"Whole life" sentences for Serial Killers breaches "Human Rights"

I believe this essay may be of interest to some of you:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1652238

It clarifies the current state--and the evolution--of the ECtHR's decision-making processes, highlighting some of the issues raised by RB and Loki. My view is that the role of the court is open to "civilized disagreement" with or without the consumption of retard-juice. I recognise that both Loki's and Dread's posts in this thread, though not necessarily correct in their characterization of the court's processes, are consistent with their general views on both international relations and judicial review.

Try highlighting the right words.

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THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND ITS FIVE PROTOCOLS
The European Convention on Human Rights

The Governments signatory hereto, being Members of the Council of Europe,

Considering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948;

Considering that this Declaration aims at securing the universal and effective recognition and observance of the Rights therein declared;

Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is the achievement of greater unity between its Members and that one of the methods by which the aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realization of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms;

Reaffirming their profound belief in those Fundamental Freedoms which are the foundation of justice and peace in the world and are best maintained on the one hand by an effective political democracy and on the other by a common understanding and observance of the Human Rights upon which they depend;

Being resolved, as the Governments of European countries which are like-minded and have a common heritage of political traditions, ideals, freedom and the rule of law to take the first steps for the collective enforcement of certain of the Rights stated in the Universal Declaration;

Have agreed as follows:

[66 original articles and 5 later protocols of which none include phrases to the effect of "except the UK" or "unless the UK feels like it" and where several affirm the authority and powers of the ECtHR]

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Got no issue with rights stated in the declaration being enforced.

The right to review after 25 years isn't "stated" in the declaration though. Which is why all the requirement to point and jab at other distraction jobs rather than point to where it was written down in the first place. Because it wasn't.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Try highlighting the right words.
Got no issue with rights stated in the declaration being enforced.

The right to review after 25 years isn't "stated" in the declaration though. Which is why all the requirement to point and jab at other distraction jobs rather than point to where it was written down in the first place. Because it wasn't.

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This is a clear indication that you don't really know what you're talking about wrt the ECHR, the way the court works and the case at hand. Article 3 is formulated in general terms with no clear definitions or specific requirements. The definitions and requirements are supposed to arise from the interpretations of the court which are required to be well-reasoned and are, in practice, supported and explicated by existing and emerging jurisprudence relevant to the cases brought before the court. In this particular case the court's reasoning has led it to conclude that a completely irreducible life sentence with no possibility of review must be considered a violation of the ban on "inhuman and degrading punishment". In other words it is "stated in the ECHR"--in the sense of the word that's been used by the ECtHR and by the contracting states to the ECHR--that you can't deny a prisoner the right to have his sentence be reviewed after a number of years. The ECHR doesn't require the Court to take a textualist or originalist approach to interpreting the ECHR and, for the greater part of its history, the Court has not taken such approaches.

If you have difficulties grasping the task of the court I invite you to consider the fact that "torture" and "inhuman and degrading punishment" are not terms that are explicitly defined in the document. There is no enumerated list that goes, "1. Tooth-pulling 2. electrocution of testicles 3. Rape, types I-IIIa 4. being peed on more than 60% of body surface area or 20% of the head-neck region," etc. By your reasoning, anything not explicitly listed in the ECHR is perfectly all right, which is both despicable and dangerous. No doubt the people who wrote and signed the ECHR recognised this and described these particular rights in general terms while being very specific about the situations and ways in which rights can be derogated. You'll note that same goes for art. 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by which the ECHR was inspired.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Minx, you could cite that bit mentioning how the law in England and Wales used to require a review at 25 years but that such a passage was "inexplicably" absent (the court's wording) in the more recent 2003 Act. The Court made the deliberate assumption that they really wanted to have such a rule but they just forgot to include it. That struck me as rather high-handed.

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Of course that's high-handed, basically what they tell us through that is that the UK is moving in the wrong way and needs a slap on the hands for (repeatedly) legislating against the letter and spirit of the Convention. The Brits are still not used to judges acting entirely independent of government. They live under the presumption that Parliament is sovereign, the reality is that Parliament has no free hands if any of the rights protected by the Convention are involved.

Please show what in the Convention (and not the Court, the Court != the Convention) shows the "way"? The Convention did not criminalise the Death Penalty, the UK deciding to re-implement the Death Penalty would be completely acceptable to the Convention alone. It is not the role of judges to legislate independently of Parliament, it is their role to implement that which has been passed by governments. The Convention was passed as such to prevent torture, banning life in prison was not.

The Judges are legislating on issues that have nothing to do with the Convention.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Please show what in the Convention (and not the Court, the Court != the Convention) shows the "way"? The Convention did not criminalise the Death Penalty, the UK deciding to re-implement the Death Penalty would be completely acceptable to the Convention alone. It is not the role of judges to legislate independently of Parliament, it is their role to implement that which has been passed by governments. The Convention was passed as such to prevent torture, banning life in prison was not.

The Judges are legislating on issues that have nothing to do with the Convention.

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Thanks for making my point; the Justices are not bound by your Parliament.

What precisely are they bound by then?

And our Parliament is bound by the judges?

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Please show what in the Convention (and not the Court, the Court != the Convention) shows the "way"? The Convention did not criminalise the Death Penalty, the UK deciding to re-implement the Death Penalty would be completely acceptable to the Convention alone.

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It would be in direct violation of protocols 6 and 13 to the ECHR.

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The Convention was passed as such to prevent torture, banning life in prison was not.

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You're both correct and incorrect. The ECHR was clearly intended to also prevent cruel or inhuman and degrading treatment that does not amount to outright torture. The ban on irreducible life sentences and the requirement for a review process of some sort reflects the ban on "inhuman and degrading punishment" which it is the court's prerogative to define.

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The Judges are legislating on issues that have nothing to do with the Convention.

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They are clearly legislating on issues that have everything to do with the convention. What you're trying to say is that they may be dealing with specific issues the original drafters of the original document did not think of. The judges are not legally bound to only act in accordance with what we imagine were the limited intentions of those who drafted the original document, intentions that clearly do not show in the text of eg. art 3 the ECHR in which they deliberately use broad undefined terms.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

You're both correct and incorrect. The ECHR was clearly intended to also prevent cruel or inhuman and degrading treatment that does not amount to outright torture. The ban on irreducible life sentences and the requirement for a review process of some sort reflects the ban on "inhuman and degrading punishment" which it is the court's prerogative to define.

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I'm honestly having a bit of trouble with that. I could buy the argument that long-term detention is inhuman and degrading, particularly from the German CC perspective about countries whose systems enshrine human dignity because imprisonment, particularly systemized imprisonment, is plainly an affront to human dignity. But that's not really what they're saying. They're either saying that it's not the case if the detention is used for the purposes of rehabilitation (which strikes me as bizarre) or they're using it as a backdoor to saying punishment is only penologically useful for shorter periods of time and should consequently be prohibited from longer sentences, which I think is true but isn't something they've made the slightest reference to and which I doubt is in their remit, not in the EU.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

I'm honestly having a bit of trouble with that. I could buy the argument that long-term detention is inhuman and degrading, particularly from the German CC perspective about countries whose systems enshrine human dignity because imprisonment, particularly systemized imprisonment, is plainly an affront to human dignity. But that's not really what they're saying. They're either saying that it's not the case if the detention is used for the purposes of rehabilitation (which strikes me as bizarre) or they're using it as a backdoor to saying punishment is only penologically useful for shorter periods of time and should consequently be prohibited from longer sentences, which I think is true but isn't something they've made the slightest reference to and which I doubt is in their remit, not in the EU.

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The court is indeed not saying that very long detentions violate art. 3 per se. It recognises that punishment--for example--may justify very long detentions. However, in paragraphs 111-118, it refers to a large body of law, policy and internationally accepted recommendations in support of the notion that rehabilitation etc. MUST be--and, in practice, is--considered in justifying humane and non-degrading prison sentences, even for "life" sentences, indeed even for people who've committed crimes as heinous as genocide. This is what enables the argument about the balance of legitimate penological reasons shifting with time and closes the door to the view that punishment alone--with no consideration for other reasons--can be used to justify indefinite imprisonment. The "punishment" portion of the pie may not be infinitely large.

Because the court's view is that there must exist a balance between all the legitimate penological reasons for imprisonment, and because its view is that this balance may change over the course of an individual's imprisonment, it concludes that, "... in the context of a life sentence, Article 3 must be interpreted as requiring reducibility of the sentence, in the sense of a review which allows the domestic authorities to consider whether any changes in the life prisoner are so significant, and such progress towards rehabilitation has been made in the course of the sentence, as to mean that continued detention can no longer be justified on legitimate penological grounds."

At least, that's my reading. We may be talking past one another :o

It's up to the state to decide how to safeguard that reducibility or how to implement a system for reviewing whether or not a person's sentence can and should be reduced. It's also up to the state to decide when such a review can take place, and the court only notes that there is support elsewhere for conducting such reviews no later than 25 years into a sentence.

I'd like to point out, btw, that the court in this case does not act as if it--and the UK--is legally bound by the German and Italian courts, which was Dread's misdirected anti-federalist and anti-EU charge. It recognises the correctness of the constitutional courts' reasoning in relevant cases, but it does not say that the correctness of the reasoning stems exclusively from the fact that it was used by those courts. Nor does the court base its decision exclusively on the practices of the contracting states, or even only on the practices of the states it likes, which was Loki's allegation. The notion that an irreducible life sentence may be a violation of art. 3 is not a new one for the court (see the references to the Kafkaris v. Cyprus case among others) and it is, for this court, founded on substantive arguments. The references to the existing and emerging international consensus on sentencing are used to support the ruling but do not suffice to justify the ruling all on their own.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

I'm honestly having a bit of trouble with that. I could buy the argument that long-term detention is inhuman and degrading, particularly from the German CC perspective about countries whose systems enshrine human dignity because imprisonment, particularly systemized imprisonment, is plainly an affront to human dignity. But that's not really what they're saying. They're either saying that it's not the case if the detention is used for the purposes of rehabilitation (which strikes me as bizarre) or they're using it as a backdoor to saying punishment is only penologically useful for shorter periods of time and should consequently be prohibited from longer sentences, which I think is true but isn't something they've made the slightest reference to and which I doubt is in their remit, not in the EU.

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The court is indeed not saying that very long detentions violate art. 3 per se. It recognises that punishment--for example--may justify very long detentions. However, in paragraphs 111-118, it refers to a large body of law, policy and internationally accepted recommendations in support of the notion that rehabilitation etc. MUST be--and, in practice, is--considered in justifying prison sentences as being humane and non-degrading, even for "life" sentences, indeed even for people who've committed crimes as heinous as genocide. This is what enables the argument about the balance of legitimate penological reasons shifting with time and closes the door to the view that punishment alone--with no consideration for other reasons--can be used to justify indefinite imprisonment. The "punishment" portion of the pie may not be infinitely large.

Because the court's view is that there must exist a balance between all the legitimate penological reasons for imprisonment, and because its view is that this balance may change over the course of an individual's imprisonment, it concludes that, "... in the context of a life sentence, Article 3 must be interpreted as requiring reducibility of the sentence, in the sense of a review which allows the domestic authorities to consider whether any changes in the life prisoner are so significant, and such progress towards rehabilitation has been made in the course of the sentence, as to mean that continued detention can no longer be justified on legitimate penological grounds."

At least, that's my reading. We may be talking past one another :o

It's up to the state to decide how to safeguard that reducibility or how to implement a system for reviewing whether or not a person's sentence can and should be reduced. It's also up to the state to decide when such a review can take place, and the court only notes that there is support elsewhere for conducting such reviews no later than 25 years into a sentence.

I'd like to point out, btw, that the court in this case does not act as if it--and the UK--is legally bound by the German and Italian courts, which was Dread's misdirected anti-federalist and anti-EU charge. It recognises the correctness of the constitutional courts' reasoning in relevant cases, but it does not say that the correctness of the reasoning stems exclusively from the fact that it was used by those courts. Nor does the court base its decision exclusively on the practices of the contracting states, or even only on the practices of the states it likes, which was Loki's allegation. The notion that an irreducible life sentence may be a violation of art. 3 is not a new one for the court (see the references to the Kafkaris v. Cyprus case among others) and it is, for this court, founded on substantive arguments. The references to the existing and emerging international consensus on sentencing are used to support the ruling but do not suffice to justify the ruling all on their own.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

The court is indeed not saying that very long detentions violate art. 3 per se. It recognises that punishment--for example--may justify very long detentions. However, in paragraphs 111-118, it refers to a large body of law, policy and internationally accepted recommendations in support of the notion that rehabilitation etc. MUST be--and, in practice, is--considered in justifying prison sentences as being humane and non-degrading, even for "life" sentences, indeed even for people who've committed crimes as heinous as genocide. This is what enables the argument about the balance of legitimate penological reasons shifting with time and closes the door to the view that punishment alone--with no consideration for other reasons--can be used to justify indefinite imprisonment. The "punishment" portion of the pie may not be infinitely large.

Because the court's view is that there must exist a balance between all the legitimate penological reasons for imprisonment, and because its view is that this balance may change over the course of an individual's imprisonment, it concludes that, "... in the context of a life sentence, Article 3 must be interpreted as requiring reducibility of the sentence, in the sense of a review which allows the domestic authorities to consider whether any changes in the life prisoner are so significant, and such progress towards rehabilitation has been made in the course of the sentence, as to mean that continued detention can no longer be justified on legitimate penological grounds."

At least, that's my reading. We may be talking past one another :o

It's up to the state to decide how to safeguard that reducibility or how to implement a system for reviewing whether or not a person's sentence can and should be reduced. It's also up to the state to decide when such a review can take place, and the court only notes that there is support elsewhere for conducting such reviews no later than 25 years into a sentence.

I'd like to point out, btw, that the court in this case does not act as if it--and the UK--is legally bound by the German and Italian courts, which was Dread's misdirected anti-federalist and anti-EU charge. It recognises the correctness of the constitutional courts' reasoning in relevant cases, but it does not say that the correctness of the reasoning stems exclusively from the fact that it was used by those courts. Nor does the court base its decision exclusively on the practices of the contracting states, or even only on the practices of the states it likes, which was Loki's allegation. The notion that an irreducible life sentence may be a violation of art. 3 is not a new one for the court (see the references to the Kafkaris v. Cyprus case among others) and it is, for this court, founded on substantive arguments. The references to the existing and emerging international consensus on sentencing are used to support the ruling but do not suffice to justify the ruling all on their own.

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You' re right, the reason though why they quote from national jurisprudence is also because they are aware that they are working in a continent that has a number of legal traditions.

And again; they don' t say you can' t keep somebody in prison for the rest of his life. What they say is that the elements that led to imprisonment need to be taken into account all. The court tells we' re not allowed to let our inner Yahoo throw away the key.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

And again; they don' t say you can' t keep somebody in prison for the rest of his life.

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They've kind of said that precisely. There's no crime so heinous that life in prison is appropriate as punishment alone.

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113. Furthermore, as the German Federal Constitutional Court recognised in the Life Imprisonment case (see paragraph 69 above), it would be incompatible with the provision on human dignity in the Basic Law for the State forcefully to deprive a person of his freedom without at least providing him with the chance to someday regain that freedom. It was that conclusion which led the Constitutional Court to find that the prison authorities had the duty to strive towards a life sentenced prisoner’s rehabilitation and that rehabilitation was constitutionally required in any community that established human dignity as its centrepiece. Indeed, the Constitutional Court went on to make clear in the subsequent War Criminal case that this applied to all life prisoners, whatever the nature of their crimes, and that release only for those who were infirm or close to death was not sufficient (see paragraph 70 above).

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So what the court is saying is that the likes of the Moors Murderer have the right to be released. All they need to do is be "rehabilitated" and they can be released. No matter what they did.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

They've kind of said that precisely. There's no crime so heinous that life in prison is appropriate as punishment alone.
So what the court is saying is that the likes of the Moors Murderer have the right to be released. All they need to do is be "rehabilitated" and they can be released. No matter what they did.

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You're misreading Hazir's post as well as the court's. You're correct that the court's ruling affirms the view that an indefinite and irreducible life sentence can't be justified by punishment alone. What Hazir is referring to is the fact that the court's ruling does not mean that a person has to be released at any given time and may therefore very well stay in prison for the entirety of his life. That being said, I think such a person may be successful in proving--in court--that he has been rehabilitated and is fit for reintegration into society and that prolonging his imprisonment would therefore constitute a violation of the ECHR. I'm not sure how that would be resolved in practice. I imagine some of it would depend on the state's ability to demonstrate that the person continues to be a threat.

Btw, referring back to your strange demand for a 100% guarantee of 0% risk of recidivism, you do realise that's basically a justification for putting all criminals in prison for life, right?

I'd like you to defend the notion that prison is 100% for rehabilitation and 0% for punishment. Because that's what the court just said. It's certainly the only scenario under which a serial killer would ever be released from prison (other than a faulty trial). Do you think this is reasonable?

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Originally Posted by Aimless

You're misreading Hazir's post as well as the court's. You're correct that the court's ruling affirms the view that an indefinite and irreducible life sentence can't be justified by punishment alone. What Hazir is referring to is the fact that the court's ruling does not mean that a person has to be released at any given time and may therefore very well stay in prison for the entirety of his life. That being said, I think such a person may be successful in proving--in court--that he has been rehabilitated and is fit for reintegration into society and that prolonging his imprisonment would therefore constitute a violation of the ECHR. I'm not sure how that would be resolved in practice. I imagine some of it would depend on the state's ability to demonstrate that the person continues to be a threat.

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Which is why a murderer is given a second chance on life licence but if they kill again then surely they should be away for "life for realz"? Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me. Or is their "right" to be free to kill repeatedly more important than others right not to be killed? One of the murderers who won this case had already been released once before, before he brutally stabbed someone to death yet again. Clearly with him the notion of measuring "rehabilitation" failed, let alone that the initial murder victims friends and families having suffered through having their beloved get brutally murdered had to endure seeing his killer walk the streets again only to imminentently kill another person in the same manner he'd killed their friend/family.

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Btw, referring back to your strange demand for a 100% guarantee of 0% risk of recidivism, you do realise that's basically a justification for putting all criminals in prison for life, right?

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That's the point: If their crime is serial murder then yes fair enough. I don't think it goes far enough, I think all pre-meditated murderers ("First Degree" in the States) should get whole life sentences, but its already very narrow and on judicial imposition only. Its a balancing act between letting people be released to recommit their crimes versus retraining their freedom - if their crime is ending other people's lives in an horrific manner then why shouldn't that be prevented?

Besides the fact that we've not yet addressed the question of why punishment alone is not sufficient grounds for life incarceration for the most heinous crimes - other than a Tautological response without any other backing of "because people must be given more chances".

Here's another thought: if the sole goal of prison is rehabilitation, then surely a criminal's prison sentence should be based entirely on the progress of his rehabilitation and not the nature of their crime? I.E. A burglar could conceivably serve more time than a serial killer, assuming the latter is more repentant and is shown to be psychologically less likely to return to their former ways? Furthermore, anyone who commits crimes by following orders (including war crimes) shouldn't be jailed at all; they can be prevented from ever re-offending by being removed from a position where they must follow orders (i.e. forced to resign from the army).

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Which is why a murderer is given a second chance on life licence but if they kill again then surely they should be away for "life for realz"? Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me. Or is their "right" to be free to kill repeatedly more important than others right not to be killed? One of the murderers who won this case had already been released once before, before he brutally stabbed someone to death yet again. Clearly with him the notion of measuring "rehabilitation" failed

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You won't get any disagreement from me on the difficulties of assessing whether or not a person has been rehabilitated. I am convinced that those who make those assessments may be naïve in their understanding of criminal behavior. I am also convinced that some of the recidivism reflects our failure to reintegrate criminals into society. If your point is that we aren't good at assessing the risk of recidivism among eg. murderers then it's a solid point. However, that point does not necessarily speak towards the present matter, which concerns reviewing sentences after several decades rather than after a few years.

My personal belief is that some people can indeed never be rehabilitated (until Chaloobi's lobotomy-ideas come into effect), and that perhaps a small portion of those can be safely reintegrated only by virtue of being old and frail. Even so, the fact that one of these murderers committed a new murder after serving a number of years in prison lets us safely draw conclusions only about short sentences and only for a particular type of murderer.

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That's the point: If their crime is serial murder then yes fair enough. I don't think it goes far enough, I think all pre-meditated murderers ("First Degree" in the States) should get whole life sentences, but its already very narrow and on judicial imposition only. Its a balancing act between letting people be released to recommit their crimes versus retraining their freedom - if their crime is ending other people's lives in an horrific manner then why shouldn't that be prevented?

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All I'm saying is that the risk of recidivism alone does not suffice to keep a person in jail. It may be enough to keep a murderer in jail. It may not be enough to keep a "rehabilitated" murderer in jail because then the safety concerns will have to be balanced against the human rights issues. There are no derogations described in art. 3 that allow for the violation of the specific rights it is found to enshrine even when dealing with convicted criminals.

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Besides the fact that we've not yet addressed the question of why punishment alone is not sufficient grounds for life incarceration for the most heinous crimes - other than a Tautological response without any other backing of "because people must be given more chances".

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See paras 111-118 as well as related references to EU case law, domestic laws in the EU member states and international treaties including ones the UK has signed and ratified to get an idea of why the UK must take other reasons into consideration.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Here's another thought: if the sole goal of prison is rehabilitation, then surely a criminal's prison sentence should be based entirely on the progress of his rehabilitation and not the nature of their crime? I.E. A burglar could conceivably serve more time than a serial killer, assuming the latter is more repentant and is shown to be psychologically less likely to return to their former ways? Furthermore, anyone who commits crimes by following orders (including war crimes) shouldn't be jailed at all; they can be prevented from ever re-offending by being removed from a position where they must follow orders (i.e. forced to resign from the army).

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Well yeah, if that were the case then you might be correct, and it's an interesting idea. Rehabilitation isn't the sole goal of imprisonment, just a goal that must be considered. I suspect a system such as the one you describe would fail for economical reasons before it would face any challenges in the ECtHR :o it brings to mind the Norwegian way of dealing with some criminals who're sentenced to psychiatric care and confinement. Some might argue that the burglar's risk of recidivism--which is certainly very high--may depend on what the rehabilitation and reintegration process looks like, on the life he returns to, that sort of thing. Unless you want to keep burglars in prison for life the onus may then be on the state to make sure the reintegration works better.

Except the ECHR ruling explicitly ruled out "punishment" as a goal of prison...

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Originally Posted by Loki

Except the ECHR ruling explicitly ruled out "punishment" as a goal of prison...

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It did not, from what I can tell. It found that punishment must not be the sole justification for a sentence. It acknowledges the legitimacy of punishment as a reason for imprisonment both explicitly and implicitly, eg. in paras 111 and 115 in this ruling. Are you referring to some other part of the ruling? You'll note that the minimum tariffs judges can place on a sentence--eg. 25 years of a life sentence--can be justified on punitive grounds alone--or together with deterrence--without necessarily being in violation of art. 3.

I don't recall if this particular ruling points out that imprisonment can be a punishment in and of itself, which afaics would cause some tension between the need/obligation to protect society on the one hand and the ban on disproportionate punishment on the other hand in the life-for-burglary scenario you describe. I don't know which the court would prioritize. In practice we can see states clearly taking calculated risks, either to avoid disproportionate punishment or to avoid skyrocketing prison costs.

Why should punishment not be the sole justification for a whole life sentence? A non-tautological response please?

On a life sentence, protecting society from the criminal seems like a non trivial justification.

See paragraphs 111-118 and related references.

So you have nothing then.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Why should punishment not be the sole justification for a whole life sentence? A non-tautological response please?

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What exactly is a whole life sentence as punishment supposed to achieve?

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

So you have nothing then.

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Now you're just being childish. Read the material. If you disagree then okay but you're probably in the wrong by most reasonable and internationally accepted standards of right and wrong.

If you believe that punishment justifies inhuman and degrading treatment then you're also in the wrong and also a little bit creepy unless you can explain why one form of inhuman and degrading treatment is okay but not another and also why the UK has agreed to blanket bans on such things as well as signaling a commitment to rehabilitation etc for all prisoners.

If the UK agrees that factors other than punishment must account for more than 0% of a prison sentence--and it must and does, as evidenced by the policy documents and laws it's shown support for--then it follows that punishment must not account for 100% of a prison sentence to the exclusion of those other factors.

Why is there a ban on torture? Why is there a ban on inhuman and degrading treatment? Why can't punishment be used to justify those things? You never did answer the question of why we don't sentence rapists to being raped or thugs to being beaten. If you believe that the desire for punishment alone can justify putting aside human rights then there is no reason to believe that we shouldn't sentence people to rape, beatings etc. Those punishments are certainly not expressly forbidden by the text of the ECHR so they should be perfectly all right. We can certainly not appeal to the common international understanding of the rightness and wrongness of such punishments because you plainly reject such reasoning, nor can we appeal to the authority of the ECtHR because you don't accept that either. It is plain to see that you don't even accept the laws, recommendations and conventions that your own country has signed and ratified over the past few decades.

What's funny is that even senior UK judges have previously considered that these irreducible orders may prove to be in violation of art 3.

I am astonished by your eagerness to trade rule of law for rule of man-gut. These may help you find your way back to the modern world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law - http://www.unrol.org/article.aspx?article_id=3

Re. indefinite sentences for public protection:

http://www.gcnchambers.co.uk/index.p...ff_is_unlawful

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...sentences.html

The UK has clearly been there, tried that :o

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Now you're just being childish. Read the material. If you disagree then okay but you're probably in the wrong by most reasonable and internationally accepted standards of right and wrong.

If you believe that punishment justifies inhuman and degrading treatment then you're also in the wrong and also a little bit creepy unless you can explain why one form of inhuman and degrading treatment is okay but not another and also why the UK has agreed to blanket bans on such things as well as signaling a commitment to rehabilitation etc for all prisoners.

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And if I think spending any amount of time in a cage against my will is inhumane and degrading treatment? Can I then pronounce you some kind of moral midget?

I'm not sure I'm understanding why you believe you are phrasing the argument as though you have some kind of moral high ground here. Rand clearly doesn't believe that putting someone in prison for life is inhumane or degrading. Instead of trying to browbeat him by insinuating he's some kind of creepy monster, why not explain why keeping someone in prison for X number of years is humane, but keeping them in prison for Y number of years is not.

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Originally Posted by Enoch the Red

And if I think spending any amount of time in a cage against my will is inhumane and degrading treatment?

I'm not sure I'm understanding why you believe you are phrasing the argument as though you have some kind of moral high ground here. Rand clearly doesn't believe that putting someone in prison for life is inhumane or degrading. Instead of trying to browbeat him by indicating he's some kind of creepy monster, why not explain why keeping someone in prison for X number of years is humane, but keeping them in prison for Y number of years is not.

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Putting someone in prison clearly amounts to depriving them of their rights eg. the right to liberty. However, this violation of eg. the right to liberty is provided for in domestic and international law.

We recognise that it sucks to be in prison, and we recognise that we're restricting some of a person's human rights by imprisoning him. Therefore we go to great lengths to ensure that prison life is as as similar to ordinary life as possible (ha!) and to ensure that we don't violate any more of his rights than we absolutely must or cause him any more suffering than we absolutely must. We also help him work towards atonement, rehabilitation and reintegration. In so doing, we reaffirm that he's a human being and respect his rights and his humanity to the best of our ability. We also help him try to regain the right to liberty. Even if he ends up dying in prison we at least pay lip service to his right to hope for release.

Wrt imprisonment, the derogations to the rights enshrined in ECHR mostly seem to have to do with balancing the rights of the offender with the rights of other members of society. Which human right of free men is balanced by removing a prisoner's right to even hope for release?

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Now you're just being childish. Read the material. If you disagree then okay but you're probably in the wrong by most reasonable and internationally accepted standards of right and wrong.

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See, now THAT statement is something I violently object to. "Reasonable" is of course the most wildly subjective of standards which is why no one uses it in trying to define such offenses and your "internationally accepted standards" are nothing of the sort. They're treaties, the results of multiparty negotiation. They are, by definition, COMPROMISES on what the parties involved think and believe. It's not an indication of what they think is right and wrong, it's what they think is not too wrong to tolerate.