It’s very clear cut if you take a strict utilitarian approach and ask only the question “which course will save the greater number of lives”? (And if you assume or or are persuaded of the reliability of the claim that each execution deters between 3 and 18 murders, of course.)
On the other hand, it’s equally clear-cut - but in the opposite direction - if you accept as a moral principle that killing someone is wrong, and can only be justified if he threatens someone with lethal violence from which you have no other way of defending them.
Much depends on the moral principles that we accept. But their are plausible and, indeed, widely asserted and accepted moral principles which can make this particular question a no-brainer.
In the U.K. the prison service and sentencing is in chaos and does not act as a deterrent. I believe that a system that separates none violent crime from violent crime would work. Prisons for none violent crime should concentrate on education as illiteracy is one of the most common causes of crime, for a first time offender a minimum of 5 years with release on licence after education problems have been corrected conditions of licence full time employment plus unpaid work as pay back.
Violent criminals serve a minimum of ten years with at least 5 years in prison for first time offenders a program of education and workplace skills gaining qualifications over a daily 12 hour program.
Re-offending. A recall from licence to complete original sentence before starting their new sentence which would double their last sentence. Habitual re-offenders would spend most of their time in prison.
Murder. Man slaughter a minimum of ten years, none premeditated murder a minimum of twenty five years, premeditated murder whole of life no parole, after completing 30 years they may volunteer for euthanasia.
Prisons for murderers to be high security in unpopulated areas with a harsh regime and removal of their human rights
five years for a first time non violent offender? Where are you going to put all the extra prisons you are going to have to build in the UK? Shipping them to Australia is not an option anymore you know :dubious:
If it is more expensive it is only because of the seemingly unending series of appeals and legal maneuvering that are done by death penalty opponents. Not only is it not an inherently ‘more expensive’ option than life imprisonment, it is much less expensive.
You state that people with nothing to lose can’t be controlled (I assume you mean those awaiting their death sentence to be carried out). And therefore we should abolish the death penalty? Please explain what someone sentenced to life in a cage with no possibility of parole has to lose? Your reasoning makes no sense to me.
A first time none violent offender would probably serve only 3 months during that time they would be assessed to find out what has gone wrong in their lives, was the crime they committed through need (put food on the table) or greed, many low level criminals have mental health problems, at present they are ignored and that does not solve anything. A 5 year sentence does not mean being banged up for 5 years licensing provides the opportunity of getting the person back on track. At present prisons are like a revolving door with to many reoffending. By cutting reoffending you cut the number further down in the system
Is there a particular reason that you include at least one excruciatingly horrible, painful way to kill someone on your list? Beheading would be, insofar as you could describe any of these things as such, humane, and hanging as well. But… burning?
Not at all. If I take the view that killing someone cannot be justified as a way to deter the commission of other, as-yet-hypothetical crimes by other people, then the facts as you present them (an execution deters between 3 and 18 other homicides) are irrelevant. I can accept your facts, and still find the moral question very clear-cut.
Or, if I take the reductive utilitarian calculation, then if I accept the facts as you present them, the moral question is again very clear-cut.
Sure, if I believed everything you believe, and held the exact same moral values, i would probably agree with you.
If on the other hand I believed that killing a murderer was OK if it would prevent a dozen other murders, I might disagree with you.
IOW its not clear cut. For many people it IS clear cut because they don’t believe there is a deterrent effect and it is almost impossible to justify the state sanctioned murder of convicted killers when we know that some percentage of them are innocent PURELY for revenge. But things change if there is a proven deterrent effect. THEN things get murky.
Its not like saying that the earth is warming as a result of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If the person is proven without a shadow of a doubt to be guilty, I am all for executing him/her. But to make executions public affairs for display, no just too disturbing and disgusting.
If it’s “disturbing and disgusting”, why not just abolish it for that reason? People need to see what is involved. In a way, you actually are just supporting my point:).
This is why I can’t stand anti-death penalty people even though I’ve in practice against the death penalty as practised in the United States. If they were smart and actually cared about saving people’s lives, they would be campaigning on a platform of death penalty rationalization-raising the bar of crimes eligible for the death penalty to limit to genuine mass killers and others of their ilk. Such a stance would get the vast majority of those currently on death off of it and especially the ones whose death penalties were the products of racial bias and/or wrongful conviction. Most people have some sympathy for someone who at age 19 got mixed up in a gang and ended up killing someone in a rival organization only to be up for lethal injection thirty years down the line-they don’t for a brutal drug cartel boss who has orchestrated dozens of murders. But like many of the more awful elements of American shitlibism, the anti-death penalty movement is the product of the debased Unitarian moralist element that pushed for Prohibition, eugenics etc. and obsessed with being moral correct and cleanliness over achieving results. Why else aren’t they advocating for switching death penalty methods to the guillotine or at least the firing squad when those are known to be far more swift and painless methods then lethal injection?
You make very valid points Qin Shi Huangdi. I am anti death penalty, but I know there is a very small percentage of violent criminals whose death would profit society and probably help them too in a way. I am of course referring to the psychopathic maniacs who must kill and torture to feel alive. I am still convinced however that it will be hard to make a distinction so clear that the ‘sympathetic’ criminals you refer to will be spared. Plus I think it’s a good base line for a civilised society to make sure a legal killing is a logical impossibility.
I too have often wondered why the crude but effective and relatively painless firing squad and guillotine went out of fashion. I guess it has to do with some misguided search for more ‘humane’ ways to kill a man. And that’s the point I want to keep stressing: there is no humane way of killing, so if you believe in the death penalty, you also have to face the gruesome practical side of that position.