Compassionate release

Compassionate release.

Virtually all state prison systems and the federal prison system allow for the early “compassionate release” of sick, elderly, or disabled prisoners. Almost always, this doesn’t happen.

Now comes Bernie Madoff, the financial world’s equivalent of a serial killer. Entering the final stages of kidney disease with less than 18 months to live, he filed for compassionate release from federal prison. The Bureau of Prisons denied his petition, as it does 94 percent of those filed by incarcerated people. He has filed an appeal with the sentencing court.

Should he be released to die at home? Should we feel compassion for him? Here’s what a thoughtful New York Times opinion piece has to say.

I don’t think it’s a matter of feeling compassion—defined as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings of others–for Madoff or for others seeking to spend their final days outside a prison. To feel compassion for someone who ruined so many lives may be beyond us.

But what is not beyond us is a long, long overdue public discussion about whether retribution should be our only penological aim, and justice for victims defined only as the long-term warehousing of perpetrators. Are victims made whole? Are criminals reformed? What does—what should–“justice” mean?

What do you think?

(And oh, the irony of this Times column just as Trump announces his list of commutations and pardons.)