Meanness and vindictiveness are counterproductive, and are not Christian values
Counterproductive, yes, but not Christian values? The entire concept of retributive justice is Abrahamic in origin in the West. The model is the god, who inflicts suffering for disobedience (eternal hellfire) for no constructive purpose. That's what many Westerners want prisons to do - inflict gratuitous suffering. They're uninterested in prison conditions except when they fiond them too cushy.
Punishment is for little children, at low Kohlberg levels. In adults, it only generates anger, resentment, and anti-social behavior.
Agreed. And unlike with prisons, this is administered constructively and lovingly with the intention to make the child a better and subsequently happier adult.
By humanistic ethics, prison is only for removing a danger from the streets, serving as a disincentive to others and to the prisoner after release by "grounding" them (which is essentially treating them constructively as one would a child), and if and when possible, rehabilitation. Gratuitous punishment has no place and serves no useful purpose except.
It's good for people to bear the full brunt of responsibility for their actions.
The humanist view is that one's responsibility after the fact is to make restitution where possible, and that this is as close to justice as is possible. Putting people in prison doesn't accomplish that. Nor does punishing them gratuitously.
Nothing is fixed by releasing her. you fail to give any reason to the benefit of releasing her
Her freedom is restored, and although this incenses many, others find it life affirming to show reason and compassion. They say let this old woman have a taste of freedom again before she dies.
The concept of owing a debt to society is counterproductive as we can see with that comment. You want to keep her in prison not protect the people (unless your position is that she is likely to kill again), not to serve as a disincentive to others to not also kill (I think five or six decades of prison even with parole accomplishes that as much as another decade of incarceration would), and isn't to rehabilitate her, which probably occurred decades ago. You just want her to pay more, and your argument is that she still owes a debt to society at large. She never did. Her crime was against two groups of people. I believe they killed four adults and a fetus at the Tate home, and two LaBiancas. One could say she had a debt to them, but there is no repaying that, so why use that word now unless it is to justify more punishment.
If you are not a Christian, how do you justify your position? Christians are just taking their instruction from their god. There's no parole from hell, no mercy, and what is called God's justice is extreme, eternal suffering for any act of omission or commission that violates a commandment from God. If that's your model, naturally you want to this old woman to go on suffering as long as possible. But if that's not where you learned what justice is, why do you want to her to suffer further?
In my view, one of the things that America shows too little of (compared to most of the rest of the first world nations) is mercy.
You may not have been referring to Van Houten here specifically, but in her case, I'm arguing that there is no debt to society to pay or forgive. It the wrong metaphor. This "debt" is not to all of society, but rather a small part of it directly affected, and it can't be paid down at all to any of those people even affected friends and family still living. It's only the idea that she does have this debt and arbitrarily declaring that it hasn't been paid in full yet that justifies keeping her in prison or calling parole mercy.
This whole Abrahamic thing was a huge wrong turn for mankind. Extracting the sacred from nature and investing it in an unseen entity in an unseen place who gives orders and punishes has generated untold unhappiness, which you as a gay man and an atheist have experienced first hand - not to mention generating disrespect for the earth by converting it from sacred to profane. Older religions are earth based, and their gods are just symbols for various aspects of natural reality - the wind, destruction, wisdom. They don't give orders or punish.
As a secular humanist, I feel a duty to oppose this kind of thinking and help to remedy it if I can, which is why I am an antitheist regarding organized, politicized religion, which harms everybody, and also consider personal in others belief a problem because it harms so many of them. The Buddhists and Druids don't think and act that way. They harm nobody including themselves. Their religions are earth- and life-affirming.
This is why I say that it's not religion that's the problem. but Abrahamic monotheism - a huge detour into the muck of bigotry, gratuitous cruelty as we see here, and anti-intellectualism for mankind.
