Of course, this question would only come up in jurisdictions with capital punishment. So let’s say a young man or a young woman in Texas wants to be hired as a correctional officer but he or she is also a staunch opponent of the death penalty.
Would this individual be eligible for the job since staff members who take part in executions have to be volunteers anyway (I guess) and there are plenty of other assignments in the correctional system? Or would the Texas Department of Criminal Justice say: We can’t hire this man because he is potentially not available for every duty?
I would imagine that it would be dependent on the specific rules of the jurisdiction, and also depend on whether or not the wannabe officer opposes the death penalty in an ideological sense but is unwilling to engage in civil disobedience, or opposes it in such a way as to make them likely to disobey orders or engage in civil disobedience while on duty.
Are these employees refusing to participate in executions in any way? Actively trying to hijack them? Or are they simply opposed to the DP, but will do their job nonetheless?
My best friend is a Captain in a state correctional system. His opinion or politics has never come up in any way regarding his hiring or proformance of his duties. It’s a civil service job as far as the state is concerned.
Correction jobs, like most other government jobs, are filled by civil service procedures. You’re not even supposed to ask about an applicant’s political opinions, much less make them a condition of employment.
As a practical matter, when I worked in prisons, I knew plenty of colleagues who were opposed to capital punishment.
The only time I ever saw political beliefs like this become an issue was one time during a training class on tear gas. It was a mandatory two-part class for all employees. The first part was training everyone in the effects of tear gas and what to do if you were exposed to it. The second part of the training was for those of us in the security department and trained us in how to use tear gas.
One of the civilians was apparently opposed to the idea of tear gas. He began arguing with the instructor about the topic. The instructor said that he was entitled to his opinion but the reality was that tear gas was presently deployed in prisons and so everyone was being trained on it but that as a civilian he would not personally be required to use it. But the civilian wouldn’t let it go and kept arguing, saying he could not support what he considered a form of torture. The instructor had enough and told him to leave the class.
There are prisons all over most states, and in Texas, if you’re from the Panhandle and work at the Dalhart unit, there’s just about zero chance you’ll be involved in a capital punishment issue at all. Death Row is located in Livingston and executions are in Huntsville, which are some 600-650 miles from Dalhart.
However, if you apply for a job at the Huntsville Unit or Polunsky Unit in Livingston, you should probably have your ethical ducks in a row to work at those prisons.
Kind of a funny way to put it. No person with even basic understanding of probability can say that every person killed by capital punished was guilty of the crime, even if you limit it to the modern era. This means that in order to ethically justify the punishment, you have to believe
a. It is ok to murder a certain number of innocent people to kill the guilty.
b. The benefits of the punishment are greater than the drawbacks, in that you prevent future murders with each person killed, or
c. You are saving the state money with each person you kill. Except you aren’t, so…
The problem is, there is very unclear evidence regarding (b) (it’s controversial and I don’t think there is any proof either way).
I have difficulty coming up with an ethical framework to justify the punishment given real world data. Sure, it’s easy to justify in theory, and you can trivially come up with straw-man cases. Hannibal Lector should have been executed, for example. (but he is fictional…)
I have to conclude that given the facts, real world participants in capital punishment are
a. Willfully ignorant of the facts, or too stupid to understand the facts due to organic faults in their brain
b. Callously indifferent to the ethics
It’s hard to see another view. I mean, how can you say the courts were fair and the punishment was fairly dealt out just from the racial and gender disparities? I mean, if the courts are so biased that skin color affects the verdict, how can you believe they are so unbiased that they never send an innocent man to death row?
Habeed, this post is in General Questions which is for questions with factual answers. Debating the ethics of the death penalty is outside both the scope of the OP and the General Questions forum. If you wish to engage in this aspect of the topic please do so in the Great Debates forum.
Note that ethical frameworks are a legitimate field of research, and while ethics fall into the “soft sciences”, you can analyze existing mainstream accepted views on ethics.
Furthermore, I am incorporating real world data. I’m asking the question : under which ethical frameworks can you take into account the facts of real world statistical data (racial/gender bias, known examples of death row inmates found innocent before and after execution, known empirical evidence against eyewitness testimony) and still justify an execution.
This question has a factual answer, and is not necessarily based on an opinion.
Finally, I am responding to another poster regarding “ducks in a row”, which implies there is a way to believe you are ethical in participating in state-sanctioned murder. Does that other poster also get a warning for such an inflammatory statement in GQ?
[moderating] Habeed, if you have a problem with a moderator note, take it up with the moderator directly in a private message, or raise the issue in the ATMB forum. Do not further hijack this thread.
To respond to Habeed’s post, I’d say he’s confusing the general case with the specific.
Let’s say somebody is a conscientious objector during WWII. He questions the morality of killing enemy soldiers just because they’re serving in their country’s military during wartime - an act which is the equivalent of what the objector would be doing. But if you asked this same person if he’d be willing to kill Hitler if he had the opportunity, he might say yes. His unwillingness to kill the average German doesn’t mean he’s necessarily unwilling to kill one individual.
The same logic could apply to capital punishment. There may indeed be many people on death row who don’t deserve execution. But that doesn’t mean that everyone on death row is innocent. You could be opposed to capital punishment in general but still concede that Richard Ramirez should have been executed. On the other side, you might support capital punishment in general but feel that Ethel Rosenberg shouldn’t have been executed.
The idea of justice as vengeance is what underlies the death penalty. ‘He deserves to die for what he did’. It’s an eye-for-an-eye mentality that serves society no greater good. What benefit, as a whole, is gained from executing a prisoner as opposed to lifelong incarceration other than the visceral satisfaction of “getting even”? No benefits yet there are plenty of risks.
That’s not the only reason. This is why I gave the example of “hannibal lector”. This is a (fictional) murderer who is highly intelligent, and purposely plans and executes murders basically every waking moment of his day. In the movie, he eventually got an opportunity to murder about a half-dozen people and escape.
In this rare case, execution is necessary to save the lives of others, he’s too dangerous.
Of course, “hannibal lector” is fictitious, and SuperMax prisons seem to be able to hold the closest real life killers, such as the Unabomber, just fine…
The topic of this thread is a factual question about whether or not those who oppose capital punishment can work in correctional institutions. Since the thread has been pulled too far away from that topic and into the general capital punishment debate, I am going to close it. Those who wish to continue discussing the death penalty may do so in Great Debates.