Yes, those acts are immensely terrible and the apologies feel minuscule by comparison. But I think there's room for more nuance here.

There are multiple reasons we put people in jail:

1. the victims can feel some vindication and retribution

2. other members of society can feel some vindication and retribution and a sense of justice

3. other would-be criminals are detered from committing similar crimes for fear of punishment

4. making people feel safe by showing them criminals are punished

5. removing a bad actor from society

6. reforming a bad actor and reintroducing them into society

Different cultures emphasize different combinations of reasons. For example, ine notable divide is how, in the US, 6. is considered to be the product of a naive mind, whereas in some nordic countries, that goal is taken seriously, with some amount of success (and perhaps at the detriment of other goals).

Anyway, I think your point is that, even if you take the convicts' apologies at face value, goals 1. and 2. remain unfulfilled. And 3. is probably weakened.

For a lot of parole boards "belief in a higher power" is a mandatory part of being eligible for any kind of clemency.

In other words: if they want to have any chance of making it out alive, they have to at least pretend to be religious.

You didn’t find the “that will be 5 dollars” one funny?

Where else would you go?

The joke is in the long-winded, self-centered empty apologies and appeals to God; the punchline is in the subsequent brief and clinical descriptions of completely unforgivable acts. These are nauseating to read.

Of course goal 1 is unfulfilled. Because victims are already dead. Often in very bad way.

I’m sure there are enough people who will consider goals 2, 4 and 5 fulfilled. I disagree with your assessment.

As I said - those pieces of shit lost their human privileges after what they did. You don’t fix them or reintroduce them to society.

I don’t care about abstracts. I care about the fact that some of those scumbags were kept alive longer than their victims lived on this earth, and suffered less in their demise.

I advise having a read through Sapolskys book "Determined" to get another perspective

I've always felt very alone in my view on this, so don't feel bad if you disagree with me because most people probably do, but I just feel super morally icky when I hear about how part of our justice system is built around "retribution" / "vindication". Like it is one thing to punish, it is quite another to allow others to derive some sort of satisfaction from that punishment, even if they were victims, I just find it sick. It means as a society we are no better than the perpetrators at the end of the day.

I appreciate the recommendation and I will read it (I also appreciate that you made a recommendation instead of downvoting me), however I don't think free will has much to do with this. If they were predetermined to be like this then I have sympathy for the bad dice roll, but once they've stomped an infant to death they're always that person. It doesn't change much about how to deal with them; you can't trust that they won't do it again no matter how much time passes, and that means that saying sorry and making Pascal's wager come off as completely hollow.

What is your goal in asking someone to read this book, we're supposed to have sympathy for those who have had a bad rap in nature and nurture.

That 'the system' is responsible for driving them to their actions ?