Modern barbarism is daily exposed

A story by Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press – Thu Dec 30: JACKSON, Miss. – "For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis."

What they did was participate in an armed robbery-beating using a shotgun, by a trio of thugs who brutally threatened and injured two victims.

Two points: one - It does not benefit society to warehouse people for decades on crimes like this.

Two - What these criminals did was temporarily take the sanctity of life from two victims, and the punishment to fit the crime, after a trial mandated to be completed by the end of the week, would be a rigorously applied caning, then several months of solitary confinement, with release on condition of supervised programs plus garnishment of future earnings to pay for the trial, confinement, programs and restitution to the victims.

Penalty for non payment of financial obligations: indentured servitude at a labor facility until paid.
Total time in the system: four months.

Justice, it's what's good for society.

Life in prison? That is the cruel and unusual punishment from the perspective of all history - to throw lives away with no possible redemptive value to society but the cost they place upon it to provide for perpetual incarceration.

How unjust and barbaric is that?