's our laws and two tiered justice system.
See, this is an excellent example of the point I just made.
Even when people say "I want prison reform" they inevitably always have some kind of carve out for "Except in the case of X."
Which means you don't actually have a problem with the current system. You just have a problem with who it gets applied to.
This isn't an example of that. My alternatives were rehabilitation or exile, which I suppose could be argued isn't reform as we've exiled people as punishment for like as long as we've been people, but I'm really having a hard time seeing how I said "except in the case of x" I said you should be mean to Nazis, not lock them up for life.
I never said to tolerate their actions. I said the punishment does not fit the crime and better serves feeding the prison system slaves.
Some people take the idea of not tolerating intolerance to mean we ourselves must become the fascists. I reject that. We don't have to go high when they go low but we certainly shouldn't go lower when they go low.
Now of course big fucking astrix for our current situation. Revolution is starting to look like our only way out of the current administration.
But on the topic of prison reform that's a bit different.
Also exile is just a terrible idea, and it's a very antiquated one. Arguably the way it was presented was just an extension of colonialist/imperialist ideal. "Hello poor nation we've decided to ship you our undesirables. Good luck with that"
Sorry I didn't mean to imply that you were tolerating their actions lol. I agree that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
My idea of exile, just a thought in my head, would be that it would be a choice to go through rehabilitation or leave society. If a person refuses to stop being intolerant, what is the solution? They can refuse treatment, act in bad faith, and I don't think forcing compliance ever helped anything. So what do we do?
I get that exile is kind of a terrible antiquated idea, but if we cannot tolerate intolerance and the offender refuses to change what is the solution?
You add more time in prison. If you keep re-offending and are a harm to society you will start to spend more time in prison.
But you'll find the vast majority of people want to be productive and even those that are more self centered will generally take the opportunity to be a better member of society even if it's just to avoid more prison. If you start with massive penalties then you never even gave that person a chance.
It's not about controlling people's thoughts. It's about ensuring that their actions aren't illegal. If they want to hold onto hate their whole life that's their choice. As long as they aren't harming others they can still carry their prejudice.
Break the law again though you go back to prison.
But when you put someone in our current prison system for 20 years you're basically ensuring they will commit a crime again. You're taking away their chance to be a productive member of society, essentially enslaving them, and all of this comes at a great monetary cost to the taxpayer.
Okay, so you want prison, but with time more suited to the crime to give ample opportunity to reform. I don't even want prisons. Rehabilitation should be completely different from that. You're still using the stick and hurting people by taking away their freedom. I think that's why our opinions differ. You would continually punish offenders and I would just give them a chance to reform or leave. I don't really like the idea of putting anyone in a cage.
Well hold on some clarifying questions.
In your rehabilitation model would criminals allowed to go free or would they be held through the rehabilitation process? What if they are violent and pose an immediate threat to the community?
If the safety of the public is at risk, then some amount of supervision is necessary. If a person is violent for example, then being restrained, restricted, or sedated is probably necessary. There can be no tolerance of them interfering with the freedoms of others.
Having thought about this for half the day, my best answer is that response, the no tolerance, should be as humane as possible. If a person is actively homicidal, then yes, they need to be restrained. If a person is untrustworthy they need to be tracked.
However, rehabilitation should teach integration into society and thus should be tightly integrated with society. Ideally rehabilitation happens in the community you live in and with as minimal restrictions as possible other than whatever requirements there is for safety of the community, attending, passing, reintegration, whatever we're calling it, a person should be encouraged to live and work within their community.
If we end up in extremes as would of course happen, the order of which I think is most humane to least is as follows : voluntary exile, voluntary imprisonment, involuntary imprisonment, involuntary exile, execution
Are you claiming that actually everyone in America agrees with you on this point, or are you simply agreeing with me, in a very roundabout way, that talking to Americans about prison reform is incredibly difficult and that you and your friends represent the rare exceptions?
Your comment made it sound like you believed no American would agree with prison reform.
I thought this was amusing since you were replying to an American that at least associates with many that agree with me on prison reform.
To make the argument more direct I'd say you'll find a lot of Americans on the left that want a reform of our justice system