[gcd]

I agree - I certainly did leave that out. I still think we need to have consequences for crimes with victims, especially violent ones. But that's still only part of the equation: we need to have deterrences and corrections in the same way that there's preventative medicine and treatment.

Even for violent crimes, I don't think that locking people up should be the only response. Victim-centered approaches, like restorative justice circles for example, could and should be used more where applicable. The victim is mostly left out of the equation in our current justice system. We should also try to view instances of violence not as deliberate evil actions taken by people, but instead culminations of bad circumstances and bad choices. This is not to say there shouldn't be repercussions for the bad choices, but we should also offer support and rehabilitation to try to improve the circumstances.

Of course, there will always be the people who are beyond rehabilitation. Even then, for these kinds of people, 'prison' doesn't sound quite right to me.. 'mental institution' seems more appropriate.

On [1], I don't support the death penalty because there are so many errors made in sentencing. Even if we managed to make the error rate much lower, I personally don't think the cost of innocent lives would be worth the potential extra deterrence the threat of death provides over life imprisonment. Hell, even if the rate were 0%, I still wouldn't support it for moral reasons.