Life without parole was found to breach human rights in the EU and other places:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment#Reform_or_ab...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/europe/10iht-britain...

which sometimes brings ridiculous situations, when people like Breivik are sentenced to 21 years, because that's the Norway limit.

that's showing a weakness to evil, and weakness will always be eventually used against the best intentions of original authors (in his case, I wouldn't mind firing squad right after trial, in same way he killed those kids). there is 0% doubt about his full guilt, and almost 100% chance he will never add any positive value to mankind, ever.

Norway's treatment of Breivik has nothing to do with Breivik and everything to do with the sort of society Norwegians want to live in. They simply aren't prepared to abandon their values and respect for human life because of the evil acts of a maniac. I applaud them for it.

He got 21 year special detention (forvaring), meaning he'll probably sit for life or until he is no longer deemed a threat to society. The detention will be renewed every 5 year or so by a special court.

But this is also problematic as the prisoner is locked up for an undetermined amount of time, which is suffering in and of itself. But I don't think it's worse than life without parole, which seems like absolute torture to me.

BTW, after 2015 the maximum sentence in Norway is 30 years.

OK I stand corrected, I thought he only got 21 years and will be out afterwards

I used to be for the death penalty, but now I feel that the death penalty is really just state-sponsored revenge. Our society has moved beyond the "eye for an eye" concept, and it's natural that feelings about the death penalty will follow.

Will Breivik get out in 21 years? It's possible that he'll convince the necessary people that he's been appropriately punished and understands why his actions were wrong, but most people believe it's unlikely. --The terms of his conviction allow him to be held longer if the State determines it is necessary.

The US needs to start looking at prisons more like Norway does - the deprivation of freedom is punishment for a crime, but we should have a duty to those who are imprisoned to help prepare them for when they are released - at that point their punishment is supposed to be over, and their crimes shouldn't continue to follow them and prevent them from being able to live like any other person.

Abolishing capital punishment isn't intended to fix the issue you're describing. You may not have done so intentionally but you've created a Straw Man there.

Abolishing capital punishment allows us to reverse the decision later when new evidence comes to light exonerating the convict. You can't free a dead person.

There are other justifications as well in terms of financial cost although the facts are more cloudy there, I've seen good quality analyses presenting cases in favour of both arguments around the cost of the death penalty vs lifetime incarceration.

If someone is wrongly imprisoned for life, they have a chance of getting out. If someone is wrongly executed, there is no way to fix that.

While that's true, the vast majority of people who are released on new evidence BECAUSE of the many appeals you get before execution.

If those people hadn't been on death row, they'd still be rotting in prison.

If you give people the option of throwing someone in prison and forgetting about them, or forcing them to actually decide on their guilt, they will always choose the former.

If I was wrongly convicted, I would much, much, much rather be on death row than in for life-without-parole.

That's a critique of the current state of our legal system, not whether the death penalty is just in the case of a wrongly convicted innocent person.

Let me know when you've created an ideal criminal legal justice system.

Fix the problems with wrongful conviction, lack of appeals, etc etc, and we can come back and abolish capital punishment.

But right now, it's naiive to advocate for abolishing capital punishment, because in the absence of other reforms, it simply makes the current system worse.

I'm confused. How does abolishing capital punishment make a system that we know has executed innocent people worse?

Halt capital punishment to prevent further, irreversible, errors. AND work on other reforms (better trial lawyers, more equitable appeals process, etc.). Then you can bring back capital punishment once we have a greater degree of confidence in the system.

I don't claim to be able to make an ideal criminal legal justice system. But I do think we can make improvements, this being one of them.

Why do you think the rest of the first world has outlawed capital punishment?

not if you would be in any 3rd world country, or Singapore for that matter

Multiple countries have abolished the life-without-parole as well - my country did so in 1884, after having abolished the death penalty in 1867.

New evidence cannot set free a prisoner the state killed last year.

Correct, it's called wrongful execution, and is a very real problem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution

Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution

If there were no false positives in the justice system, your argument might be reasonable. There's always a chance a person will be mistakenly given life without parole. They can be released, an executed person cannot. I guess it depends whether a) you have more trust in the justice system than evidence would support, or b) you think the false positives (dead innocents) are a reasonable price to pay.

Additionally, people can and do kill themselves in prison: there is a way out of serving a full-life sentence that doesn't involve judicial killing.