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Jeff, I think your argument suffers from binaryism (a word I made up). People will not fall neatly into "feral" and redeemable categories. There are as many gradations as there are people. Where's the line? It's a pretty important line--maybe even so important that it shouldn't be a line at all. Maybe something else should come into play . . . hark . . . those are the ghostly echoes of the founding fathers I hear, asking us: WTF, Dudes? How come you forgot all about Due Process.
Not to mention that we in the US have not exactly covered ourselves in glory as to whom we incarcerate. Every year, prisoners are exonerated on DNA evidence or other proof of innocence, innocent folks who served decades because they were either wrongly accused, had confessions beaten out of them, were wrongly convicted, are routinely under-represented because we starve of PD offices. You can bet more than a few wrongly accused have been executed over the years. So--what makes us so sure that as we all merrily wave to the buses headed off to the gas chambers that we have made the right choice? Makes me kinda uncomfortable.
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