The other day I bemoaned the fact that the Raleigh News and Observer rarely published any of my letters, so today they published one. The background is that a prisoner with a life sentence filed to be released. Seems that a life sentence had been defined as 80 years, but for a brief spell -- when this and some 19 other prisoners were sentenced -- a life sentence had been re-defined as forty years. And these prisoners had all served their forty years. And the state suddenly realized why these prisoners had received life sentences: for heinous murders and rapes. The newspaper headlines screamed: "Murderers and rapists to be freed!" Here's my response:

"Given that the convicts expected to be released are all in their 50s and 60s, many having been incarcerated since they were teenagers, I can't help wondering: Haven't some of them perhaps turned their lives around? I realize you wanted to get the headlines out on the street quickly, but don't you have an obligation to tell more of the story? I for one would like to think that prison can transform people -- otherwise why not execute them and be done with it? But even if the crime was horrific, forgiveness must be an option -- as long as there is reason to believe the prisoner will no longer be a threat to society."

The first thing I need to emphasize -- in case it's not clear enough from the necessarily very brief letter to the editor -- is that I'm not urging that these prisoners be automatically released. (It appears that the technicalities of the applicable laws might require that they be released, but authorities are looking for other charges on which they could be convicted and re-sentenced, and the legislature is being urged to pass some sort of law to keep them in prison as well.) But I am urging that those who have in some sense been rehabilitated, those who do not appear to pose any threat to the public, should be released.

Please realize that my question -- "why not execute them and be done with it?" -- is rhetorical. Though I don't believe in the death penalty, I'd be willing to countenance it IF the crime was particularly violent and IF we could be ABSOLUTELY sure that the person was guilty. But, idealist that I am, I'd like to see prison function as a place of rehabilitation, with the goal that just about every prisoner could eventually be released to become a productive citizen. (Yes, I know that's a dream -- we're miles from anything like that now.)

Further, I'd like to see society transformed so that few if any young people become criminals, particularly violent criminals. (Violent crime seems to be largely committed by young men -- few women and few older men.) Look at the background of anyone arrested for a violent crime. It's depressingly monotonous: an emotionally and often sexually abused, unloved child, no effective intervention by schools or social services, a trail of minor but increasingly serious crimes, leading to the big one(s) resulting in that life sentence. (There's one other less frequent but recurrent pattern: the quiet, model child who suddenly explodes and commits multiple violent acts -- think Columbine.) I'd like to see a system that enables us to spot these developing crises and intervene before they erupt.

What we have now is like a sinister version of a Monopoly game, in which some of the players are given a "Go to jail -- go directly to jail" card, and once there, they can't get out. If you are that player, you are destined to be a loser, and there is only a negligible chance you will somehow escape that fate. It'd like to see a system in which we offer a chance for the losers to change their lives and maybe become winners -- losing should not be guaranteed permanent.