Life Extension’s Impact on Inmates with Life Sentences
I am a proponent of life extension technology. As it is well documented, our society has done a great job in extending the life of an average human being. However, we haven’t addressed the absolute life spans. Though, that may be changing as we find a way to extend the absolute life span of any given human being.
For the following discussion, lets assume that we are able to extend the absolute life span.
I haven’t seen any literature addressing to key questions:
- Will these technologies be made available to prison inmates?
- If so, how will this apply to their life sentences?
Instead of an average life span of 75 years, what if it became 200 years, 500 years, or even longer? Bernie Madoff was just sentenced to 150 years, how would this apply to him? Would be get out after he has served his full 150 years? What would be the impact to inmates who are serving life sentences?
If a criminal is serving life in prison without the opportunity of parole, would they be subject to a death sentence if they weren’t given access to the live extension technologies? Right now they have full right to medical care. Would this be different?
Maximum sentences of 100 years or more are “understood” to be life sentences. If an inmate were given access to life extension and not released would this change the equation of the punishment fitting the crime?
We are living in an exciting time, where death as we know it may be eliminated outside of accidents or hostility. However, there are still massive issues to be resolved on moral and ethical grounds.
Welcome the brave new world…
I’ve read that the theoretical maximum that a human lifespan can be extended to is 150 years. Don’t remember the article or the theory behind it, but I believe it had something to do with the decay rate of telomeres in DNA. I doubt that our generation will see an increase in lifespan past 120 anyways, barring bold new advances in gene therapy. This idea would theoretically invalidate concerns about whether or not these “life” sentences will be served.
Science out of the way, the moral implication of extended life as applied to these implied life sentences is really the issue at hand. I would argue that a sentence of over 75 years would be such a massive punishment that it would be just as bad as a life sentence. My reasoning behind this is that incarcerating a criminal for such a long time – if ages of 150 are reached, 75 years would be half a lifetime – that the quality of the convicted person’s remaining life would be severely diminished. If a person misses out on half their life, only regaining freedom in the later part of their life… I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. By the time they regain their freedom, they are likely to be physically incapable of much due to old age.
That said, if we account for the possibility that old age is also eliminated from the equation, it would seem that sentencing would need to be changed to reflect the new quality of life. It would be only fair that criminals with termed “life” sentences would have to be released at the end of their term, and hopefully a 150 year jail sentence would be enough to convince them that they should never do what they did wrong again. Failing that, however, they would find themselves subject to the new realities of the law.
I hope I got my point across in a way that makes sense. For all I know I could’ve written gibberish. It is rather late, and I am rather tired.