Zombie Justice

Should we be bringing back as zombies convicted criminals who die before they've completed their sentences?  I only ask because, in some quarters, there seems to be an idea that those offenders who have the audacity to die, whether by accident or the result of illness, whilst they are incarcerated, are somehow 'cheating' their victims of justice.  Just the other day I heard a senior police officer on the radio describing a convicted peadophile (and former senior police officer) of having 'won' again because he had died only a few weeks into his sentence.  Believe me, didn't 'win'.  He died.  That's quite different.  It's not like some kind of 'better' option to prison.  You don't walk free.  in fact, you don't walk anywhere, ever again.  Not only is death not the easy option, if you are of a religious bent, you'll know that, if you are a bad guy, then it means eternal damnation.  Which, despite the current state of our penal system, isn't an easier ride than prison.

But maybe that's the problem - you just can't be sure that hell and eternal damnation actually exist.  So the only practical alternative, as I see it, is to bring these bastards back from the dead, somehow.  That way you can keep punishing them and force them to complete their sentences.  Let's face it, with more and more peadophiles seemingly evading prosecution until they are drawing their pensions, this is probably the only way we're ever going to get full 'satisfaction' from their punishments.  (Of course, one might argue that a large degree of responsibility for the fact that these peadophiles evaded prosecution for so long actually lies with the very senior police officers who lament how they've 'cheated' their victims by dying.  Perhaps if they'd properly investigated the allegations against these people in the first place, they might have secured convictions before the perpetrators were at death's door).  But just how do we bring them back?  Should we be recruiting voodoo priests as prison officers?  The only problem with using voodoo is that the dead prisoners would come back as zombies - completely lacking in free will, memory, personality or sentience.  Which would making continuing their punishment pointless.  They would be completely unaware of why it was happening.

So, maybe the answer lies in some sort of scientific resurrection, which preserves the offender's personality.  Perhaps some kind of Frankenstein-style brain transplanting would be in order?  Stick their brains into the bodies of of recently deceased, younger, accident victims?  Mind you, that could bring problems down the line - when they'd finally served their sentences, they could be physically younger than when they started.  They'd be rejuvenated, ready to start offending all over again.  Plus, it could be a bit disconcerting for the relatives of the people whose bodies they received to find that their loved ones had apparently returned from the grave as raving sex offenders.  Anyway, whatever the solution, it would entail the irony of seeing the sort of people who usually call for the return of the death penalty for child molesters instead calling for them to be kept alive.