How much time should Anderson serve?

[calumniate]

Encourage you all to listen to this podcast. Goes into great detail about it and has interviews from both Mike and the clerk he robbed

http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-...ng?act=4#act-4

[flamesfever]

One could consider the penalty served as being constantly fearful of being picked up over a long period of time.

I agree that community service would be the best, from a merciful, wise and practical standpoint.

The case makes you think of having a balance between justice and mercy when it comes to sentencing, or adopting policies related thereto.

[Redliner]

Let him go. He's obviously rehabilitated and never made any attempt to conceal his identity or whereabouts.

If it was a violent crime like murder then this is a different conversation - but it wasn't. The sentence should be commuted to time served and the guy released.

[tvp2003]

Mr. Anderson? I wouldn't bother. Even if you were able to catch him, he'd just bend the steel bars and escape...

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Redliner

Let him go. He's obviously rehabilitated and never made any attempt to conceal his identity or whereabouts.

If it was a violent crime like murder then this is a different conversation - but it wasn't. The sentence should be commuted to time served and the guy released.

I would consider armed robbery a violent crime.

I don't think he should go to prison.

[AcGold]

logically no punishment whatsoever, it will punish his family more than him. He probably served his time living in fear and trepidation, just let him be. When the recidivism chance is zero it is counter intuitive to punish.

Actually, his punishment would ideally be paying back the restaurant manager and helping improve the persons life that he actually harmed instead of giving him a record that ruins his life.

[Keselke]

In a vacuum a prison sentence isn't just do serve time, like other posters said if he is indeed rehabilitated and a contributing member of society (which he appears to be from the article) then i would have no problem with him staying free

What should require more investigation is the system that broke down and caused a man to be free for 13 years after a conviction

[You Need a Thneed]

Putting him in prison at this point would just ruin the lives of more.

Find some community service for him to do instead.

[Daradon]

Another important reason for prison is to keep the community safe, which again, wasn't needed in this specific example. In fact I would rate the three reasons for incarceration by importance as such.

Safety of the public
Rehabilitation
Punishment

Of course many people (most even?) swap the last two. And it shows in our systems which don't offer a lot to increase the chances of rehabilitation. As Flash said, it's highly anecdotal as it's one case, but it can probably be said that this mistake worked better for society. Putting someone in prison can make things worse, in some cases making a career criminal of them, yet giving them a second chance and responsibility can turn things around.

For this case I am of the same mind, he shouldn't need to serve any time. The biggest reason is that he does appear to be self rehabilitated. Another reason, which when it really comes down to it probably shouldn't matter, but does in a 'fairness' way which appeals to our animal/human nature is that the length of time that he was supposed to serve has already elapsed. If the example was 5 of a total 15 had elapsed before the system figured it out, I'm sure some people would still want him to serve the rest, and I'm not entirely sure I would not be part of that group.

And of course, for a extremely violent crime, I have no idea where I would stand.

But luckily this doesn't appear to happen very often at all, so looking at it at a case by case basis is possible. And in this case, I don't believe he needs to serve any time.

For the larger discussion of punishment v rehabilitation, it's very natural for people to want to see bad people being punished. To 'even out' things as much as possible and make things 'fair'. It's been shown that our sense of fairness and desire for it is in our very makeup, it's part of our genes, an evolutionary trait.

However, life isn't fair, we all know that. And a justice system that focuses on punishment above all else, is always going to be less successful and more expensive. It creates more criminals and in turn makes the very society we are trying to keep safe more dangerous. Not to mention that it costs more money to jail people than to have them live their own life.

If the ultimate goal of a justice system is to keep people as safe as possible, wouldn't we go with what works, no matter if it doesn't seem 'fair'?

It's hard to forgive those who wrong you, and natural to want to see them suffer. But in a lot of cases it works out better for everyone. The victim, the criminal, and society. The more a justice system can reflect that, more successful it will be and the safer that society will be.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Daradon

For the larger discussion of punishment v rehabilitation, it's very natural for people to want to see bad people being punished. To 'even out' things as much as possible and make things 'fair'. It's been shown that our sense of fairness and desire for it is in our very makeup, it's part of our genes, an evolutionary trait.

So true of human nature. You can especially see it on display in every crime related thread on CP. They're like gorillas pounding their chests when explaining what should happen to every criminal, lol.

He needs to ****in die, with needles in his eyes and his arrftgghhjg heart torn out and I hope his fffljhjhgujh aahhhhhhhh family is killed and he has to watch arghhhghghh, I hate him so much!!! Justice ahhhh!!!

[Locke]

Unless the last 13 years was merely an elaborate ruse deliberately designed to generate public support for the freedom of a violent criminal.

Perhaps this man is more than meets the eye....

[Dion]

Michael Anderson and his family....

[FlamesAddiction]

Something tells me that those kids need a father more than this guy needs to be punished.

The system screwed up, but now they need to think of the greater good.

[Dan02]

Knowing some guys who have spent time inside for various offences, often jail time is the worst thing that could happen to them in terms of rehabilitating them.

You spend 13 years in jail, lose all your friends on the outside and then suddenly get released. You wanna know what happens?? quite often they start hanging out with the people they met when they were in jail because they don't know anyone else anymore. Even the people who want to clean up their act often get corrupted by the bad seeds.

So mark me down for commute the sentence to some sort of community service.

and on a completely unrelated note, for some reason there's this really hot chick dumpster diving in my alley right now with a slurpee from the local Macs, quite entertaining.

[Cheese]

Wonder if his wife knew?

[Shawnski]

13 years?

I'd call a statute of limitations on this one.

Can't get your shyte together, too bad. Time served.

[calumniate]

Originally Posted by Cheese

Wonder if his wife knew?

Gotta listen to that podcast I posted cheese. Quite the story

[calumniate]

Bump.. released!

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog...erson-released

[habernac]

good on the judge for having a clue here. Well done.

[19Yzerman19]

I agree he shouldn't be imprisoned but it doesn't sit right with me that he simply got away with a crime. Seems to me that community service would have been a good way to go.