I do believe people can change but I don't know how you assess it.

I've only met one "lifer" (through someone doing prison visits), He claimed to have found God. As an attempted Christian myself, I guess I should have been delighted but my overwhelming impression was the guy was highly manipulative.

It's a good job I don't have to make these decisions, at least not on my "character assessment". The other side for his release, I'd have agreed with. Ageing, terminal cancer and pretty physically incapable. To me, keeping him in longer would have seen vindictive but again, I'm not the judge.

As for medical science. Would I be unreasonable in questioning that if we can trust it to place a person in that category in the first place that we shouldn't equally trust it to say a person is "cured"?