Talk:Life imprisonment in the United States

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Misc
Can someone please comment on what happened with the Maurice Shick case if they know? Did he die in prison? Is there a possibility he is alive?

Maja3141 (talk) 01:24, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Tuck in!Eschoir (talk) 04:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. I'll take a break from editing this now, in case someone else wants to take over and do some more editing.  The section "Summation" need to be completely removed or integrated elsewhere, as encylcopedic articles dont have summaries - it is this section that makes the article still feel like an "essay".  I think that the section "Accidental History" also needs to be taken apart and rewritten, as it isnt about the history of "life imprisonment" - it is about "imprisonment" in general. John Vandenberg (talk) 14:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a blog where the author claims to be a friend of Schick's victim: http://daughterofliberty.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/the-killer.html (see some of her earlier posts for more details). She claims that Schick was 29 at the time of the murder, which seems to indicate that he's the Maurice L. Schick who is listed in the Social Security records as being born June 24, 1924 and dying on January 30, 2004 in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida. As I don't think there is a federal prison there, he must have eventually gotten out of prison and died a free man. 174.109.20.153 (talk) 02:53, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I've been able to locate two independent online sources claiming that the guy got his sentence commuted further by Ford either in 1976 or in 1977 (the 1977 date seems more credible because it comes from an alleged OCR of a contemporary LA Times article.) After half an hour of searching, I failed to locate any lists of Ford's pardons, so I can't confirm either date. The official list on justice.gov only goes back to Bush Sr., and a fairly comprehensive list of presidents' public papers at presidency.ucsb.edu appears to lack many if not most pardons (e.g. it does not include the pardon of Tokyo Rose, which was granted around the same time.) --Itinerant1 (talk) 09:09, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Accidental History
Much of the history of imprisonment seems accidental. George Bernard Shaw, writing a treatise on Imprisonment as a preface to the report of Lord Olivier on English and American prison conditions, said this about penal imprisonment:

"Nobody invented this. Nobody intended it. Nobody defended it except the people who made money by it. Nobody except the prisoners knew about it. . .It was by mere accident of being picked for sheriff that John Howard learned what the inside of the gaol was like.

As a result of Howard's agitation prisons are now State Prisons: the State accepts full responsibility for the prisoner from the moment of his arrest. So far, so good. But in the meantime imprisonment, instead of being a means of detention, has become not only a punishment, but, for the reasons given at the outset of this essay, the punishment. And official shallowness. . . has made it an infernal punishment. . . ."

I found this on the page, and it has no background information, one can't tell what it's talking about (what exactly was done on accident? Who is John Howard?) and seems more like somebody spouting their message than it is encyclopedic information. -CB319 68.11.200.74 (talk) 04:30, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It is my humble opinion that Life without parole is a horrible way to die. The inmate lives their entire life knowing there is no second chance, no life but behind bars. No hope for family members who love and need them. It is a very cruel and inhumane to treat people. How is it justified that people get treated this way when I would be arrested for treating a dog or cat this way? - Karen Gatlin, Winter Springs, Florida 2/7/2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.129.215.254 (talk) 15:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Minors, unsourced POV
Regarding Edit 03:15, 1 July 2012‎ 98.223.133.112 (talk)‎. . (17,219 bytes) (+1,660)‎. . (→‎Minors)

The last section of the Minors chapter seems more like unsourced POV, and should be removed. Seems like a very personal defense of life imprisonment of juveniles in the US with wording like "Not all Western and developed countries are faced with the extreme levels of severe juvenile violence the U.S" and "commit truly heinous cases of aggravated first-degree murder- against young children or helpless elderly persons, for example), is unfair- that it might warrant that penalty."

I can't see how this part is Neutral.Jaydee711 (talk) 06:13, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Statistics
This section appears to be the target of vandalism or activism. The language "without" has repeated been changed to "with" intentionally inverting statistics about the number of inmates serving LWOP sentences. We need to keep an eye on this and try to find which users are committing the changes.John Andrew Ellis (talk) 22:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Grammar
Hi, doesn't "famous" have a positive connotation? If so, should "famous lifers" be "infamous", or at least "notable" or something?


 * That's a good question. Famous does have a positive connotation, but I think "infamous lifers" would be a redundancy because all lifers are infamous.  "Notable" would have the same connotation as famous, and "popular" would be worse.  Perhaps "well known" lifers or maybe just stick with famous? Groupsome (talk) 12:57, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

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Last line on "minors" not properly sourced
"International standards of justice hold that a juvenile life imprisonment without a possibility of parole is not warranted under any circumstances because juvenile offenders lack the experience, education, intelligence and mental development of adults and must be given a reasonable opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation"

Can somebody please find the right source for that. The source used only leads to the Graham v. Florida article which doesn't mention that.Bjoh249 (talk) 01:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem
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Potentially adding more subtopics
Hello, I was wondering if this article might be improved by adding some more topics of its present-day implications, like the organizations working with prisoners serving life sentences, what debates there are around the topic, what relation it has to the death penalty? I have a little bit of research ready for some of this, but would this be effective to add here?

Here is my current bibliography with some sources we can use for it.

Subaitar34 (talk) 02:18, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

NPOV
The U.S. practice of sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without a possibility of parole violates international standards of justice, as well as treaties to which the U.S. is a party.


 * Argumentative
 * No sources

Creuzbourg (talk) 15:20, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Several sources are provided in this section, describing these treaties. Jarble (talk) 14:56, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

confusing - was he paroled and died in 2004?
Although Schick's sentence was given only cursory mention, the court concluded a whole life sentence was constitutional.[10] Schick, together with only five other federal prisoners who were still ineligible for parole at the time, was made eligible for parole by a separate pardon from President Gerald Ford in 1976 or 1977, and he may have died a free man in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2004.

What does this mean? No one knows what happened to Schick? Infinitepeace (talk) 00:53, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

removed no name blog
I removed a blog with no relevance, replacing it with a real source:

In 1954, Master Sergeant Maurice L. Schick was convicted by military court-martial of the murder of eight-year-old Susan Rothschild at Camp Zama in Japan. The soldier admitted the killing stating he had a sudden "uncontrollable urge to kill" and had chosen his victim "just because she was there."

Infinitepeace (talk) 01:00, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Maurice Schick was released from prison
https://progressive.org/magazine/the-will-to-kill-in-black-and-white-lueders/

This article states that Schick was released from prison in 1979 after president Gerald Ford commuted his sentence to make him eligible for parole. We can trust this source since presidential commutation records mention a commutation for Maurice Schick by Ford in 1977.

Multiple sentences
The article should explain what multiple "consecutive" life sentences for a single person mean. It's paradox, and it's not known in many other countries. Who came up with this ridicuolous idea, and why? --Anvilaquarius (talk) 09:38, 3 March 2022 (UTC)