I think you hit diminishing returns even before 10 years. Unless you have a reason to believe that if let out they would immediately do harm I would cap it at 5 for the very worst offenders.

Absolutely, I figured the argument would stand stronger with 10 years as, even if you're of the mindset that prison works, 10 years is obviously more than enough for the "rehabilitation." If anything, prison seems to breed more resentment for the system that put them there in the first place.

I really think the entire prison system needs to be rethought from the ground up though. It doesn't make sense that excons carry this weight with them throughout their life, failing background checks. If someone's been released from prison, they should be done with their punishment. Period.

So 5 years for premeditated murder?

Yep! What do you gain by having it be longer? What reform happens in 10, 25, 50 years but not 5?

You can add on non-prison sentencing if you must but I very much don’t like wasting people’s lives by holding them in a box.

And again, if you can make a case that the hypothetical murderer will immediately do it again if let out you can hold them longer.

Some people simply can’t be reformed; keeping them in prison for life is the only option.

In other cases, most violent criminals seem to be young men, so there’s some value in running out the clock so they aren’t young men anymore by the time they’re released.

Even if you are right, there is also therapy, house arrest, 24 hour monitoring, etc.

Prison is not the only option by a long shot.

I strongly agree that prison isn't the only option. At the same time, I can't support the notion that Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should all be free men today.

Be that as it may, and maybe they shouldn’t be free. But I don’t think they should be in prison either. You can have your freedom punitively stripped away from you without being held in prison.

I agree they shouldn't be in prison. They should be dead. One of them is.

The problem with capitol punishment is that it's irrevocable. Even though we know these people committed these heinous crimes, there's going to be a line for where it's not ok to sentence someone to death because the proof is not airtight. When cases are close to that line, there's always the chance that they weren't actually guilty. I believe this will be the case no matter where that line is.