In an interview published Friday by New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR), US navy veteran Jason Riddle said: “It’s almost like [Trump] was trying to say it didn’t happen. And it happened. I did those things, and they weren’t pardonable.
“I don’t want the pardon. And I … reject the pardon.”
Riddle entered the US Senate parliamentarian’s office, drank a bottle of wine, stole a book and inflicted damage at the Capitol when Trump supporters attacked the building on 6 January 2021 in a desperate attempt to the then president in office after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden weeks earlier, according to court documents. He received a 90-day prison sentence and was fined $750 in April 2022 for pleading guilty to committing misdemeanors in an attack that was linked to several deaths, including officer suicides.
I understand what you’re saying, but you are still implicitly agreeing with the idea hardened criminals should be treated more harshly. If your goal is rehabilitation and not punishment, this is the wrong mentality.
I didn’t mean that as my personal mindset, but that of our American culture. When I said “hardened criminals,” I was using the cultural sense of the phrase that refers to those guilty of more serious crimes and repeat offenders, nothing more.
The vast majority of people in prison are there for stupid reasons, and most would never be there in the first place if there were better social safety nets and support programs in the first place. And of those who do end up in prison, everybody would be far better served by rehabilitation programs than punishment for the sake of punishment. That serves no purpose other than to be cruel.
There are, of course, those very few people who are better off locked away from the general populace, like CEOs. But even then, the point is to prevent them from doing harm, not inflicting pain and misery on them.
The American prison system is good at 2 things: creating profit off of slave labor and creating repeat offenders who are likely to turn to things like theft, drugs, or dangerous forms of sex work (prostitution, becoming human trafficking victims, etc.) out of desperation after they get out.