A troll-bait surely (Score 1)

This can't be serious - is it April 1st yet? ~checks~ nope. In which case it is a downright scary proposition.

I understand that people feel the need for vengeance when wronged, I really do. However, what this alleged "scholar" suggests is barbaric and I would even go as far to say, given the "scholar" in question had a child abuse case at the front of their mind at the time of writing, by their own admission, they were not approaching this objectively. That is no basis for forming any rational opinion - scientific, judicial or anything else for that matter.

Taking just the first linked piece - dose up the prisoner with some psychoactive drug that tricks the mind to believe they spent 1000 years in prison within 8 hours of space-time as we usually experience it. WTF does that achieve??

1. It's not really going to go down well in courts if child beaters are put away for 8 hours - they'll be released and likely shot in the head (if in a country where firearms are rampant), purely because the vengeance factor and emotion is still running high.

2. After being given this time dilating substance (notably unamed in TFA) and believing they have spent 1000 years in prison, the perp is released after a day or so - how seriously messed up are they going to be?? Come out of prison, believing they managed to survive 1000 years, so it must now be 3014 only to discover it is the next day in 2014.

"I had wondered whether the best way to achieve justice in cases like that was to prolong death as long as possible. Some crimes are so bad they require a really long period of punishment, and a lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying. And so I thought, why not make prison sentences for particularly odious criminals worse by extending their lives?"

Sadist bitch. If you want them dead, just campaign for the death penalty and get it done. What is with the extended torture shit? I can't even begin to grok that. People "get out" of a punishment by dying - oh yes that works... look at me, I'm gone and am now worm fodder with nothing to look forward to other than maggots eating my brain and returning me to the soil, sure glad I dodged that prison sentence he he he..... oh shit, didn't think that through.

Please tell me this is troll-bait, or some gov't BS to subtly poll our opinions on crime, justice and punishment/rehab. If it's not..... we're doomed I tell ye DOOMED!