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

you can change who you are but not what you've done

Would you watch a matt damon movie with this tagline y/n

ignoring the big picture and also pasting that big jpeg there.

http://www.citypages.com/2011-07-27/news/one-punch-homicide/

The Talented Mr Ripley iirc

xxp

stevie g was one lucky man to still have his job/life

one of the bournes surely

"If you're looking for one common thing: alcohol," says Detective Hagen. "All of mine have involved alcohol."

¯\(o_o)/¯

: )

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the pub

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

― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Friday, August 5, 2011 6:08 AM (4 hours ago)

i worked late last night, sorry i didn't respond to your other, longer post addressed to me. i think this kinda gets to the heart of the matter for me - child (sexual) abuse is an unspeakable thing, but the person who commits it is still a human being. your rhetoric ('child molestor', 'perpetrator') sorta seems to dehumanize that person, which makes it much more palatable to call for that person's death i think. i'll always sympathize with victims and families who, in their emotional grief, seek revenge through the legal system, but i think that the rights of the accused/convicted are sacrosanct, namely the right to not be strapped to a bed like an animal and put to death. i realize this may not satisfy the victims' (or, in some cases, even the community's) thirst for revenge ('justice'), but man, putting someone in jail for a very long time is a pretty severe punishment as it is imo! and that's part of what prison is/should be - keeping dangerous people from repeating what they did until they can be rehabilitated (or in some cases, until they die). and as far as child molesters go, many of them really blur the line between having full mental capactites intact and not. executing people like this is doubly cruel imo.

(about to get high-minded here) anyway i feel strongly about the death penalty because i was raised catholic - i believe in forgiveness and mercy, and nonviolence, and think redemption is a real and important thing. also executing a prisoner nowadays, who will have been on death row for some 15-20 years thanks to appeals and such, is so far removed from the actual crime that it's hard to imagine it addressing any kind of swift justice the mob seeks. and, of course, there are no data showing that the death penalty has any effect as a deterrant; it does, however, create a new round of victims and more suffering and misery.

a few xposts

http://images.tvrage.com/screencaps/31/6190/206639.jpg

xxp

Why should the State have the right to decide whether one lives or dies? If its job is to protect its citizenry and deter crime, the 'death' part is unnecessary, and has been shown to have no impact on reducing violent crime (and is in fact correlated with states with higher crime rates).

The death penalty is the State intervening on moral grounds, but also committing the act they are supposedly against.

i just want to make sure you know that i don't dismiss families' cries for justice/revenge - it's a vaild emotion with which i can sympathize. i think that as a society/state we need to respect the right of people to breathe in and breathe out on their own schedule and that rehabilitation should be a major goal of any prison system.

anyway you guys in the uk can pretty much not worry about the death penalty ever coming back. and d-mac, you're irish, right? iirc it's in your constitution

xps

xp I don't think you can blame the right-wing media for a fairly atavistic desire for eye-for-an-eye justice.

- DL

GREAT word btw

rehabilitation should be a major goal of any prison system.

absolutely. it might be a starry-eyed liberal pie in the sky fantasy in a whole load of cases, but that shouldn't stop us trying.

rehabilitation should be a major goal of any prison system.

I think to the greatest extent that rehabilitation should be the goal of the prison system. Drug crimes, property crimes, public disorder, and lesser violent assaults, and other shit. It's just that there are some crimes from which the victims are grievously harmed or killed and will never be able to recover. The people who do those things shouldn't walk free.

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

― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Friday, August 5, 2011 7:10 AM (4 hours ago)

also ha not to pick on you but i reeeallllly disagree with this - for one thing (in america) they tend to literally be historically repressed minorities, but (again talking about america) their rights in prison and upon release are severely restricted in horribly cruel ways. people who commit certain crimes are often barred from types of housing, jobs, public assistance, voting, etc.

whois kkvgz

The people who do those things shouldn't walk free.

― kkvgz, Friday, August 5, 2011 11:25 AM (1 minute ago)

we disagree then. not the next day, no, but i believe the person who committed the crime should have the chance to redeem himself

I agree to disagree and respect your position.

conrad, I am me!

I agree to disagree and respect your position.

tea and crumpets all round.

harp, imo.

Kkvgz- so are you saying people who commit vehicular manslaughter due to a momentary lapse of reason (ie, on cell phone), but are not monsters, are remorseful, and want to atone should be put in jail for life?

Their victims can't come back. And yes, I do know someone that fits this category (a tragedy 7 years ago)

No, sorry. I was unclear. I think vehicular manslaughter people should definitely do time, but I was referring to people who intentionally commit murder, rape, child abuse, etc.

jail for life imo

kevin, good, thoughtful, reply tbf. I used 'perpetrator' once or twice cos it's shorter than 'someone who molests children', but i was conscious of trying not to use dehumanising terms for the reasons you've give there.

If i get right down to basics myself, i'm not sure i believe that people who have killed/raped/abused with malice aforethought ought to have the same protection from society as the people that avoid these fairly easily avoided and extremely societally-destructive behaviours.

I guess i still believe in some inalienable rights for all, in that i don't agree with torture or inhumane conditions for these people while in prison, i do believe that each person is entitled to fair defence against their accusers, etc. But i don't know that, if convicted, their level of rights should equal those of a law abiding citizen (rolling out these terms but y'know). And i'm not sure that there is an indelible right to rehabilitation, imo that's possibly something you already owe back if you get the chance rather than anything that you have coming to you. I don't know if i even support the death penalty, tbh, but imo when a person commits certain crimes i get a lot less bothered about whether it's an option they have facing them or not.

Darraghmac for presidetn.

kate super otm itt btw - i'm focusing on why the death penalty is wrong, always, for any criminal, ever, but the ~larger, underlying issues~ she's talking about might have a better chance of convincing righties who favor it

I don't agree that "revenge" on the part of a family is a valid emotion; it's a failing and we need to evolve away from it.

Remember kevin, a large number of left-wingers favor the death penalty. Be careful about this line of thinking.

I can't keep up.

many many xps

My point about Boyle is not how good (or otherwise) his fucking sculpture is. My point is that Boyle was (by his own admission - read the books) exactly how Onimo describes him, but that was not the end of his story. The prison system he was put into was designed not to redeem people but to punish and, whenever possible, beat the shit out of them. It wasn't until he was moved into a different regime that his behaviour changed. It seems to me that even producing a bad non-violent sculptor is better than using all your resources to re-inforce already fucked up behaviour.

I am anti-death penalty in general for many many reasons but still ok with e.g. stuff like Osama getting shot in the face w/o a trial - at some very very extreme point, you do surrender your basic rights as a human being

"For god and country..."

rehabilitation should be a major goal of any prison system.
I think to the greatest extent that rehabilitation should be the goal of the prison system. Drug crimes, property crimes, public disorder, and lesser violent assaults, and other shit. It's just that there are some crimes from which the victims are grievously harmed or killed and will never be able to recover. The people who do those things shouldn't walk free.
― kkvgz, Friday, 5 August 2011 15:25 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what about, say, whoever caused the enron collapse? that probably grievously harmed and drove many more people to death than a mugger with a knife.

at which point does a crime become a death penalty crime and when is it imprisonment.

I think that corporate crimes should be punished far more harshly than they are! But I haven't given the whole idea that much thought, so I don't have a distinct position.

i guess my question in general is why is murder inherently such a bigger deal than other types of crime?

and on the other hand why is death penalty such a bigger deal than other types of penalties

30 years in prison = may as well die?

what about, say, whoever caused the enron collapse? that probably grievously harmed and drove many more people to death than a mugger with a knife.

I mean, there's evil and then there's like evil evil.

The prison system he was put into was designed not to redeem people but to punish and, whenever possible, beat the shit out of them. It wasn't until he was moved into a different regime that his behaviour changed. It seems to me that even producing a bad non-violent sculptor is better than using all your resources to re-inforce already fucked up behaviour.

It's crazy to me that people understand that a childhood full of violence and abuse produces violent abusers, but many of the same people seem to fail to understand that putting a violent criminal into a system designed to dehumanize, punish, humiliate and endanger them produces . . . more violent criminals!

and obviously the connection between being an evil corrupt powerful businessperson who screws a shit-ton of people over and death is a lot more tenuous than the connection between sticking a knife in someone and death - let's not be disingenuous here

violence is a big part, though i agree with your point about large crimes against society like enron. I don't know what can be done apart from regulating that shit tighter.

Violent crime happens without warning and is impossible to prevent in the same way, though again it hurts individuals and society in no less damaging a way sometimes

what about recklessness?

if someone regularly drives 100mph down the road, jumps lights, eventally does kill somebody

and then there's someone who murdered say someone who has been regularly abusing them or did something psychologically bad (sorry this is vague) to them for 30 years.

who is more deserving of harsher punishment?

xxp: yeah, creating the necessary legal proof in court would be a bitch-and-a-half.

to weigh in on the brief harp interlude, yes it still is available but not in many places as far as i can tell. i was in kilkenny in south east ireland last weekend and we went to a pub (which had really good guinness) and one of my friends thought he was hilarious ordering "the pint of harp" etc, despite me trying to warn him that it's not just an average beer, or a sort of rough beer, it actually tastes fucking awful, worse than the shittest cheapest beer you buy when you're 16 and drinking in a park.

he didn't finish it.

first person, without any hesitation

There are levels of recklessness that simply blur the line where intent matters imo

also, people who kill their abusers deserve all of our compassion and should probably get off in most cases.