The Death Penalty: Yes or No?

[morph4me]

Hi fireman00,

While I sympathize with the loss of your friends, the fact remains this argument is an Appeal To Emotion and, as such, has no real merit. If you are going to give a sustained defense as to why state executions should be a defining feature of our society, you'll need to come up with something more enduring than reciprocal vengeance.

I'm fine with reciprocal vengeance

While this may seem like a crass statement on my part, what arguments such as this really boil down to are We Should Have Executions Because It Will Make Us Feel Better. That a policy may seem emotionally self-gratifying does not make it a morally sound policy.

Thank you for taking it upon yourself to be the guardian of morality for the rest of us

Also, as per your last paragraph, life imprisonment would also "permanently remove" a murderer from society. Depending on the nature of their imprisonment, the aforementioned murderer may also be able to contribute to society in some way (such as through prison labor systems).

life imprisonment doesn't permanently remove a murder from society, just changes the society he interacts with.

 

[MBuzzy]

Also, as per your last paragraph, life imprisonment would also "permanently remove" a murderer from society. Depending on the nature of their imprisonment, the aforementioned murderer may also be able to contribute to society in some way (such as through prison labor systems).

life imprisonment doesn't permanently remove a murder from society, just changes the society he interacts with.

And puts the criminal in a position where he is living at the public's expense, probably in a better manner than he was accustomed to anyway, gives him an opportunity to learn (both about crimes and college level), and allows them to still live a full life.

 

[Big Don]

It occurred to me, as I was driving home from an 11 hour workday, this morning, that, perhaps we, as a society look at capital punishment, and indeed imprisonment wrongly.
Too much emphasis, IMO, has been placed on "rehabilitation" and not enough on PUNISHMENT. Ask any member of a 12 step program, no one, NO ONE will ever change unless and until THEY CHOOSE TO. If we as a society said,"If you do X your punishment will be Y" and stuck to it unerringly and without hesitation, fewer people would be inclined to commit crimes and risk punishment. But, for that to work, we as a society MUST stop treating criminals as misguided and return to treating those who do evil as evildoers.

 

[Touch Of Death]

A resounding no.

 

[Touch Of Death]

It occurred to me, as I was driving home from an 11 hour workday, this morning, that, perhaps we, as a society look at capital punishment, and indeed imprisonment wrongly.
Too much emphasis, IMO, has been placed on "rehabilitation" and not enough on PUNISHMENT. Ask any member of a 12 step program, no one, NO ONE will ever change unless and until THEY CHOOSE TO. If we as a society said,"If you do X your punishment will be Y" and stuck to it unerringly and without hesitation, fewer people would be inclined to commit crimes and risk punishment. But, for that to work, we as a society MUST stop treating criminals as misguided and return to treating those who do evil as evildoers.

No, there is not to much emphasis on rehab.
Sean

 

[jetboatdeath]

I think the death sentence was meant as a deterrent to the most violent of crimes, and because of the violent criminals of today they do not fear death so the death sentence really offers no deterrent. I also think the death sentence is to light for some of the crimes out there. I also don’t feel it is my responsibility to pay for a criminal to be put away for life. So we must come up with a new sentence that wills denture the criminal. My idea is bare with me here…. torture, yes it is harsh and cruel but hey, so is shooting 20 people in the head because you had a bad day. As I was taught in the French commando school I attended while in the army, Torture as a form of getting information does not work, torture as a form of punishment does.

 

[Archangel M]

Death will certainly deter at least ONE criminal.

 

[Big Don]

The problem, I think, is the compulsion to at least appear to be "nice". The way we handle vile criminality in this day and age, it is remarkable that BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) isn't our motto.

 

[Big Don]

Death will certainly deter at least ONE criminal.

The dead commit extremely few crimes...
The deterrent effect is hampered by not executing criminals in a timely fashion. When, in the late nineties, Florida and Texas were executing felons in large numbers, both states saw a dramatic drop in violent crime. Deterrents that are not used properly are worthless. Empty threats do not now, nor, have they ever been effective.

 

[heretic888]

It occurred to me, as I was driving home from an 11 hour workday, this morning, that, perhaps we, as a society look at capital punishment, and indeed imprisonment wrongly.
Too much emphasis, IMO, has been placed on "rehabilitation" and not enough on PUNISHMENT. Ask any member of a 12 step program, no one, NO ONE will ever change unless and until THEY CHOOSE TO. If we as a society said,"If you do X your punishment will be Y" and stuck to it unerringly and without hesitation, fewer people would be inclined to commit crimes and risk punishment. But, for that to work, we as a society MUST stop treating criminals as misguided and return to treating those who do evil as evildoers.

Hi Don,

I actually think the opposite is true. Our penal system is mostly concerned with arbitrarily "punishing" criminals and (in most cases) releasing them back into the general public after they have acquired knowledge and experiences that make them better criminals.

By the way, your assertions are almost totally incorrect. Punishment strategies are largely meaningless to individuals who do not experience them firsthand, especially if we're talking about adults. You should familiarize yourself with the science of applied behavioral analysis (and perhaps experimental psychology as a whole), as your beliefs seem to be rooted almost totally in myths and illusions about human behavior.

What has been demonstrated time after time to be the most effective means of reducing criminal recidivism is educational programs that teach the incarcerated basic job skills and provide them a means to pursue employment outside of prison (otherwise, the only "career" that will work for them is crime). Unlike the assertions that capital punishment is a deterrent to others, this is something that has actually been documented time and time again in the academic literature.

Incidentally, reward/punishment strategies aren't particularly effective on adult populations (or adolescents, for that matter) and punishment-only strategies have a very limited success on children.

The more you know. And stuff.

Laterz.

 

[Sukerkin]

It is odd that I find two posts in a row above that I agree with completely and yet they are, at their core, contradictory to each other .

The liberal side (British liberal remember ) of my own views on the death penalty are coloured by the necessity of certainty of evidence. It's a bit hard to bring someone back from the grave when you discover they were innocent after all.

The conservative side of my views is utterly ruthless. "Death for parking offences!" is the cry. By this I mean that harsh penalties only have an effect if they are vastly disproportional to the offence.

Sad as it is, I don't think that we can support the death penalty in a supposedly civilised society unless proof is absoute and unequivocal. There are obviously exceptional cases where it is clear who the culprit is but many cases are not clear cut and you're dealing with probabilities of guilt.

We've had a case in England that's hit the news very recently which has spurred quite an emotive response. In part it's because the victim is a beautiful teenage girl but also it's because the crime is so outrageous.

Basically, the accused man (I use the term loosely) knifed the girl to death in the driveway of her house and had sex with her corpse.

If the proof is absolutely infallible, I would have no qualms about the death penalty for such a crime - in fact I'd be prepared to carry it out myself if required (Japanese style).

Given, however, that even DNA evidence is only 'very likely' rather than 'certain' do we as a society have the right to take the life of a citizen on what amounts to 'accusation'?