That was not a contract killing, rather it was a far more common type of murder. The list was something like an enemies list. I have no idea why he kept one, mind you, but the police showed it at trial and it freaked out grandma and some other family who were on there. I'd imagine his former boss wasn't any too happy to realize how easily it could've been him, either, for that matter.
I think you underestimate the revenge cycle that might occur if society wanted to be more lenient than life in prison, which was the result here. The state can't reasonably be more lenient than the average person, or the average person is going to decide that the cost of a few years is worth the revenge. You're already looking at a lifetime of pain for losing someone dear to you, what's a couple of years if you admit your guilt and surrender quietly? And that's before we get into "hey, this guy made a hit list with my name on it, and we have to take that seriously because the person at the top of the list was already murdered."
For the rest, one of your studies says "There was no evidence of significant differences on rearrest or reconviction. Moderator analysis showed no significant moderating effect for risk score, age, or sex." and "the results would be considered mixed, at best." Which... yeah, is pretty much what I've seen for the most part. Maybe I'm not communicating what I think accurately enough, but this sort of result pretty much exactly what I have in mind. You find studies with promising numbers that still turn out to be meh and don't leave you convinced that the intervention is actually changing what the people are capable of.
Importantly, I do not say that nothing shows some promise, or that we shouldn't keep trying, I'm just saying we don't have anything that looks like it can be scaled up to have big impact. And I get that it's hard to measure when plenty of people will do maybe one crime due to some big mistake and had no intention of doing more. I have some small hope that maybe intervening for psychosis could help with violent offenses, but that might assume too much about people taking their meds, unless they're willing and able to use long-lasting injections.
> I think you underestimate the revenge cycle that might occur if society wanted to be more lenient than life in prison, which was the result here. […]
My guess is you are writing from a U.S. point of view. You are severely underestimating how much of an outlier the U.S. is in terms of its justice system when compared to other democracies. Germany, not exactly known for its historical social cuddliness, for example doesn't even allow "life in prison" sentences. Our constitution guarantees the possibility for every convicted, no matter the crime, to regain their freedom. Even people convicted of multiple murders will get their first parole hearing after 15 years and while a court can order their detention beyond this, this is technically no longer a prison sentence and only allowable if there is a high likelihood that the person in question will cause additional harm if released. This assessment is checked every few years with the goal that no one will spend more time in prison than necessary.
This approach to criminal justice enjoys broad support in Germany and most western European societies. All of these societies are also considerably more safe than the U.S. and many other places that put an explicit emphasis on retributive justice. I'm not aware of notable cases of revenge violence due to this.
Retributive justice is an outdated philosophy that only sounds reasonable when you assume the worst in people and ignore the effects of the intergenerational trauma that it produces.
The problem with that is that when you have a situation where the punishment is known to be lenient and there's someone threatening your life, you might just be willing to pay the price for revenge.
Yes, I'm aware that some places don't do life in prison or such. I'm pointing out the harms of that.
What you are describing is the plot of a Liam Neeson action flick, and not how real life works. Revenge killings are not a thing or you’d read about them in societies with “lenient” punishments.
And if someone threatens your life in the moment you are entitled to reasonable measures of self defense, including killing the attacker if you can not avoid harm to yourself or others in another way, that is a completely separate issue.
It's weird to see you flip things like that, when you're the one talking with no actual experience with these things. Anyhow, I certainly have read about them and they have been common throughout history, with justice systems being created to displace such revenge cycles.
I can't help if you're not aware of even thing like the Hatfields & the McCoys, but I can push back when people want to head us back to the bad old days.
Jesus, I was talking about societies with modern justice systems focused on rehabilitation, not civil-war era wild west. Yes, of course absent a functioning justice system revenge cycles will occur. But the whole argument in this thread is about the relative merits of rehabilitation vs. punishment in modern society. And on that front the evidence on the outcome is pretty solid: Punishment-focused justice systems (like in the U.S.) result in more people in prison, are more costly and correlate with higher crime rates (not sure about the current evidence on causality, but I think it is pretty obvious that the trauma and stigma associated with a punishment-leaning justice system would tend to lead to more crime).
Studies quite consistently show that increasing the punishment for a given crime does not reduce the rate it is committed at, all other things being equal. Because guess what, criminals are either unaware that they are committing a crime/are committing a crime in a moment of passion (in which case the punishment is of no consequence) or they think that they won't be caught. Which is one of the many reasons the death penalty is so stupid. Catching criminals and bringing the to trial quickly is much more relevant than the severity of the punishment and the concept of rehabilitation is an extension of that: You find criminals quickly, you sentence them quickly and you invest in them leaving the justice system as quickly as possible to become productive members of society again. Why would I want to spend hundreds of thousands of Dollars on keeping someone behind bars for the rest of their life when I can also try spending a fraction of that on cognitive therapy, apprenticeships and social work to get them out of prison and into a stable life situation in which they have a decent chance of not committing a crime again?
It wouldn't be a problem if people would just stop advocating for going back to the bad old days. You don't know how it feels, but absolutely, if you lower the cost too much people are going to pay it.
The more we reduce this to some sort of transactional justice where everyone is supposed to pretend that nothing happened after a few years in a cage and everything is perfectly okay because people have "reformed" (never mind the people who keep going back...) the more you go back to the bad old days by making the justice system dysfunctional.
Also we can't very well make police more efficient because we don't really agree on the laws. Some people want all drugs to be legal (never mind the addicts who fall into a spiral where they rob others), some people want approximately no drugs to be legal (never mind the other costs). But there's yet to be any social consensus on whether we end up with the Tenderloin, Singapore or somewhere between.
Problem is that I think increasing leniency looks more or less like a phase change at some point. And nobody wants to acknowledge that historically, justice systems made society more peaceful via literal selection effects. Jail was not used so much in the past, there was more corporal punishment or death. Part of the problem is that jail only works while they're inside and imposes other costs, including moral ones.
I think you underestimate the revenge cycle that might occur if society wanted to be more lenient than life in prison, which was the result here. The state can't reasonably be more lenient than the average person, or the average person is going to decide that the cost of a few years is worth the revenge. You're already looking at a lifetime of pain for losing someone dear to you, what's a couple of years if you admit your guilt and surrender quietly? And that's before we get into "hey, this guy made a hit list with my name on it, and we have to take that seriously because the person at the top of the list was already murdered."
For the rest, one of your studies says "There was no evidence of significant differences on rearrest or reconviction. Moderator analysis showed no significant moderating effect for risk score, age, or sex." and "the results would be considered mixed, at best." Which... yeah, is pretty much what I've seen for the most part. Maybe I'm not communicating what I think accurately enough, but this sort of result pretty much exactly what I have in mind. You find studies with promising numbers that still turn out to be meh and don't leave you convinced that the intervention is actually changing what the people are capable of.
Importantly, I do not say that nothing shows some promise, or that we shouldn't keep trying, I'm just saying we don't have anything that looks like it can be scaled up to have big impact. And I get that it's hard to measure when plenty of people will do maybe one crime due to some big mistake and had no intention of doing more. I have some small hope that maybe intervening for psychosis could help with violent offenses, but that might assume too much about people taking their meds, unless they're willing and able to use long-lasting injections.