Or, have them clear the brush and trees that can help prevent/limit the fires.They can live in tents , like some parolees make their kidnap victims.

According to Thomas Sowell, 250 years ago, another Scotsman, Adam Smith, said "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." He then goes on to say "That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America as well, where so many people seem to have been far more concerned about whether we have been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terorists themselves."

Giant hamsters wheels might be too good for them.

Good for california. More people should die in jail. Less should be there for stupid stuff. I'm not totally sold on the "legalizing drugs would be a good" argument, but it has merit and should be carefully thought out. And yes, prisoners should have to work their asses off for the public good while there. Tent cities? Why the hell not!!

To me, taking someone's life is such an enormous and horrible thing that there's really no turning back from it; there's no redemption. Being cavalier about another person dying when you could have saved them is also unforgivable -- which is why I posted all I did on Mary Jo Kopechne killer Ted Kennedy, who was also in the U.S. Senate for a number of years, after his connected family kept him from being prosecuted.

Her orginal sentence was death. That was later commuted to life in prison. Now we have to hear two things constantly. First that she was a model prisoner and second, she is the longest serving female prisoner in the state of California.
She blew her shot at life on the outside when she plunged a knife into a pregnant woman multiple times and then wrote with her blood as well as the many other people she stabbed to death. The fact that she is now a model prisoner is not very impressive. What choices did she make while free?
She was sentenced to life. Now I'm not a lawyer, but to me life means life so I'm not sure what point people are trying to make by constantly declaring that she is the longest serving female prisoner. To me that's a good thing.
She's pretty lucky that she was able to marry twice in jail and do all of the things that she is being credited for doing. She is lucky that she is able to breathe oxygen and not the gas originally planned for her. And she is lucky that nobody ever broke into her cell and stabbed her multiple times while laughing and singing.
I don't understand why we are equating being compassionate with releasing a brutal cold-blooded killer who only showed remorse when it was time for a parole hearing.

Life is life. That they're dying just means their sentence is coming to an end. Send them to the prision infirmary. Especially the likes of Susan Atkins.

If the victims weren't able to die in the arms of their loved ones then why should their killers?

I really think it's that simple.

Let us not forget that Obama's buddy (and founding member of the Weather Underground) Bernardine Dohrn idolized these killers.

These are the sorts of people our President saw fit to consort with in his youth, and still actively seeks counsel from today.

"She was a prisoner for a reason."

I have a problem with the model prisoner statements too. Not only is she in prison for a reason, but how can you compare her behavior in a prison setting where her life is structured and say this is the person she would be outside of prison. She wasn't that person outside of prison. She was a murderer outside of prison, and not just a murderer, but a murderer eight times over. All of her supposed good deeds were done in the confines of prison walls where she had little else to do to pass the time.

Brian:
I'm with you. Bernadine's words when she learned of the Leo LaBianca murder are as chilling today as Susan Atkins were then. Bernadine said, and I'm paraphrasing, " Wow, they stuck a fork in that pig and left it there. Far out. " As far as I know, Bernadine has not apologized or expressed remorse for those words. If she thinks this way, why should I have any support for her or any of her friends ?

The hamster-wheel idea is appealing...but the additional food required to support all that exercise would probably cost more than the electricity would be worth.

A person could probably generate somewhere around 70-100 watts on a continuous basis...so if we work 'em a 10-hour day and sell the electricity at a wholesale price of 5 cents per KWH, we'll only be getting about a nickel a day.

I think we should all be a little more compassionate. If she wants out because of failing health, then show her the door to the gas chamber.

California is not going to save money by letting prisoners out.
The reason crime went down in California is that so many of these people were locked up.

Once let out, the majority of these people will re-offend. This costs money. The cops have to catch them, they have to await trial in county jail, they usually get a court-appointed attorney, (aka paid by the tax payer) then they have to go to court where a huge amount of paperwork is generated.
Witnesses have to be called etc..

Crime goes back up and a politician runs on the get tough on crime platform and "we need more prisons."
The revolving door justice system is only good for the people who profit from it, politicians, lawyers, and judges.

This exact behavior - releasing convicts - is how Jaycee Dugard ended up living in a backyard shithole for 18 years.

Phillip Garrido was a convicted kidnapper and rapist, yet he was allowed to skip out on a 50 year prison sentence after 14 years.

There are degrees to these crimes. Degrees which, I thought, were judged. Some drunk guy pissing behind a bush in public? Probably not a huge danger to society. Definitely doesn't need to have a sexual crime slapped on him. Some guy who kidnaps and rapes a woman? Absofuckinglutely a danger to society. Definitely should never see the light of the free world again. This seemingly obvious conclusion is based on the idea that prison isn't merely just to punish (or to try and rehabilitate). It's to protect society. Let the pot smokers out (punishment). Keep the killers and molesters in (punishment and protecting the rest of us).

People who do really fucked up, sick things don't get better. They are psychologically damaged in some way. They probably know it. And some may even wish they oculd get better. But statistics have shown that people who do these things do them over and over again. Garrido was a model prisoner - of course he was! He was a calculating little fucker and wanted to get out and do his little deeds of evil again. It seems so obvious to me.

"A person could probably generate somewhere around 70-100 watts on a continuous basis...so if we work 'em a 10-hour day and sell the electricity at a wholesale price of 5 cents per KWH, we'll only be getting about a nickel a day."

Hey. The machines in The Matrix found a way (granted, they had several billion humans...but. I thought I'd bring it up anyway.).

Let her rot. Absolutely zero sympathy from me.

I concur with Alkon.
But I think electricity-generating bicycles would work better.
We should sentence people to prison not in years, but for energy generated.
As in, "Alkon, for causing a public disturbance at a private establishment not your own (SBUX, the cell-phone guy), you are nereby sentenced to generate 20,000 watts at TopBitch Women's Prison in Chino."
Get on the bike and start generating.
I am serious too. Our prisons should become power plants, with bicycles, solar power panels, etc. Prisoners owe a huge debt to society ("debt to society" being a foreign expression to libertarians, but never the less), and should pay it back.
Pretty female prisoners should have the option of hooking, and turning proceeds over to the state for shorter sentences.

Legalize drugs, release everyone who's in for nothing but trafficking or using (drug-related violence is another matter), and there would be so much prison room left over that they wouldn't have to parole another murderer or rapist for the rest of this century.

Until they do that, I don't want to hear any official complaints about overcrowding.

"Legalize drugs, release everyone who's in for nothing but trafficking or using (drug-related violence is another matter), and there would be so much prison room left over that they wouldn't have to parole another murderer or rapist for the rest of this century."

Remove all the laws requiring us to pay for drug abusers, welfare, etc...THEN let them out.

Also, traffickers are a completely different thing altogether than a user. When ones profession involves illegalities for profit and to the extent such a profession would warrant imprisonment, these people have been shown time and time again to have zero scruples. Not sure you’d find too many traffickers that didn’t have a history of theft, violence or other sociopathic criminal behaviors.

i-holier .... you are truly an ass-holier

Talmud:

"One who is kind to the cruel will in the end be cruel to the kind."

(I quote that a lot at pro-Palestinian libs.)

The Jewish legal system has NO prisons.

Capital punishment for murder and some rapes.

Exile to sanctuary cities for manslaughter.

Restitution for everything else.
Can't make good on the damage you caused?
You are "sold" as a bondsman/indentured servant to pay your debt to society. Which curtails many of your rights/freedoms.

Your "master" gives you a small grant at the end to start fresh.

- this places first-time offenders in a more positive environment than prison, and teaches them a trade while they work off their debt. Basically workfare.

- it keeps repeat offenders busy, powerless, and separate from other thugs.

My older brother's girlfriend is Iranian. They have no need for locking stuff up over there (except for women...) because there is no theft. Losing one's hand immediately is a strong deterrant. It might even be a strong enough punishment for dealers who sell to kids. Adults can do what they want, but getting kids hooked is just evil. The immediate ramifications idea would help thin the prison system a lot.

Fuck kindness.

I'm not interested in kindness. I'm interested in JUSTICE. A person can be kind, a law can be flexible. Justice by contrast, has to be absolute & final.

If she finds it hard, she's free to stab herself in the belly like she did to her victims.

Fuck her.

People like Atkins, and the Homolkas, and Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (to name three samples from three countries) are the reason the death penalty was invented.

Personally, I'd stuff them into a tumbril and drag them through the lined-with-cheering-crowds streets, put them into the guillotine, and give them a sample of French Revolutionary justice.

Why grant mercy to someone who never gave it?

One may call it a noble gesture and feel good about their kindness to a monster manifest in a man. But what do they call it when they speak to those who survive the victims, or surviving victims themselves? Do they call it justice? Not with a straight face I hope.

I remember a story I read once:

A warrior was moving down a freezing mountain and encountered a deadly snake, the snake was nearly frozen to death, and it said to the warrior, "Please, carry me with you down the mountain, that I may live and not die."

"But you are a snake and poisonous, you will bite me."

"If you help me, I will not bite you."

The warrior believed the snake and kindly carried the snake near to his body, sharing his warmth with the dying creature until reaching the base of the mountain. No sooner had he set the snake down, than it struck him with a fatal bite.

As the warrior lay dying and the poison ran through his veins, he said to the snake, "But you promised you would not bite me."

To which the snake replied before going on its way, "You knew what I was, when you picked me up."

Kindness is not always a virtue.

She is a sociopath. Sociopaths don't get 'better', they just get to be better sociopaths. Her religious 'conversion' was just one more selfish tool with which to manipulate people. It was not sincere, no matter how convincing she may have appeared in interviews. None of her victims got to live this long. None of them died in the arms of loved ones. None of them were sentanced to life in prison as Atkins was. She should serve her full sentance, period. Unless she has some way of bringing her victims back to life.....

but the additional food required to support all that exercise

Additional food? What additional food?

Eh, they don't want to release her in order to be nice - they don't want to pay for her end-of-life treatment. It probably costs them TONS to keep her in pain pills and all the other treatments that are considered medically necessary for her. Letting her out of prison means she then has to go apply for Medicaid (Medical, whatever), and in most states it takes a while to prove that you are disabled and qualify as a childless adult. In the meantime, the state has saved money and she's in pain without the care she needs and her family (assuming she has one and they still feel some responsibility for her) has had to shoulder the burden of feeding and caring for her.

I just watched an interesting account of the Manson murders on the History channel. I believe that they are still replaying it if anyone is interested.

I agree, let her rot in jail for her final days, begging for her morphine like Sharon Tate begged for the life of her child.

-Julie

She is married to an attorney who has supported her bid for freedom for many years. He says that he will take financial responsibility for her medical care if released. Let him foot the bill for his wife while in prison if his intention is really to spare the taxpayers the financial burden.

What kind of twisted individual wanted to marry Susan Atkins? I agree. Make him pay even if she's not released.