Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

i think it sends a message that there is a point where killing is a legitimate solution to transgressions: but how citizens interpret transgression isn't likely to be identical to how the state interprets it.

This is an interesting thought. I'll think on it.

i shd be clear that my main opposition to capital punishment is based on repugnance at violence wherever it comes from, i guess. but i do have a secondary pragmatic objection in that it doesn't seem to be effective at preventing violent crime. i could argue that more effective policing might reduce the popularity of the death penalty because the probability of detection has more of a deterrent effect than the severity of punishment.

I can't ever side with the death penalty and its advocates. There are so many reasons why I am against it. From wrongly convicted to being more expensive than life imprisonment and the fact it doesn't deter other people from killing/stealing whatever...

my great uncle was in a concentration camp so I have no real sympathy if a bill magill gets beaten mercilessly by a stranger with a baseball bat

― iatee, Saturday, July 30, 2011 12:52 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark

How sad it wasn't one of your direct ancestors so we wouldn't be subjected to your stupidity. Go fuck yourself.

can't wait for bill magill's sb

happy to contribute there

Same. Consider ingesting a chill pill, William!

I don't blame you Bill, but you might want to go for a walk...

my great uncle was in a concentration camp so I have no real sympathy if a bill magill gets beaten mercilessly by a stranger with a baseball bat

― iatee, Saturday, July 30, 2011 12:52 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark

How sad it wasn't one of your direct ancestors so we wouldn't be subjected to your stupidity. Go fuck yourself.

― You're a notch, I'm a legend (Bill Magill), Saturday, July 30, 2011 10:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk281/duhflushtech/GIF%20Files/friday.gif

can you really support suggest banning if you don't support the death penalty, though

i support wiping humanity of the face of the earth, so i've got no problem starting with bill magill?

^^^ tough on the causes of crime

i'm pretty much down with vengeance as a motivator, i think? Even for the state. I'm not strongly for death penalty tbh, but saying that in eg 1st degree murder cases where no real doubt exists it's not a huge moral quandary that i'd personally struggle with.

i think i understand the impulse to vengeance, but then i think i understand the impulse to murder. i feel like we shd try to legislate for our society to be better than we are as individual people.

see, I think we should legislate society so that the government is in charge of the serious jobs that individual citizens would almost certainly fuck up. obviously it doesn't work like this in reality, but that's how it should be, damn it.

and in turn that's understandable, of course, just.... not to an unrealistic/unrepresentative extent, maybe?

Should point out i'd gleefully hang the little shits bouncing on the beds in the next room

xp to nv, that

Darragh, bouncing on the bed is actually mad good exercise in a word where kids have increasingly fewer outlets for (particularly state-sanctioned) exercise.

murder cases where no real doubt exists

this is always an intriguing notion, are you suggesting there should be two verdicts: guilty and totally guilty?

well yeah y'know

Of greater concern is the possibility that broadcasting executions could have a numbing effect. Douglas A. Berman, a law professor, fears that people might come to equate human executions with putting pets to sleep. Yet this seems overstated. While public indifference might result over time, the initial broadcasts would undoubtedly get attention and stir debate.

This is wrong, I think. I wish I thought well enough of people in general to think that broadcasting executions would make them think "this is barbaric," but within minutes of each execution animated gifs of "funny" jerks and twitches would be getting play all around the web, and it would further desensitize an already terrifyingly desensitized population.

if you'll excuse me now I'm off to listen to some goregrind

Lol

maybe they'd see that y'know it's not such a bad way to go tbf?

i mean the method isn't really the debate, or am i wrong there?

What's the point of a form of vengeance where one party is no longer around afterwards to see how badly he's been pwned after the act of vengeance is done?

Not really into the idea of the state taking vengeance btw, just saying capital punishment hasn't really been thought through from that POV.

Capital punishment is pretty draconian. At one time, I opposed the death penalty on pure 'oh noes don't execute innocents' grounds, which are valid, but now have just grown to detest the entire practice. It serves no function except to convince American citizens that the government killed the "monster in the closet". It doesn't clear out overcrowded prisons significantly, so that argument doesn't really work.

The problem with it as a deterrent is that a basic psychological tenet is that punishment is most effective when doled out immediately and consistently. If we all knew that if, after killing someone in pre-meditated fashion, we were arrested, we would be executed, say, in two days time, regardless of circumstance, race, socioeconomic status, etc...we might think twice. And there are some people out there who quite (erroneously) say we should do things like this.

But, that cuts into the accused's civil rights, and we know way too many people have been exonerated from Death Row to say "oh, nobody is ever wrongfully convicted of murder" with a straight face.

Likewise, the death penalty is inconsistently handed out, and much more likely to be given to a minority of low socioeconomic status. This is one major reason it doesn't work as a deterrent.

I do have a major issue with the State deciding it has the right to determine when someone lives or dies. Like, I will never bat an eyelid when the military commits a tactical strike against someone (say, Bin Laden) in the name of battle. Or when the police incarcerate someone. But the State condemning someone to death is them intervening on moral, and not punitive grounds -- after all, if the subject is incarcerated, for life or not, he/she is removed from society and therefore unable to commit said crime again.

I'm terrified that the state might execute the wrong person, so NO. Also I just think that flipping the switch corrupts people, it debases them. I think it debases a culture and a nation.

so much so that the Pixies wrote a song about it

but ya in all srsness, dudders to death penalty

La La 'Lectrocute You? xp

wouldve only made the album better imo

vengeance isn't for the person receiving it, tbf nick

I'm against the death penalty for people who are innocent, fwiw.

even pope innocent x?

x? is an unrecognised emoticon

"i'm pretty much down with vengeance as a motivator, i think? "

Where does it end then?

I'm cool with the government doling out whatever punishments make them feel good

oh yeah, exactly.

just govt after govt getting their kicks offing random citizens

even pope innocent x?

― MY WEEDS STRONG BLUD.mp3 (nakhchivan), Sunday, 31 July 2011 14:42 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
x? is an unrecognised emoticon

― CH3C(O)N(CH3)2 (darraghmac), Sunday, 31 July 2011 14:44 (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://agaudi.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/300px-study_after_velazquezs_portrait_of_pope_innocent_x.jpg

pope innocent D:

Thread revive just in time for Guido Fawkes latest attempt to prove he's got a big cocktougher than the rest.

http://www.restorejustice.org.uk/

I imagine it's about whipping up Euroscepticism as much as it is reintroducing the death penalty.

I imagine it's about whipping up Guido Fawkes profile as much as it is reintroducing the death penalty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/04/death-penalty-e-petition-commons

The e-petitions goes live to-day so I imagine Staines will be working hard to get his 100,000 signatures in fast.

cool, thks for link

No problem, I'm in favour of the debate. The Pro-death penalty lobby have had it their way too long.

LOL, I'm working at Amnesty International just now so I better follow the company line or else

Let the public decide, not many MP's killed, but many of the public are. YES 2 DEATH

finally the voice of that one guy who stands up and somehow manages to correlate littering w/the absence of capital punishment on question time has been heard

How about in the case of child sexual abuse?