[TheLarch]

Clarence Darrow, in his autobiography, discusses his defense for Loeb and Leopold. L&L were wealthy Chicago teenagers who read Nietzsche and decided they were Ubermensch. They murdered a random boy to prove they could get away with it. Darrow argued that L&L would not consider murder again, and that their crime was something that would happen only once in 1,000 years.

I found this repugnant. Who more deserves prison than those two? But with reflection my views have softened. At least one of the two seems to have wanted to be good. He lived out his life in prison quietly, spending his time writing an ornithology book. I can no longer honestly say I believe that society as a whole was better served by jailing them. Perhaps they should have been given the chance to redeem themselves by becoming productive citizens, and the chance to earn back a measure of dignity. (Certainly repeat offenders should be deemed a menace and incarcerated for the public good.)

I feel the same confusion about Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who raped a woman behind a dumpster. There was a lot of outrage at his early release, but again I'm not sure the greater good is served by keeping him behind bars. I hope he will live in infamy for the rest of his days, as is just. But should he have stayed behind bars for longer, at the public expense? I can't give a really cogent reason why he should (I am not comparing his sentence to that of other rapists, or to that of other convicts by the way).