> Why should someone who "seems sorry" when he pleads guilty get less time than someone who doesn't? Why should repeat offenders be punished more harshly for any given crime than those who are first offenders? It all shades into punishing someone not for what they did, but for who they are.
Because punishment has many goals, and one of them is removal of negative agents from society.
If someone seems sorry, or it's his first crime, there's a likelihood it will be his last crime, and releasing him earlier makes sense.
If someone is not sorry, or keeps committing crimes when released, then perhaps a higher penalty will at least somewhat deter them, and if not - they'll have less opportunity to repeat the crime.
At the same time, it is incredibly easy to fake being sorry. In addition to that, in the case of an innocent being held in jail they would have no real reason to be sorry for what they didn't do. (I could accept that this latter point doesn't hold, if the prisons simply assume that wrongful convictions don't occur and aren't their problem if they do.) (I recall this scenario from a study we did in school on wrongful convictions. One particular individual -- who served 30 years and later had his conviction overturned after he was released, explicitly refused to apologize; that would mean he was guilty.)
I have read that it's much more difficult for the wrongfully convicted to get parole, as they tend to be rather averse to admitting they committed the crime.
Because punishment has many goals, and one of them is removal of negative agents from society.
If someone seems sorry, or it's his first crime, there's a likelihood it will be his last crime, and releasing him earlier makes sense.
If someone is not sorry, or keeps committing crimes when released, then perhaps a higher penalty will at least somewhat deter them, and if not - they'll have less opportunity to repeat the crime.