These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.
At least 80 percent of American prisoners are grossly over-sentenced. The Supreme Court knows this, but shows scant concern for this human side of criminal justice.
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent.
Each murder is one too many.
Very few of us playing a murderer will actually have killed someone.
Not all political prisoners are innocents.
The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.
Murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of law-abiding citizens.