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

would you advocate the humane killing of office workers for the same reasons

that wasn't my point; i was saying you were being paternalistic, not the state - 99% of people in this position would rather have life in prison over death, so to say "actually, dying is probably best for you" is paternalistic

xp mords

mordy i tend to agree with that, but to me that argument serves not to justify the death penalty (wtf) but instead to demand a reassessment of how and why we imprison people in the first place

on some level, i don't even disagree with you. but that's not a vaild argument for the death penalty
xp

and yeah, kev otm---prison may be awful and dehumanizing, but i'd hazard most ppl in for life might say "well at least i'm still alive"

gbx, strip it down to that, if you're certain the person isn't going to kill again......then what? Walk free?

office workers haven't committed crimes that the state must respond to in order to maintain a semblance of civilization. xxp

xp to mordy: well in that case i'd probably disagree; i'm sure a lot could be said for cleaning up prisons and making them less hellish places to be, but given the choice i'd at least give incarceration a go. and then sure, ask me again after ten years.

Mordy's argument is basically why I am very, very, pro-life imprisonment, to be honest.

like if you gave lifers the option of euthanasia, i'm p sure most would be thanks but no thanks

yeah morfy but it's probably kinder tbf

also, in terms of crimes of the state the death penalty is a crime that happens once -- a single sin for retribution or justice or whatever to make up for the original sin against civilization and society. life in prison is a constant crime against humanity that continues indefinitely. i'm not going to speculate on what the majority of lifer prisoners think, tho i have read at least a few testimonials where ppl have said that they'd prefer death to eternal imprisonment. </anecdotal>

i'm obv sympathetic to the idea that ppl want to stay alive no matter what the circumstances and certainly there are numerous accounts of ppl surviving hellish things bc the will to live was so strong. but life imprisonment really is worse than death penalty in my eyes, which isn't to say that death penalty is somehow a good thing, just better than this other alternative. on a different note, i think most ppl would rather receive corporal punishment than imprisonment. like 39 lashings instead of 5 years of prison, w/out question.

i basically agree w/ this more or less: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/in-favor-of-flogging.html

strip it down to that, if you're certain the person isn't going to kill again......then what? Walk free?

― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Friday, August 5, 2011 12:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

if being certain that a person isn't going to kill again = ready and willing to be a non-violent productive member of society: yes.

i don't put a lot of stock in punishment for punishment's sake. let god sort em out.

(which, incidentally, is something i've always found curious about certain moralistic/religious advocates for the death penalty/heavy incarceration. if you're so certain that someone will get theirs in the afterlife, why not let them go free if they're no longer a danger to society? sleep easy knowing that they will bathe in a lake of fire etc)

well i would only be in favour of life imprisonment in cases where there is no hope of rehabilitation - as protection for society basically, not as deterrence or for any kind of retributive effect.

i think there are more options than 'prison or the lash'.

on a different note, i think most ppl would rather receive corporal punishment than imprisonment. like 39 lashings instead of 5 years of prison, w/out question.

― Mordy, Friday, August 5, 2011 12:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

fwiw i tend to agree with this, if somewhat hesitantly. don't have time to read the article because lunch is winding down, tho

we differ hugely but someday there'll be the pint of harp to talk it out

As an atheist, the god thing isn't workin for me,

overcomingbias.com = nutters

what we really need is another australia

Seems to me that being certain that a person isn't going to kill again is as naive as being certain that everyone on Death Row is guilty of the crime they were sentenced to death for.

on a different note, i think most ppl would rather receive corporal punishment than imprisonment. like 39 lashings instead of 5 years of prison, w/out question.

― Mordy, Friday, August 5, 2011 12:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

friend's dad, an irishman, was a polis in scotland, he used to offer offenders a doing in the back of the van or being taken to the station and booked, they always chose the doing. I think he did it because he was a cruel man and he didn't like paperwork.

he was a cruel man and he didn't like paperwork.

wicked despots i have known

xp not to mention the huge numbers of psychopaths in the prison system who are basically impervious (not the right word here but lol) to rehabilitation.

overcomingbias.com = nutters

the only interesting ppl are nutters.

that's as maybe but i wouldn't want them running the world.

tough break 4u

the ppl actually running the world are real-live sociopaths

ya but that's more of a problem with defining sociopath, or maybe even just recognising that it's a necessary trait at that level

friend's dad, an irishman, was a polis in scotland, he used to offer offenders a doing in the back of the van

that's hot.

but life imprisonment really is worse than death penalty in my eyes, which isn't to say that death penalty is somehow a good thing, just better than this other alternative

FWIW, I'm against the death penalty, but I'm also against life imprisonment. I think the European countries have the right idea - sentences should top out at around 20 years.

God, I've just been googling news stories on people who have been executed in America in the last 5 years or so. There have been very few where the details of the crime haven't just led to me saying "fuck it."

I need to clean my brain this weekend. Why are we fucking talking about this shit any way? Guh.

death penalty being more humane than life imprisonment: you are aware that people can commit suicide?

God, I've just been googling news stories on people who have been executed in America in the last 5 years or so. There have been very few where the details of the crime haven't just led to me saying "fuck it."

I need to clean my brain this weekend. Why are we fucking talking about this shit any way? Guh.

I'm not armed with the facts here but consider yr sources: horrible savages make good copy.

Also the narrative you are getting is the result of a trial and series of appeals during which nearly all information was controlled by the prosecution, which has an interest in making them sound as savage as possible. If you want to feel better, read through some of these stories, which read like some of the exact same narratives, but resulted in innocent people getting railroaded: http://www.innocenceproject.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DmYLrxR0Y8

from the restorejustice site:

In 1964 when hanging was abolished the murder rate was 6.3 per million, in 2010 it was 13.5 per million. If the “life-for-a-life” deterrent remained, thousands of lives would have been saved over the decades since 1964.

other notable events in 1964 that may have contributed to purported vast increase in murders:

* The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
* The Beatles vault to the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time, with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", forever changing the way popular music sounds to Americans, also starting the British Invasion in America.
* Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
* Terence Conran opens the first Habitat store on London's Fulham Road.
* The Catholic Church condemns the female combined oral contraceptive pill.
* Judith Graham Pool publishes her discovery of cryoprecipitate, a substance that extends the lives of hemophiliacs around the world.
* Bob Dylan turns The Beatles on to cannabis for the first time
* The Labour Party wins the parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom, ending 13 years of Conservative Party rule.

In 1964 when hanging was abolished the murder rate was 6.3 per million, in 2010 it was 13.5 per million. If the “life-for-a-life” deterrent remained, thousands of lives would have been saved over the decades since 1964.

holy shit this kind of reasoning makes me kill 13.5M people per year

~want to~

no the figures speak for themselves, that's why in places with no deterrent like Texas or Florida the murder rate is a puny 55 per million or so

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

some telling statistics here on the deterrent effect

can't read that now, but isn't the argument that if you have a death penalty, killers are practically incentivized to kill witnesses/accomplishes/etc since after the first kill they basically have nothing to lose

i've heard that argument, yeah. i would also argue that a regularly used death penalty creates a social landscape that devalues life. but i think the main conclusion is that severity of punishment does not deter, for whatever reason. i think there's evidence that the probability of being caught and convicted of a crime has some bearing on deterrence, but it doesn't really matter what the reasons are for the disconnect: anybody who argues for the death penalty on grounds of deterrence has very little evidence to support them.

tell that to this guy

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099693/as-britain-debates-the-death-penalty-again-studies-from-america-confirm-that-it-works/

why states with different policies on the death penalty have paradoxically differing murder rates is probably a pretty complex chicken-egg situation that depends on a lot of other factors other than the existence of the death penalty, to be fair.

xp

but yeah it's definitely not a deterrent, and even if it was it ~still wouldn't matter~

^^^this is the thing.

the 'utilitarian' argument for death penalty ("hey it works people, so") is still p gross imo

esp when one considers all the many other countries that DON'T have it and also have dramatically lower murder rates...hmmmmm is there something to be learned there? nah fuck it

xp agreed

i think deterrence arguments for the death penalty are pretty deplorable but i think it's useful to be able to offer counter-arguments to people who use them. i read some interesting stuff a while back which looked at the numbers of executions in the same state over a 30 year period and compared those stats to murder rates and the general condition of the economy. once again, there was little correlation between number of executions and murder rate.

once you admit that the causes of changes in the murder rate are complex and multiple then i think any argument that still wants to attribute murder to innate criminality is made in very bad faith.