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

which would be where there's a large disconnect from 'the man in the street with the pint of harp'

Not really

Would ignore the opinion of anyone drinking Harp anyway.

you consider yrself a centrist tom?

What I mean is I don't think there's such a large disconnect.

i think prob why the death penalty isnt a bigger issue is 46 just isnt v many as far as dead people go

Absolutely. Compare to the number of people who die each year due to lack of access to medication or due to plenty of other equally evil and preventable reasons.

ehh idk, like obviously frequency is going to dictate coverage etc etc, but i think it flatters our rationality & reflection to think of the debate as a sensitive evaluation of what's happening in our country. i think it remains an almost theoretical moral issue, even if corporal punishment is a construct, & one that there'll probably be proponents on both sides of forever, but i don't think that its infrequency explains much of people's attitude towards it. we pin our opinions on these extremes; look how big an issue late-term abortions are/were in proportion to the marginal numbers involved. i feel like to make an argument that "if there were executions on a mass scale we'd consider it more thoroughly" is sort of true, in that we'd be compelled to by it impinging on our consciousness more, but i think it would take like ... say one hundred million executions a year for people to actually start interrogating their beliefs on it. there was that book, iirc 'the republic of suffering'?, which studied the civil war & the sea change it brought in attitudes towards death & religion & life, just because no-one had been affected by those things on such a scale before, had had to be bombarded by their realities. and i think it's probably the same here.

ah well i'll not fall out with anyone over it, it's hardly life or death

I don't know what it's like in Ireland but there's only a small majority of people support the death penalty in the UK these days

Absolutely. Compare to the number of people who die each year due to lack of access to medication or due to plenty of other equally evil and preventable reasons.

& yeah but here we're back onto that weird plain of cigarettes versus heroin or whatever - all of which i agree with!, but with which it's not hard to understand the human logic for perceiving that way. also slightly cynical about gaining solace from comparing with the sad outrage over lack of access to medication, which though widespread, & though totally the righteous cause of many, did not set about profound redirection in healthcare legislation debate, etc. i don't know what it would take to get people to switch sides on this kind of debate (i guess greater visibility or impact of the execution of innocents), but i don't think it's just a matter of volume.

I don't know what it's like in Ireland but there's only a small majority of people support the death penalty in the UK these days

would be curious for stats on this, the phone was ringing off the hook during the petition debate iirc.

link upthread sez

...British support for capital punishment has dropped since 1995. A MORI poll of residents in the United Kingdom found that, even in the wake of revelations about the recent murder of two young girls, public support for the death penalty remains low. In 1995, when the issue of reinstating the death penalty was debated and subsequently defeated in Parliament, 76% of British respondents supported the death penalty. A poll taken after the highly-publicized child murders found only 56% support for capital punishment. (The Guardian, August 21, 2002).

i doubt ilx has a 'small majority' in favour of the death penalty!

I keep thinking it must go completely out of fashion one day and become a folk memory or sumthin', I mean it's been 40-odd years since the abolition. Ditto conscription.

I thought conscription had gone that way, but the riots brought a few "Put 'em all in the army" comments

A poll taken after the highly-publicized child murders found only 56% support for capital punishment. (The Guardian, August 21, 2002).

am i reading this wrong

i really wish that instead of it just being under a pile of books on my floor i had read the copy of 'bowling alone' i have from the library, because a lot of stuff - people aggrieved by welfare and tax rises, death penalty debates, etc - reminds me of the wikipedia precis of its thesis, that we give less of a shit about other people now because we encounter them less and more narrowly, & that empathy has dwindled in tandem with our ability to retreat from society (may be bastardising here). i think i read about it in abbott's post on here, idk if she is posting at the moment but i am not getting any closer to reading it so if anyone wants to summarise i am listening.

uk no longer has conscription? huh, we do

i doubt ilx has a 'small majority' in favour of the death penalty!

Indeed, so we're part of the tiny 44% minority then

poll ilx, would it be 90% or higher against? Probably. Your argument seems to be 'we're on the side we're on'....well, ..yeah?

Support for the restoration of the death penalty has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time since its abolition 40 years ago, according to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph. (telegraph, 2006)

i can't find any irish polls on this issue...

great post about this btw, max read

Your argument seems to be 'we're on the side we're on'....well, ..yeah?

The side that contains quite a few 'men in the street with a pint of harp', yes.

and i doubt all of that 44% would be 'nobody ever deserves it' as opposed to 'what about the wrong verdict' or w/e

xxxp

Ireland had a referendum on a constitutional amendment to prohibit the re-introduction of the death penalty. 38% against.

According to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Ireland#Debate

the tories got in off a "small majority"

yeah max that was a nice piece

Age is also a huge factor. Would be interesting to see the percentage of people under 40 who'd like to see it reintroduced.

Apparently the unexpectedly high number of Irish people in favour of capital punishment were just confused...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/2001/0609/Pg008.html#Ar00803

too many pints of harp

I would have thought the Irish would be a bit wary of the death penalty... but, yes, they don't have British police, judges, juries, to contend with anymore so fair enough

that is rather pickily worded though, 'death penalty y/n?' would be better

we'll see how mcguinness does in presidency campaign before making any further comment

thx onimo

that is rather pickily worded though, 'death penalty y/n?' would be better

Scottish referendum: Death Penalty AYE / AYE, RIGHT

darraghmac: if we had captured OBL, should we have killed him?

that's about 90%

ha well there y'are

what point are you even making?

ilx is filled with hippies

lol

me? Just branched out from a thing with tom about ilx being v left/liberal as a whole, hardly controversial nor a major point rly. Specifically relating to whether someone 'can' deserve the death penalty, iirc.

xp well yeah!

dmac are you a conservative? i don't mean the question in a nasty way but i don't read the UK/irish politics threads

Just branched out from a thing with tom about ilx being v left/liberal as a whole, hardly controversial nor a major point rly. Specifically relating to whether someone 'can' deserve the death penalty, iirc.

Not really, you said there was a large disconnect between ILX's views on the death penalty and the mythical man on the street, and I was saying there isn't really because a lot of "men in the street" share those views

The "large" bit I was disputing... i've gone all Yoda

no he's right actually ilx's views on these issues are significantly to the left of joe six-pack, i mean some joe six-packs are abolitionists too but not many, is the point.

and i pointed out that there was prob x percent of that 44% that wouldn't maybe hold to the specific question as opposed to being against the death penalty for all the reasons one could give. For instance, i'd be against it in any case where there's any doubt, which in the real world is probably close to 100%

Kev- i dunno, i'm rural irish. i vote left, wish the party i voted for was further left tbh, but on 'social issues' and on ilx i tend to argue to the right on things like this.

xp: And some leftists are pro-death penalty!

or at least "pro-retributive punishment".

The man in the street with the pint of Harp in North Korea for instance

have u met the man on the street and is it true he's a fucking cunt?