Economic Left/Right: 1.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.10
I have to Strongly disagree with #42 for reasons that have nothing to do with morality. While I’d happily act as executioner for some of our home-grown scum, I’m opposed to the return of the Death Penalty to Canada becuase I don’t want to see our judiciary turned into an appeals industry, with the convicted being executed (if at all) only after a decade or more of slowly grinding court proceedings.
Of course, you are arguing from the POV that life in prison is preferable, for the convicted, to execution.
They may be so nowadays in the US, Western Europe etc but this debate is non-specific as regards geography and time-period.
Of course, if you actually read my OP, you will find that I say completely the opposite:
I even gave an example of a woman who could almost certainly have avoided death if only she had spoken out about her mistrial.
But more common than wrongfully executing an innocent person. Therefore, if you execute a thousand murderers and thereby prevent X numbers of escapes ending in murder, you have to show that X + 1 innocents have been executed to argue against use of the DP.
About 1.2% of all murderers are re-arrested within three years for another murder, which could be prevented by the DP as well.
I just finished a thread covering many of my arguments in its favor.
Regards,
Shodan
And what of my argument that such a view is statistically fallacious, Shodan? One could similarly show that the death penalty for speeding, or even for suspected criminal activity, can save “innocent” lives. You are arbitrarily choosing a random variable on which to examine a probability given that variable.
I cannot see any further argument of yours in that thread which I did not address in my OP: could you summarise them, and respond to what I said there?
I believe you have a hidden assumption that there is a mathematical equivalency here between the acts of madmen and the acts of society. I don’t buy that. My position is that society does not need to commit murder. Whether society commits more or fewer murders than madmen is irrelevant to me.
Life in prison without parole is just as effective.
I did read your OP in its entirity which is why I’m confused when you argue that inflicting the greater punishment (a lifetime of incarceration) is not vengeance while dishing out the lesser one (execution) is.
This quote suggests to me, however, that you view a life of incarceration as preferable to execution, as far as the convicted is concerned.
I said that the only reason I could think of for justifying a punishment other than deprivation of property or liberty was vengeance. I argue that deterrence and punishment can be satisfied without the death penalty, and that vengeance as a criterion is unnecessary. I am not interested in a semantical exploration of what does and does not constitute “vengeance” as an entity - that would be as irrelevant here as debating euthanasia.
My quotation stated explicitly that I consider death to be preferable to life imprisonment as far as the convict is concerned.
Forgive me if I’m being a tad slow here Sentient.
I’m not interested in what “vengeance” means but why is the harsher punishment not so while the lesser one is? Especially if the harsher one is of no greater deterence.
Is it because it has more “punishment” built in?
I’d agree that the terms we’re using here can be a little tricky, marky. I’d suggest that you’re focussing on right now is the punitive aspect, which is not necessarily anything to do with revenge.
For any crime there must be a proportional punishment in the interests of deterrence, prevention and justice being "seen to be done’. Disproportionately harsh or lenient punishments have negative societal effects. Now, in this case, it is difficult to see which of the punishments (life imprisonment or death) are “harsher” - there are arguments for both.
However, this is not the same as vengeance. I would suggest that vengeance has far less to do with deterrence, prevention or impartial justice than with an emotional and passionate desire to harm those who have harmed you or others. Just because one punishment or another is harsher or less desired by the convict than another does not make it more vengeful: that characteristic only rears its head if there is a question of the punishment being motivated by visceral, human passion rather than rigorous and cold policy-making.
Life imprisonment is far more punitive than an afternoon in the stocks, or chopping off a hand. However, I would offer that the latter have their basis in revenge where incarceration does not, since they involve wishing to see humiliation and domination visited upon another in order to satiate emotional human urges.
Looked up my old scores again:
Libertarian/Right
Economic Left/Right: 4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.18
I’m going to say I also disagree, though not strongly. Mainly I disagree because of how our current system opperates, not necessarily on ‘humanitarian’ or ‘moral’ grounds. Essentially I think the US should ditch the capital punishment system because A) I’m unsure of the deterent effect of the system on preventing capital crimes, especially in light of the appeals process, B) Its a drag on our system, increasing an already stretch workload on our courts, again due to the seemingly endless appeals process, where it literally takes years to actuall execute someone, and C) Due to the appeals system it ends up costing us more to execute someone than to simply put them away for life.
-XT
But couldn’t a criminal’s victims want passionately to see the perpetrator slowly rot in a jail cell for the rest of his days rather than “get away” with being executed?
This, by your reasoning, would then be vengeance, right?
Yes it would, which is why I’d be extremely uncomfortable with the victims getting to dictate policy. Like I said in my OP, that people feel that way is perfectly understandable, but the thought of a state government feeling that way fills me with dread. The legislature must be analytical and impassionate: allowing revenge into our laws is a step towards false democracy.
Why do you suggest that, given circumstances whereby a criminal deserves the harshest of punishments, the state would reason any differently to an emotional victim?
If there are only two choices - life (sentence) or death - who’s to say a group of legislators will not also decide they would like to see the “scum rot away the rest of their lives in a cell” rather than “escape” through execution?
If it is merely a matter of perception, could we not use the same arguments against life imprisonment and for the death penalty?
(Impassive should replace impassionate in my last reply.)
They might well do so, which is why I argue that vengeance is not a valid motivation for state action regardless of who thinks what. If you agree with that sentiment, we can go on to ask whether punishments other than the deprivation of property or liberty we currently enact are necessary. I contend that the state reasons where the emotional victim simply retaliates.
One point must be made clear here: it is entirely possible for the “right” position to be held for completely the wrong reasons. You appear to be arguing that just because someone somewhere might slaver bloodthirstily at the thought of confining a murderer in a box for decades and dismiss death as a let-off, my position that justice ought not be motivated by revenge is somehow impugned. I argue that the death penalty os unnecessary. You might consider imprisonment to be unnecessary, and think that we could abolish it and replace it with physical punishments and tortures against the person. I would ask you what your justification for such a switch might be.
I am arguing no such thing.
The point I was trying to get across was that, if these ‘legislators’ were thinking vengefully in considering a lifetime’s incarceration a fitting punishment (plausible) - then the “lesser” death sentence could equally present a level-headed, analytical, impassive alternative.
But it would still be an alternative of an altogether different type to what we already enact for all kinds of other crimes. The harshness is not the issue here. If the death penalty is indeed to be arrived at analytically and impassively, one must explain why imprisonment, which clearly is appropriate for anything from assault to fraud, is not appropriate for murder. From a dispassionate viewpoint, why the switch for more serious crimes?
You haven’t shown that it is statistically invalid. Your cite states that Bayes’ theorem is valid as a mathematical concept.
“Number of innocent lives lost” is hardly a random variable - you used that as a good to argue against the death penalty in your OP.
The reason we don’t execute people for speeding is not statistical - it is moral. We give greater moral condemnation to deliberate acts such as murder than we do to accidental deaths such as from speeding. Plus,I think the implied assertion that we would reduce innocent deaths if we executed speeders is mistaken - the number of speeders who never kill anyone is proportionately much higher than the number of repeat murderers.
In short, I don’t think you have addressed my point at all.
Regards,
Shodan
I cannot find my original number, it was almost smack dab in the center I remember.
I have never heard of an execution being refered to as an “escape”. weird.
The Bible, in Romans chapter 13, states that God has given the state the power of life or death over the criminal. For those who try to follow the Bible, this allows us to support the death penalty for serious crimes.
Is our system inefficient? Yes. But to argue that since we’ve made mistakes we should never execute anyone makes me wonder why we allow almost anyone to drive since clearly many people are incompetent at it resulting in far more automoble deaths (44,888 in 2003) than murders and executions combined (16,503 murders and 65 executions ).
Now, I’ll admit we do not have a perfect system, we should work to ensure that the best safeguards are in place. But not at the expense of not punishing the most severe crimes. Does anyone regret the punishment of Timothy McVeigh?