Alternatives to the Death Sentence?

Wow , just wow! As a result of being on this thread, I have just solved 18 across in today's Guardian crossword. I am deeply grateful to HD

I'm with you!

Soutra - - which are we or are we both?

Getting a bit crowded in the naughty corner now

I have only just read this thread, and I am not sure which posts are worse: the dismissive ones , or the patronising ones.
I read a book called A Rusty Gun which was about a prison which seemed to be able to successfully change the behaviour of some violent prisoners through therapy . I suppose it's all down to cost ,if suitable candidates are found.

Elegran

Until a cure for it has been discovered . . .

I'd quite like this thread to be cryogenically frozen

Perhaps with a detachment of cryogenic researchers to work on the unfinished details of that, with a view to using it once it is perfected?

If we are still in the realm of la-la land, maybe the idea of transportation could be resurrected only this time to some distant planet- can't be any dafter than cryogenics !

Ask Hollydaze. That's where she lives!

Are there strawberry fields on the Isle of Man too? I knew about the IoW ones because my son-in-law was surrounded by so many of them there in his childhood that he can't eat them now.

Shouldn't you have sent the lifers to the Isle of Man to grow their strawberries, Elegran?

Not only dressed but have been out gardening, Jane.

Galen If you looked in at one ear, you would see out of the other, if it weren't for the feathers floating round inside.

(Disclaimer - No, that was NOT a dig at the OP or at anyone else specific!

Wonder what we would find if we looked into the heads of some GNers?

Are you dressed yet Elegran?

Is it possible to study behavioural abnormalities when your subjects have stopped behaving at all, either well or badly?

Exactly!

Well if we were in Germany in the 30's and 40's a jolly good wheeze would be to screw into the brain and see what we found, omitting any form of pain relief of course.

This conversation is insane!

I have thought of just one more practical problem with freezing lifers (I will stop then, Whitewave !)

How would a "cure" be found for the personality/psychological traits that have caused those prisoners to be sentenced to life imprisonment (or to being killed and frozen) if all the examples who could be studied (or experimented on, if you prefer that terminology) are locked away unconscious or worse in freezers, and unavailable, waiting for researchers to produce a cure out of a hat?

This discussion reminds me of the sort of discussions that must have taken place in Germany during the 30's and 40's Please stop now it is ghastly!

Wind it back again
Wind it back again
Pull pull
Clap clap clap.
Point to the window, point to the floor etc

Seriously. The main problem would be that as ice crystals form during freezing they expand and rupture the cells. I didn't think that that problem had been overcome yet.

No Hollydaze it was not just using an an opportunity to be sarcastic.
It was an attempt at a protest; or perhaps a cry of despair against the distastefulness and utter craziness of the proposals about cryogenics.

It's still totally science fiction. I cannot understand how some very silly people, who must have more money than sense, would even consider it.

The majority of posters do not seem to think freezing prisoners could ever be a viable or morally justifiable option.

You are most certainly enjoying this discussion.

Wind the bobbin up!
Wind the bobbin up!
Pull pull!
Clap clap trap!

So am I. Not even showered yet. I am sitting here in my dressing-gown (late to bed last night and late up) posting hypothetical answers to even more hypothetical questions. I must have too much time on my hands.

We could turn the Isle of Wight into Alcatraz and have lifers growing garlic and strawberries to make the money to fund their imprisonment? (Sorry, IoW residents, you don't deserve them as neighbours)

PS That was a hypothetical suggestion. I know it is not workable.