How punishments can be a crime

It has been known for decades that gardening and pets are calming factors for the violent mentality - and yet no effort is made to introduce these calming influences into a prisoner's life. In an environment of concrete, wire, bars and people in uniform checking one's every move, nobody will look at, speak to or touch the prisoner with affection. He may even live in continual fear of becoming the target of a brutal inmate.  

In this environment, how would you feel to have on your file the words "Never to be released"? As there is no point to reform, no effort will be made to reform. You will be a sane human being who has simply been "put away". When survivors of the concentration camps were asked how they ever survived, the invariable reply was that they never gave up hope. The inmate of a concentration camp dreams of freedom. Our never-to-be-released man can dream of nothing.

If he attempts to suicide, we make his life more miserable by denying him normal prison life by restricting his access to bedding, garments and utensils available to other prisoners, and with which he could make a second attempt. To suffer as we want him to suffer, he must live.

The third option is to put him into a peaceful but deadly sleep with Nembutal (as used by vets).

The reason formally given for the ruling-out of lethal injection as an option is that human life is a sacred God-given gift and an enlightened society is morally bound to preserve it at all times, regardless of the cost - and it does cost. It costs $300,000 per year to keep Ivan Milat alive.

If the five killers of Anita Cobby who are never be released were to live an average of 50 years since their conviction as young men in 1987, and assuming the cost at $100,000 a year per man, the total cost is $25 million. How many dying Sudanese infants could be kept alive and free of pain and hunger until they reached 18 years of age with $25 million? Answer; about 1300.

Plainly, the sanctity-of-human-life claim is a hypocritical as it was when we manipulated over 400,000 naive and bored young Australians into "volunteering" for service in the pointless meat-mincing war of 1914-1918. The value of a human life is not based on logical criteria, but on the prevailing mood as set by the scope of the public's vision.

Our sanctimonious government has the gall to criticize a country trying to manage 1.2 billion people for its executions. We call these actions by China a crime against humanity. China could tell us that in a world where about 30,000 children die each day due to lack of basic nutrition and medical care, the expenditure of $300,000 a year to keep a single man living a worthless life of emptiness is also a crime against humanity.

Psychopaths feel powerful when they are hurting humans or animals. These wretched people who can neither give nor receive love and who have never known the joy of creative work are undeserving of our cruelty. If they cannot be physically let free, then let us release them from their unhappiness with 15 grams of intravenously administered Nembutal.