New Bill Could Lead to Potential Life Sentences For Guilty Swatters

[Elijin]

If your "prank" causes a police officer to take the life of an innocent person, you've just ruined one life and ended another. You most certainly deserve life in prison.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Plus what if their is a serious incident like a shooting and the SWAT team are caught up in this fake swatting calls? Depending on the circumstance many lives could be lost. Something has to be done as it wont be long before some poor victim will be shot.

 

[Thyunda]

Yes, police has to react to all calls seriuosly because it is impossible to know which ones are fake.

Have a look at the British response to bomb threats in the UK between 1972 and 1996. For every genuine attack or bomb threat (and there were many) there were maybe twenty false ones. There were simply not the resources to crack down hard on every single potential threat, so they had rapid investigative systems in place to try and pry the real and the fake apart before storming the place.

 

[Starke]

Lifetime in prison? Maybe not quite that harsh, but i'd agree these idiots need to still get a few years - personally atleast.

Looks like the lifetime in prison is in the event that the police kill someone. So it's basically just attaching a homicide charge.

 

[Lightknight]

Harsh sentences for swatters is a good thing but life sentence is way too much. i basically agree with the bellow statement by ObsidianJones, it should be equivalent punishment to similar crimes.

It's only a potential life sentence if the swatting results in someone's death. Life is long, it should be somewhere closer to voluntary manslaughter. But you've also got to see it like this:

Let's say you have a gun and a person has money you want. If you brandish the gun at them to get the money and accidentally shoot/kill them, does it matter that you weren't waving the gun at them with the intent to shoot?

In the eyes of the law, that scenario is equivalent to swatting if the person is killed. It's not necessarily first degree murder but it's also more severe than voluntary manslaughter. So what should be the maximum time if you intentionally do something that gets someone killed?

well, things like "insure your wife and her for money" tends to get around 8-9 years in my country. Id say 10 years sentence for a murder is fine. hence my comment that i think it should be harsh but not life. The point of a prison sentence is to fix someone so he would be useful for society later, not to tuck someone away never to be seen again. If your giving life sentences you may as well just do the capital punishment.

In your country a man who insures his wife and then murders her for the policy doesn't even get a decade? In the country where this law is being conceived, the point of prison is a combination of a desire to rehabilitate and also to enact retribution for the cost their crime incurred. So in the instance of taking someone's life, it isn't entirely unreasonable to charge the murderer with life. Usually only cold blooded intentional murderers would get that though. So I wouldn't expect to see anyone actually charged with life for this.

As for the death penalty, it actually costs the state more money to execute than to just keep feeding them. Besides, our death penalty process completely fails to do anything. According to the anti-capital punishment philosopher John Howard Yoder, if you're going to have capital punishment as a deterrent then it should be brutal and public, like a public hanging or firing squad. This hidden away in a room nonsense just isn't going to instill any kind of fear in anyone. However, there are many victims in the crime of murder who receive justice when the murderer is then killed. So the notion of retribution cannot be entirely thrown out.

 

[Strazdas]

well, things like "insure your wife and her for money" tends to get around 8-9 years in my country. Id say 10 years sentence for a murder is fine. hence my comment that i think it should be harsh but not life. The point of a prison sentence is to fix someone so he would be useful for society later, not to tuck someone away never to be seen again. If your giving life sentences you may as well just do the capital punishment.

In your country a man who insures his wife and then murders her for the policy doesn't even get a decade? In the country where this law is being conceived, the point of prison is a combination of a desire to rehabilitate and also to enact retribution for the cost their crime incurred. So in the instance of taking someone's life, it isn't entirely unreasonable to charge the murderer with life. Usually only cold blooded intentional murderers would get that though. So I wouldn't expect to see anyone actually charged with life for this.

As for the death penalty, it actually costs the state more money to execute than to just keep feeding them. Besides, our death penalty process completely fails to do anything. According to the anti-capital punishment philosopher John Howard Yoder, if you're going to have capital punishment as a deterrent then it should be brutal and public, like a public hanging or firing squad. This hidden away in a room nonsense just isn't going to instill any kind of fear in anyone. However, there are many victims in the crime of murder who receive justice when the murderer is then killed. So the notion of retribution cannot be entirely thrown out.

nope. I went and looked it up when i wrote that. i expected something closer to 15 years but looks like average setence is around 8-9. of course circumstances may make it more or less.

The problem with charging anyone with life is that its a net loss on the country. on top of having to sustain the damages from the crime, you are going to pay for their living expenses for the rest of their lives. life prisoners have no reason to be rehabilitated since they are never coming out anyway, so there is not going to be any benefit from them.

The reason death penalty costs that ridiculous amount of money is because its been politically bloated over decades of baggage attached to it. I never meant to make it as a deterrant, rather as a alternative to life sentence. either way, the person is not going to have a life anymore, your just prolonging his death with a life sentence. on the other hand since prisoners seem to live in better condition that a third of my country here, perhaps i should kill someone for economical gain (we got no capital punishment here).

In murder in particular deterrents do not work because majority of cases are crimes of passion in which case people do not weight their options rationally. Personally i think capital punismen should be reserved to very few crimes, but if your going to throw life sentences for people making prank calls you may as well just go all out.