[sergiosgc]

It's hard to argue with a country that has such low criminality rate. The options are strange from an American perspective, but they work. Naturally there are many many other factors influencing crime rates, but the numbers point towards our position being the correct one, not the other way around.

Then again, I don't think we ever had a serial killer. Maybe one, in the sixties, still unsolved. It's just probabilities at work. At ten million citizens, the odds are low.

[krschultz]

Broad based crime rates and 'that one guy raped and killed a bunch of people' are two dramatically different things. Having a hard limit in sentences ignores the fact that in any population there are a tiny handful of outliers that can never be rehabilitated and should never see the light of day in free society again. Arguably the average punishment is too high but the extreme punishment is too low. If the maximum sentence is 25 years, one does a car thief get? Because I personaly feel that anyone that commits murder is more than 25x as bad for society as a thief.

[sergiosgc]

You are falling into the punishment trap. From the point of view of recovery of the individual, there is no such notion as 25x worse.