Just curious how everyone else feels about this topic.
(NOTE When I speak of Prisoners in this text, I am referring to repeat offenders and extreme criminals like murders, child molesters, and rapist. I exclude criminals in prison for drug trafficking, domestic abuse, or lesser crimes.)
The prisons and jail cells are filling up quickly and are in need of a solution. There are some prisoners who have it easier in prison rather than on the streets. Prisoners have some privileges being in prison: cable TV, three meals a day, a bed to sleep on, a toilet, clothing on their backs, etc. Grant it, its not luxury in prison but it is better than worrying about your life on the streets. These prisoners have no value to the American society. Could genocide be an option to relieve the overfilling of the jails and prison cells?
I believe many extreme criminals are beyond rehab due to a distrubing past. If you would like to use rehab as an excuse, please give me reason and proof of success.
Well, some states already have the death penalty for crimes like murder (and in Louisiana, for rape, but there’s only recently been one person sentenced under that law, and there’s a question if it’ll stand up. ) Is it your suggestion that we extend the death penalty to child molestation?
And, by the way, what you’re suggesting isn’t genocide. Genocide is the systematic elimination of a group of people. While you’re suggesting the systematic elimination of murderers, murderers really don’t count under that definition.
And how do you propose that we determine which prisoners are beyond rehab and which aren’t?
Also, we all know that putting inmates on death row is quite expensive. How would your plan raise enough money to pay for all the appeals that the expansion of the death penalty would bring about?
I have never, I stress never, have become so upset with anyone that I wanted to kill them (or rape; or molest). It takes a very deviant mind to reach that conclusion and commit the act. Drugs and therapy are not going to resolve anyones mental problems with murder, molestation, or rape.
About the money issue, the appeals and cost of death penalty is bullshit. Thats another issue and another thread. Please, do not bring up that topic.
The numbers that I have seen would appear to indicate otherwise.
If you are proposing expansion of the death penalty, you must consider the cost factor, though. It may be an issue on its own, but it’s also important to the discussion at hand.
And, of course. prison building and prison jobs have become a “growth industry” in rural America.
Does this addressing your hypothesis that ultra-violent criminals must be killed for the good of society? Or do you want me to find stories about The Murderer Who Learned To Love or somesuch?
JoeBitt, your country’s burgeoning prison population is due to the war on drugs. The murderers, child molesters and rapists are a very small percentage of the incarcerated. If your rationale for the death penalty is the overpopulated gaols, perhaps you’d be better off executing the abusive spouses, traffickers and other unnamed ‘lesser criminals’ who make up the bulk of the population.
At first, I wanted to suggest you use a term like liquidation, euthanasia or negative eugenics rather than genocide. However, like gluteus maximus, I have a feeling that if you come back and flesh out the details for your Endlösung, genocide will seem perfectly apt for what you want.
Utter nonsense. Murder is committed in the heat of the moment every day. Murder of innocents has been committed by our government during the past year. Murder is committed every time an innocent person is put to death in prison. A minister was arrested and charged with murder here recently because he killed two druggies who were robbing his church. These are arguably not deviant acts. Morally reprehensible perhaps, but not deviant.
So your solution is to kill them all and let god sort them out? Is that anything like a “final solution to the prisoner question”?
“Genocide” is not the correct term you wish to use. I believe “democide” fits better.
I urge you to leave the teaching profession immediately! The idea you have put forward, to massacre tens of thousands of your fellow Americans, for no better cause than saving a few bucks, is morally repugnant! I question whether it is appropriate for a person with your value system to be entrusted with teaching young people.
This isn’t the case in every state. In my state, prisoners do work, but they only are able to do work which directly benefits state agencies. For example, they have a factory which makes office furniture-- but it cannot be sold to outside companies or consumers. It can only be used in state offices.
The inmates farm, but the produce is only used in the prisons. The only telephone work they do is answering calls to the state’s 1-800 tourist number.
They do earn tiny wages, but the goods at their commissary are proprotionatley priced. For a carton of cigarettes, they pay a fraction of the price you’d pay at the store. They have the same “buying power” as they would with normal wages. They accrue vacation and sick leave.
My state does not force inmates to work. The prisons encourage it, especially when the inmate is learning a marketable job skill, but they cannot make the inmate work if he/she does not want to.
This state does not “charge” the inmates for room and board. All clothing, food and toiletries are provided to them for free, and they actually recieve a nominal ammount to buy extras. Most inmates chose to work because they can buy more things from the commissary, and also because it gives them something to do with their time.
All ethical issues aside the US has two million prisoners behind bars. How many of these are “extreme criminals” who are beyond rehabilitation? I would be surprised if it came close to even 100,000. So killing of the “extreme criminals” isn’t going to reduce the prison population signficantly.
Incidentally if you look at the prison statistics the differences between the rates in the US and other Western countries are astonishing with the US about 7-8 times the rate of the others. Perhaps the US needs to be asking why it puts so many people behind bars in the first place particularly for drug offences.