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

must be a mare having to take all that time to work out whether somebody is sufficiently compos mentis to thoroughly appreciate their judicial murder or not

its not worth doing really i agree

I'd butcher a million death penalty proponents rather than allow one guilty man to be executed tbh

they should just take that racist murderer and shoot him before week end.

still not clear on why we have to spend a bunch of money and time on this lethal injection nonsense. We make it easy for shitheads like dylann roof to buy guns, why can't the state just execute him with one.

Really he should be murdered by another racist for the symmetrical justice to really work, shouldn't be too difficult to arrange

i think the us criminal justice system might even employ one already tbh

we should bring back the guillotine

Have so far resisted mentioning anti-capital punishment campigner Robespierre on this thread until right now.

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2017, time for a comeback.

im usually very anti-DP but yeah i stand w sarahell here

very anti death penalty except when I feel total disgust

lol at "usually anti-DP but" you frikkin squish

like dont worry guys we still believe that you dont like racist murderers even if you dont think its acceptable for the state to execute them

lol could give a shit what u believe

I thought you weren't American unless there's at least one person you'd happily see killed

it's not like a life in prison is some great benevolent violence-free solution

of course it isn't! the prison system is rotten and awful

i just think, imo, and you dont care what i believe, that accepting the death penalty for really bad ppl you dont like is, at best, a way of working through grief and railing against the horror of what the bad person did and the societal failings it represents, and, at worst, virtue signaling and a way of letting ppl know that you're willing to take a hardline on the right sort of bad things, lest they think you weak

the death penalty is bad and unacceptable, is what i'm saying here

I don't think the state has the moral authority to execute citizens

*high-five*

the royal family would be my exception - bring ON that guillotine - because the citizens have a moral authority to execute a rotten state

(framing the death penalty as "the state executing citizens" is exactly why it's so horrifying beyond the usual argument of whether this person who committed awful acts "deserves" to live or die. whether you think they deserve to, the state being the arbiter of it is unconscionable)

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that's a good argument. sorry for saying i don't care.

but you can read virtue signaling the other way around as well. having an inflexible stance on state violence lest they think you "a frikkin squish".

no doubt there are a lot of emotions tied up in reactions to this kind of thing. that's fine, it's natural. imo the state plays a part in this too, and this public act is highly symbolic, however much we'd like to pretend it's an impartial and emotionless actor.

given the nature of the royal family they should have to suffer a symbolic execution imo, guillotine the figurehead, make the queen read a speech saying how sorry she is and how glad she is the people have executed her

upper classes more generally to be stripped of possessions and made to live in caves doing crafts

exile them to Siberia Grimsby imo

It's A Royal Knockout. To the death.

Barbarism (xp)

ignoring the economic argument lads

I don't think the fact that sentencing people to death is more expensive than sentencing them to life in prison is relevant, unless you're so deep in the bureaucratic burrow that administrative efficiency has replaced morality entirely (see also: arguments about incentive)

youre presupposing the relative expenses there tbh

as are you; seems no point in playing research tennis when even if you're right its irrelevant

true!

its only an interesting debate in theoretical terms.

gbx otm

The main reason: Innocent people being executed. Secondly I don't think it is a very effective way to control crime anyway. Thirdly for financial reasons (although not always applicable).

not a fan of the Value For Money theory of ethics. it's totally ridiculous in the case of capital punishment where economics is too variable and unstable to provide a defensible basis for issuing death sentences, but more broadly it's not applied consistently and there's always a [deeper/political/ideological] reason why people start to worry about the cost of any given thing. it acts as a cloak for impulses people are too ashamed to own up to

private murder is morally preferable to the death penalty imo; plus it expects results

private murder can be done at no cost to the state and very little to the individual if you do it right

problem is ogmor you yourself are starting from a definite position of not wanting to execute people, which then informs your reasoning. its a real doozy i admit.

Yeah, I think the financial argument is silly. Hence my last reason not to do it.

Lately I have getting into a "grey" zone. I can understand why one would be pro cap punishment.

so can I: for bantz

overpopulation tackling measure

My economy teacher once suggested killing pensioners. Good idea, lets start with the prisoners first.

killers
music bloggers
other violent criminals
nonviolent but repeat criminals
bloggers
unemployed
pensioners
students

now you must agree youd be a long way down that list (and a long way towards alleviating the housing crisis) before this discussion actually needed to kick in in any serious way

firstborn always seemed p sound to me, people serious about parenting will try again and the others will secretly be happy to have the "out"

there isn't a serious discussion to be had about the death penalty,V the death penalty is solely for bantz

the death penalty is bad and unacceptable, is what i'm saying here

i understand the arguments against the death penalty (particularly when they're pragmatic ones like concern of executing innocent people (nb not an issue regarding dylan roof)) but i feel like these definitive, incessantly otm'd statements, fail to understand the converse argument even tho it is intuitive and simple - karmic retribution; that which you visited upon another is now visited upon you. iirc this was an argument that arendt either recounted from the eichmann trial or forwarded herself (google wasn't able to turn it up) - because he did not have room to allow his victims to live upon this earth, our society does not have room for him to live as well. it is the most kind of comprehensible response to murder and can only imo be brushed aside by these more pragmatic interventions (concern of innocents, concern that allowing the State to kill even within justice will give it the reigns to kill outside the domain of justice) but i think this implicitly understood anti-death penalty sentiment coming from k3v is rooted in a Catholicism that forbids death in any circumstance, a sort of intervention into our naturally felt sentiment along a continuum of turning the other cheek when your body calls instead to slap the offender back.