Happy that someone changed their mind. You asked a very good question. I don't think there are any easy answers to it. Crime hurts people and creates lots of strong emotions, so our instincts on what is best for society regarding crime are not very reliable.

A lot of conversation needs to happen on this, and we need to constantly reevaluate our positions.

Suppose the person didn't commit murder, but had intentionally and violently raped a ten year old?

We can't make the punishment the same, or he would just murder her, yet I don't think such a person should every be let out.

I didn't want to dive down away from murder, because then I'll have to pick my "line". I'm not prepared to do that for various reasons. For example, I don't know the punishments for the crime you mentioned.

Murder is the "easiest" crime to use to make my arguments. And even then I have to specify stuff like "intentional without a damn good reason".

Every case is nuanced. You can’t say murder == life without screwing something up in the system. It’s not simple or trivial to solve.

Luckily many places around the world solve it differently so we can look at those systems and observe.

> We can't make the punishment the same, or he would just murder her, yet I don't think such a person should every be let out.

Do you believe people can change? Or perhaps more generally, what do you think the purpose of a prison should be when considering rehabilitation vs punishment?