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

No, he's equating an ignorant general public with an ignorant general public. Don't be a dick.

no, he's equating a general public discrmiating en masse against jews with a general public divided on how they feel about child molestors, don't any of us be dicks

I can't stand victim impact statements, they make me cringe and they're utterly triumphalist and stupid. I like to think "if it was my son" etc I'd have the dignity (which many families do) to maintain some calm and not just hurl my poorly conceived anger into the public sphere on the steps of a courthouse. I'm sure it would be difficult but at the least the state shouldn't facilitate media opportunities with victim's families. It's like the media has become so important that it's a civil right to have your say after a crime.

I also find this e-petition thing offputting. Most people don't know enough about the law or about crime or criminals to have any right to decide how it's made. The whole modern culture of "WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS" is completely unchained and out of control. It's like as if there's more authenticity to people's opinions the less they know about something.

At a certain point people's opinions need to be questioned. Who are you? Who are you to say this? What experience have you? What have you done?

This raw unquestioned "real people's real views" opinion is as omnipresent as oxygen. And the funny thing is the more right wing and illogical the view the more "real" people in the media perceive it to be.

love ya man

not sure how to interpret that but thank you!

Also, how many of these illogical right wing views which "real people" hold were influenced by pronouncements in the media to begin with?

and continuously perpetuated by using these opinions as the devil's advocate view in every news story...

if public opinions rule - then should a paedophile who abused an english child get punished more than a paedophile who abused a foreign child?

When looking at a set of ideas in action, it draws its supplies of additional troops and intellectual matériel not only from its own depots but also from those of its opponents

I'm not sure that the public are "divided" over the issue of child molesters; who would come out in favour of them? But I don't see how stringing them up just because the media says that it makes their street a safer place and provides a panacea for "the public" amounts to anything resembling progress (see R Brooks' "campaign" and the subsequent hounding of paediatricians).

Always worth remembering that this isn't a domestic issue, really. Regardless of which European country might like to reintroduce the death penalty, none are able to without removing themself from the EU or the Council of Europe (in the case of non-EU states like Russia). It's not a case of British politicians clashing with domestic public opinion, it's 'Europe' as a whole that has drawn a line in the sand on this issue, as it has with torture, and said it's not even a debate any more. The question of how legitimate that is will always be a live one but it's clear that any move in that direction would have serious consequences in terms of the way the UK is treated by the rest of the world.

'progress' = again, 'movement in the direction i personally favour' though, why can't 'progress' be 'guilty, inject em full of lead' or 'bread and water for life, put the money towards war memorials'

D-.

xp I don't think you can blame the right-wing media for a fairly atavistic desire for eye-for-an-eye justice. They play to it because it's popular - it wasn't cooked up in newspaper offices. For me the death penalty issue has always been the strongest argument against direct democracy. If it leads into elites-know-best territory on this occasion well so be it.

Why can't 'progress' be 'guilty, inject em full of lead'

Because that idea (minus the lead injection) goes back centuries, ergo not progress. Would stoning adulterers or shunning menstruating women be progress?

'progress' = again, 'movement in the direction i personally favour' though, why can't 'progress' be 'guilty, inject em full of lead' or 'bread and water for life, put the money towards war memorials'

tbf in the first case surely by definition it would be a regression to go back to using the death penalty.

i think the biggest indictment of the death penalty is to imagine the last person being killed and how they'd possibly still be alive if the law had been made what, 3 months earlier, a year earlier? death by legislation.

Top ten arguments against the death penalty: the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.

no in fairness it was fairly lazy. DL otm, tho again convicted criminals != historically repressed minorities or genders imo

xps arguing in the theoretical for a cert-guilty eg murderer. You might posit that sufficient certainty rarely exists, and i'd agree with that, so can we take it as a given for this that there's no question of innocence?

convicted criminals != historically repressed minorities or genders imo

quite often they do though

i'd also like to amend my last lazy post- just the last one, mind- to not really arguing about the direction of progress (i'm well right of ilx on social issues, i'm aware, but i'm generally in favour of the ways things have been going since the 1400's) but i'm wondering if it can happen that the pace of change can be too far ahead of general public opinion at times, which i think causes the feedback loop of pub-backlash, media-backlash, FRENZY

xp stevie yeah fair point

the pace of change is nowhere near fucking fast enough, cf the length of time gay rights groups have been told to just wait for public opinion to inch incrementally forward

'progress' = again, 'movement in the direction i personally favour' though, why can't 'progress' be 'guilty, inject em full of lead' or 'bread and water for life, put the money towards war memorials'

One answer might be because it make's everyone's lives better. The death penalty is not a deterrent and treating prisoners like shit doesn't make them less likely to offend when they come out. So having the death penalty and treating prisoners like shit is more likely to make everyone's life more unpleasant.

well again yeah, there are things that are none of the general public's fuckin business, so i'm not gonna defend that either, lex, but i think punishment of violent offenders is more legitimately a public issue.

Though y'know that's in question too i suppose, as ledge and ronan and p much everyone else have said

It would also make everyone's lives as they might have been in the early nineteenth century, when the "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" principle of one-size-fits-all-crimes capital punishment applicable in English law at that time meant that, for example, if you robbed someone, well you might as well kill them into the bargain since you're going to get hung anyway. Did nothing to improve crime rates or people's understanding of crime.

...nor indeed their understanding of right and wrong.

xp it's likely to make prisoner's lives short and/or unpleasant, certainly

xp marcello, nobody's advocating that one-size-fits-all system, so i'm not sure i see that's relevant

xp it's likely to make prisoner's lives short and/or unpleasant, certainly

― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Friday, 5 August 2011 11:25 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The death penalty is for sure but, unless you're advocating killing them all (which you specifically say you are not), then you're just making prisoners lifes unpleasant. Are you advocating keeping these people in prison forever? Huge prisons full of lifers paid for by an increasingly begrudging populace (esp. when they see no decrease in crime)?

My problem is (and it's one that we're unlikely ever to reach a compromise on) is that I don't regard child molesters (or mass murderers for that matter) as evil.

i find it hard to conceptualise evil or call anyone evil. not that i totally am amoral or something, i just can't wield the word really, i don't know what evil means.

what the fuck at you two

really?

if you want some kind of working definition, i guess:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele

back in your box a second, i don't think we're saying the same thing, define "evil" then. it's not that i don't think certain acts are disgusting or patently wrong, i just think evil goes too deep into issues of someone's nature/intent that are hard to prove, it's not a v useful term.

x-post that's right, rely on the nazis for dismissal of moral relativism, what a cheapshot!

xp, nobody's advocating a one-size-fits-all position but the possibility of redemption and release exists for almost all criminals, barring a relatively small number who have either done something exceptionally horrific or are simply too dangerous to ever consider letting out.

The reintroduction of the death penalty in Trinidad amplified the scale of crime enormously. When people started to realise that drug / robbery related killings would get them the death penalty, they started targetting witnesses. They didn't shoot the one person they had a grudge against, they started killing three or four people who they suspected could identify them. Why wouldn't you if you had literally nothing to lose?

hey ned i'm a questions man not an answers man you're the guy paid for sorting this out, right?

and fuck no i'm not going near 'evil', i nearly drove grimly fiendish to murder on the shannon matthews thread before. It's not a helpful word.

i have no problem using the word 'evil.' it seems like a useful term for someone who's capable of intentionally, unapologetically committing acts that are beyond the pale. i'd use it to describe a rapist as easily as a nazi. i can't think of a better way to describe such ppl.

as a rapist or a nazi? seems better since it actually describes them and their acts.

nouns before adjectives

as obscure and relative as words like 'right', 'wrong' or 'progress' imo

I can take acts or behavior as evil but its more difficult for me to accept the concept of evil as applied to a person rather than the behavior, just like stupid or angry

Like if we say a person is evil when they are murdering someone...ok I'm fine with that...but are they evil two days later when they are making a cup of tea and feeding their rabbits...like are they evil right at that minute...what about when they are asleep?

i have no problem using the word 'evil.' it seems like a useful term for someone who's capable of intentionally, unapologetically committing acts that are beyond the pale. i'd use it to describe a rapist as easily as a nazi. i can't think of a better way to describe such ppl.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, August 5, 2011 7:52 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

thank you.

exactly...it implies knowledge of someone's thoughts as well as their deeds. in the case of systematic murder and degradation and torture like the nazis i feel it's the best possible case for it to be used, but again moreso because that entire system and its rules and structures seem suited to the word evil.

x-post there are two better words tho, see above.

What if they are capable of it some of the time? Are they evil only at those times?

I just think that "evil" tends to be such an unhelpful term when looking at the causes of "horrendous" crimes because it means so many different things to different people.

I mean, the thing I always keep in mind, when dealing with, specifically, child molestors, was reading an interview with someone who was working with abused children - and also with abusers - and how much the two groups *overlapped*. And they said something which has always stuck with me, which was "there are (sexual abuse) victims who are not yet offendors, but I have never yet worked with an offender who was not themselves a victim (of sexual abuse)."

That when you're dealing with people calling for the death penalty, working on an "eye for an eye" mentality, the problem is, that is often the same motivation or compulsion that is, in a way, driving the perpetrators of these crimes?

That is maybe very specific to one crime, and an emotive one, but it still colours my approach to the treatment of criminals.

lake otm

If you are capable enough of murder to have committed it, the amount of evil in you is sufficient to qualify you as an evil person, no matter how many rabbits you feed.

Like if we say a person is evil when they are murdering someone...ok I'm fine with that...but are they evil two days later when they are making a cup of tea and feeding their rabbits...like are they evil right at that minute...what about when they are asleep?

well, tbh, yeah. for me the very horror of such ppl lies in the fact that such mundanity, ordinariness, etc., exists side by side with the capacity to commit horrific crimes.

things are complex

the centre cannot hold