Booman asked, What about that 21 year sentence in Norway?

serious question

This was my reply.

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Public safety would be best served if he were executed quickly and cheaply.

The Weimar Republic used a small, easily transported guillotine.

I assume that is not possible, but still.

Dead men never do it again.

Others might.

Given, however, that capital punishment is not possible, transportation for life to some place from which he cannot reasonably be expected to return, or anyway cannot return on pain of death, might work out well enough.

Who doubts Norway has wilderness amounting to a frozen hell where a fellow like this might actually survive for a time, but well away from the public to which he would be a menace, up close, with an axe and a dog-sled?

But if his countrymen feel for whatever reason compelled to spend lots of money on the fellow's upkeep while protecting themselves (and us?) from him then by all means let them lock him up someplace forever.

Can you seriously imagine a hearing board deciding to let this guy out 21 years from now?

They would put the fools who let out Jack Abbott on Mailer's say-so quite in the pale.

On the other hand, even in the present case and at least in principle, there is always the bare - even if extremely bare - possibility the system has convicted the wrong guy.

When that happens the public safety is actually harmed in two ways, at least.

First, the real bad guy is still out there posing whatever danger he poses.

And second, when the criminal justice system swallows an innocent man that is a harm to the public of which he is a part.

(The real bad guy being in contrast, of course, a public enemy.)

This risk accompanies any system at all of trying to find and deal with the guilty to protect the innocent, no matter how the guilty are dealt with.

It is not unique to the death penalty.

It might even be smaller, in death penalty cases, given the time and trouble and expense US states must go to before a convicted person can be executed.

Anyway, all of us pretty much assume we are better off if there is a criminal justice system to find and deal with the dangerous, and deal with them effectively and at reasonable cost, than if there is not, even in the face of what we must hope is a moderately low rate of mistaken conviction.

A rate we must wish to see lowered, certainly, if that does not unreasonably increase costs or the net danger to the public.

That much for the public safety angle.

I don't for a moment suggest there are no other considerations to attend to, of different kinds.

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But of course these cannot include moral considerations, though I neglected to say so at the Booman Tribune.

Nor religious.

Divine law, allegedly revealed, surmised, or merely impostured, is out of the question.

As well as the alleged natural or moral kind.

Oh, AP says this.

"In his final words, Breivik regretted not killing more people, apologizing to other 'militant nationalists' for not achieving an even higher death toll."