Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes, we should keep it

13 (24.5%)

No, we should ban it

40 (75.5%)

Total Members Voted: 52

[werty892]

Well, you guys could START trying to rehabilitating people.    

Hell, if its a choice between killing the criminal and not killing the criminal, why not give them the option to work instead?  Could put them to work building hospitals or fixing up roads or something.

People given death are usually violent supercriminals who will try to escape. And you want them building hospitals? With tools?

[WealthyRadish]

In my experience I've only ever seen prosecutors go for the death penalty when there's a ton of sensationalism by the media (may be a bias there since I maybe wouldn't hear about those trials without that hype). Whenever one of these crimes happens and it comes up in passing conversation, the vast majority of the time people I talk with support it out of a spirit of vengeance/anger, two things that I think have no place in the justice system. Certainly public opinion shouldn't influence sentences, anyway. Gets a bit shaky at the supreme court level, when things are also political, but I think one of the main protections the government can offer its citizens (guilty or not) is protection from mob outcry, and the media definitely feeds that. If we want to talk about deterrents, not having all the media outlets sensationalizing the latest killing sprees for weeks at a time would be a good start.

And yeah, there's no logical argument for keeping it anyway. If we streamline the process to make it cheaper, even more innocent people will be executed, and if we don't somehow cheapen the process, it's a colossal waste of money. The death penalty is also something that I think is used as a distraction for many other, much more serious political problems in our justice system. Being US-centric here, but it's the primo example of a backwards system still in place.

[10ebbor10]

Well, you guys could START trying to rehabilitating people.    

Hell, if its a choice between killing the criminal and not killing the criminal, why not give them the option to work instead?  Could put them to work building hospitals or fixing up roads or something.

People given death are usually violent supercriminals who will try to escape. And you want them building hospitals? With tools?

I actually do want confirmation on that. After all, most of the violent supercriminals are insane, and as such are put in psychiatry rather than the normal prison system.

Looking at the Wikipedia list, I see many people with barely one or two murders, or a rape and murder case. While obviously bad, it doesn't quite qualify as a supercriminal, does it.

[Cthulhu]

Well, you guys could START trying to rehabilitating people.    

Hell, if its a choice between killing the criminal and not killing the criminal, why not give them the option to work instead?  Could put them to work building hospitals or fixing up roads or something.

People given death are usually violent supercriminals who will try to escape. And you want them building hospitals? With tools?

I actually do want confirmation on that. After all, most of the violent supercriminals are insane, and as such are put in psychiatry rather than the normal prison system.

I would like to see some confirmation of this, as well.

The death penalty currently doesn't seem like a very good deterrent but maybe we're not doing it right!  Maybe we should give that whole violent public spectacle thing another try.  Break out the Wheel, see what happens.

[WealthyRadish]

The death penalty currently doesn't seem like a very good deterrent but maybe we're not doing it right!  Maybe we should give that whole violent public spectacle thing another try.  Break out the Wheel, see what happens.

The sad thing is that I always read things like this as a joke at first, and then remember that it's a commonly held opinion.

[Graknorke]

Punishment as a system is just absurd. It's petty revenge. It doesn't actually stop the crime from having happened, and doesn't prevent it from happening again apart from the literal restraint.

[Levi]

I dunno, I feel like there is some kind of moral obligation to punish.  You do something wrong, you should get punished.  At the very least you should be forced to make reparations.  If we just wanted to prevent crimes we could just lock up everybody in the country and be done with it.

[Graknorke]

I dunno, I feel like there is some kind of moral obligation to punish.  You do something wrong, you should get punished.  At the very least you should be forced to make reparations.  If we just wanted to prevent crimes we could just lock up everybody in the country and be done with it.

Reparations, yes, that would be good. That fixes a problem. What problem does punishment solve though?

[Levi]

I dunno, I feel like there is some kind of moral obligation to punish.  You do something wrong, you should get punished.  At the very least you should be forced to make reparations.  If we just wanted to prevent crimes we could just lock up everybody in the country and be done with it.

Reparations, yes, that would be good. That fixes a problem. What problem does punishment solve though?

It doesn't solve a direct problem.  Hrm, I'm not convinced though.  I need to think about this more...   

Edit:

Okay, I'll agree there is no direct societal benefit to punishment(a few indirect benefits, but they could probably be achieved in other ways).  It still feels immoral not to punish though. 

If I went out and shot and killed somebody, I don't really think I should be able to get away with no consequences other than a fine and some therapy.  Even if the therapy is successful and I'll never murder a man again, and even if I give the family of the man a million dollars in reparations, I still feel that I should have some kind of punishment enforced. 

As a kid somebody told me once that if Hitler had repented his sins before he died, he would get into heaven.  It sort of reminds me of the same thing.  It might not solve a real problem, but it feels like punishment solves a moral problem?

Edit 2:  I'm not entirely satisfied with my own answer.   

[Sonlirain]

I dunno, I feel like there is some kind of moral obligation to punish.  You do something wrong, you should get punished.  At the very least you should be forced to make reparations.  If we just wanted to prevent crimes we could just lock up everybody in the country and be done with it.

Reparations, yes, that would be good. That fixes a problem. What problem does punishment solve though?

As an absolutely insane person I killed your dog and ate it in front of your kids.
Is just giving you 100$ for you to buy a new dog enough?
What if i'm rich?
Can i go around town killing peoples dogs and steal bikes as long as i give reperations for it?
Maybe i could attempt to burgle your house and get caught... just to get away scot free by just returning all the stolen goods and buying a new lock for your house?
It's an obvious exploitable loophole.

As for Death Penalty...
Personally i think it should be reserved for psychos and mass murderers that are far beyond resocialization and are a risk to their inmates and any guard nearby.
A "normal" murderer should just get sentenced and sent off to a work camp or something so they work for their stay in prison.

[Leafsnail]

I do think that punishment has a place in sentencing - it's effectively the same thing as the "deterrant" element, just with a justification based on an appeals to morals rather than pragmatics.  You need to discourage people from performing acts which are harmful to other individuals or society as a whole.  Making sure people won't do it again is also important, but it doesn't cover every case adequately.

I think appealing to so-called "super-criminals" when arguing that deterrance is necessary is actually a mistake.  Highly dangerous individuals would obviously spend a lot of time in jail under a rehabilitative system, and they are also unlikely to be consider the consequences of their actions too carefully anyway.  It's better to think about more mundane criminals - say, a guy who murders his wife because he's grown to hate her guts.  This kind of criminal is statistically very unlikely to reoffend (his wife will stay dead afterall) but you really need to punish them anyway to discourage others from doing the same thing.

That said I do not think that the death penalty is effective or appropriate as a deterrant.

[GlyphGryph]

On a separate note, if we ARE going to keep doing executions in the ol'USA I pray to god we bring back the guillotine or something similar, because the current incredibly cruel method of doing it is blood-curdling. You don't spend an hour writhing and screaming in pain with the guillotine (or being in that much pain but also being completely paralyzed and unable to writhe or scream, which is what happens when it works "right").

Chemical executions are cruel, unreliable, dehumanizing, and expensive as fuck, and I do not understand how they actually became so popular when we had a perfectly valid alternative that was absolutely none of those things. I guess it's a natural progression from the electric chair though, which had all the same problems...

[Leafsnail]

I agree, there's increasing evidence at this point that chemical executions are both terrifying and painful (because you are basically paralysed but conscious while a poison is spreading through your body).

[misko27]

Well, you guys could START trying to rehabilitating people.    

Hell, if its a choice between killing the criminal and not killing the criminal, why not give them the option to work instead?  Could put them to work building hospitals or fixing up roads or something.

People given death are usually violent supercriminals who will try to escape. And you want them building hospitals? With tools?

I actually do want confirmation on that. After all, most of the violent supercriminals are insane, and as such are put in psychiatry rather than the normal prison system.

Not in the US they don't. They end up in prison. And will likely not be treated. I know it's cool and all to just say that the war on drugs is why the prison system is so huge, but it's really not the only one.

In a 2006 Special Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated that 705,600 mentally ill adults were incarcerated in State prisons, 78,800 in Federal prisons and 479,900 in local jails. In addition, research suggests that "people with mental illnesses are overrepresented in probation and parole populations at estimated rates ranging from two to four time the general population" (Prins and Draper, 2009). Growing numbers of mentally ill offenders have strained correctional systems.

Source.

I would like to say that, given how this forum isn't strictly, nor primarily, a US forum, I think the discussion should be broadened.
EDIT:

Since the reinstitution of the death penalty, 143 prisoners have waived their appeals and asked that the execution be carried out. Four states (Connecticut, New Mexico, Oregon, and Pennsylvania) have executed only volunteers so far.

[ed boy]

As for Death Penalty...
Personally i think it should be reserved for psychos and mass murderers that are far beyond resocialization and are a risk to their inmates and any guard nearby.

There are problems with this system, such as that what meets these conditions. After all, it wasn't very long ago that homosexuals would commonly be thought of (and in some cases, are still thought of) as beyond resocialization and a risk to those around them.