Murderer With "Aggression Genes" Gets Reduced Sentence 507
Noiser writes "New Scientist reports: 'In 2007, Abdelmalek Bayout admitted to stabbing and killing a man and received a sentence of 9 years and 2 months. An appeal court judge in Trieste, Italy, cut Bayout's sentence by a year after finding out he has gene variants linked to aggression.'"
Not Fair (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where's the... (Score:3, Informative)
A fair die has a 1/6 chance of producing each of its possible outcomes(a fair D6, that is). A loaded die might have a 100% chance of producing a 6 and no chance of any of the others. One of these is random, one is deterministic, neither is free.
Aside from the fact that it is intuitively powerful, it is actually pretty hard to figure out what it would mean for something to have "free will". Imagine a die that can "chose" which face will come up. Ok, what causes it to chose one face rather than another? Is this an uncaused cause? If so, WTF? If not, then it isn't really free, is it?
Re:Where's the... (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing we don't live in one, then.
Nope. It is impossible, even at the most basic theoretical level, to predict everything. Basic physics theory shows that it is impossible to even just measure everything to an arbitrary degree of precision regardless of what instrumentation you may have. Go back and read your Heisenberg.
Re:Where's the... (Score:2, Informative)
Criminal sentences are NOT about revenge. Or at least they aren't supposed to be in theory.
Actually...there are many theories as to the purpose of criminal sentences and laws. We spent the first half of my Criminal Law class my 1L year in Law School discussing them. And revenge is most definitely a theory beyhind criminal law. It may be a bit out-dated, but it is there and there are many people who subsribe to it.
Re:Where's the... (Score:1, Informative)
Doesn't that make the punitive aspects of the prison system (which have not been demonstrated to serve any rehabilitative goal) unconscionable?
Yes
Re:Where's the... (Score:3, Informative)
You should read up on Kant's categorical imperative. I am an atheist and it is the closest thing to a written rationale for a universal morality that I can find. Here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative [wikipedia.org]
The summary, from the wiki page:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
-b
Re:8 years? Hate to be ethnocentric but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Italy had 1.29 murders per 100,000 people in 2000. We had 4.28 per 100,000 people. (link [nationmaster.com])
I guess those harsh prison sentences are going wonders for stopping murder here. Gosh, you'd think that with only 9% of the world population and 22% of the world's prison population that American society would be safe, right?
Wrong on the statistics, wrong on the facts (Score:3, Informative)
What utter bullshit. A moments Google search for total crimes per capita would have shown you that from worst to best, the rank is:
1 Dominica
2 New Zealand
3 Finland
4 Denmark
5 Chile
6 United Kingdom
7 Montserrat
8 United States
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita [nationmaster.com]
Furthermore, people don't steal because they are poor. They steal because they are sociopaths. Bernie Madoff was not short of cash for a box of donuts and a six-pack. He was not poor or downtrodden or starving.
There are plenty of poor people who never steal, and plenty of rich people that do.
Reproducing the numerical values in the table counts as "junk characters". A tech website that counts numbers as junk. Go figure.
Re:I get your point (Score:3, Informative)
More than "the devil made me do it" we're facing a serious problem in the coming years:
1) The court recognized and given a written sentence that stated there are innate violence traits in some north africans.
2) Here in italy special laws are provided for the dog races known as "biters" (Bulldogs and the likes). Since the same can be now legally said for North Africans should we have special laws for them?
3) If a "biter" harms a person the law prescribes the dog to be retired. Instead this offender got a penalty discount! (On the news it's written it was a religious issue)
4) If I'll ever be in the position to choose between a north african and someone who doesent have potentially this gene I could do so and I have a sentence that justify me besides my prejudices.
Note: North africans are 41% of foreign inmates in Italian prisons but just 16% of legal immigrants. Thought they are 2% of the population on italian soil they are roughtly 1/3 of italian inmates. Source: http://www.ismu.org/ISMU_new/approfondimento.php?id=80 [ismu.org]