Thanks for the link - will take some time for me to digest.
> people with complex problems, chaotic lives and a high and ongoing risk of reoffending.
Surely that applies to almost all prisoners?
I don't think that you have addressed my point though, which is that the people who have been given these sentences are not those supposedly targeted by the law.
I couldn't disagree with any of the points that you make, but I think we're talking past each other. There is a threshold at which these sentences might make sense, and we risk conflating discussion about those cases with the much larger number of problematic cases where the logic is - at least quantitatively - different.
The slippery slope argument can be made that this power could be abused (and likely is to some degree anyway) and that justifications could be made to apply to just about anyone. But if we assume the best intentions here, then something like this does make sense. There will always be a small percentage of people in any large society who are just going to commit violent and criminal acts over and over again.
I think most prisoners are in the category where they are regular people who made a bad choice due to things like environmental factors, poor judgement, and the like. And there are a few prisoners who are just wired differently - they will never not be dangerous. The trick is correctly sorting between the two.
Because on the other side of the coin, in every large society there will also always be a small percentage of people who will try very hard do the right thing.
The incentives involved in incarceration as it's practiced in our society - as a means to secure the living of the people doing the incarcerating - means that you're implicitly not going to find any of that small percentage involved with it.
> people with complex problems, chaotic lives and a high and ongoing risk of reoffending.
Surely that applies to almost all prisoners?
I don't think that you have addressed my point though, which is that the people who have been given these sentences are not those supposedly targeted by the law.
I couldn't disagree with any of the points that you make, but I think we're talking past each other. There is a threshold at which these sentences might make sense, and we risk conflating discussion about those cases with the much larger number of problematic cases where the logic is - at least quantitatively - different.