I personally don’t see any benefit to the death penalty vs. life imprisonment. None. Not cost, not vengeance, not as a deterrent. As an atheist, my compass is not through any religious morality. It is simply what is practical and logical. In practicality, we can NEVER be sure. Ever. And it costs many times more to kill someone than it does to just lock them up. How many innocent people need to be convicted or killed before we say enough? Is 99.99% good enough? Not to that 1 in 10,000 it isn’t. If you had only a 99.99% chance of surviving a plane trip you’d be screaming for the government to do something about it.
What problem is being solved by killing someone? If there were an answer to that that wasn’t also solved by life in prison, I’d be for the death penalty.
These aren’t just Christian values. I’m one of the most unChristian people on this board and I subscribe to those values. But I don’t see why they have to extend to other sentiences. I can see how an argument could be made, but it’s not just a matter of “should” - you need more justification than that.
These sorts of rate arguments bother me because there is an acceptable rate for anything or it isn’t something done. A quick Google search gave me a value of 1 in 9.2 million chance of dying in a plane crash for the top safest airlines. More or less, that works out to the idea that we, as a society, are okay with killing 1 in every 9.2 million people for the convenience and speed of airline travel. If that rate were too high, no one would fly. People drive cars every day and they’re even more dangerous.
Now here’s a scenario, let’s say I want to go on vacation across country. I could take a plane, but I have a 1 in 9.2 million chance of dying. Now let’s also say that, for the sake of argument, I could walk and be absolutely certain I will make it, it will just take days or weeks to do it and I’ll be tired and all that. Sure, there’ll be a few random people who wouldn’t choose it, but how many societies would straight up disallow it based on that?
And if we’re willing to accept death as a given in a future plane crashes for something like faster travel, what sort of rate is justice worth? If the death penalty is just, and it is only the practical aspects that concern people, what sort of failure rate ought we to accept? If we pride ourselves as a just society, knowing that justice intrinsically carries a failure rate, at what point does that failure rate cross a threshold from acceptable to not acceptable? I think that, in general, we as a society hold justice as one of our central virtues and so it it ought to bear a reasonable accepted failure rate.
Bwaaahaaa haaa haa. You’ve been reading too much Sanday. In the Ashanti heartland of Ghana, it’s not rape if you’re married (even if the bride is 14). And wartime rape is pervasive in Ivory Coast. I doubt that follows tribal lines.
Sanday’s fieldwork was laughable. She made the classic mistake of believing what her indigenous Indonesian contacts told her about rape unquestionable, for instance. Like they were going to tell her all about it…
The problem is that you bear the cost yourself with something like plane crashes. That’s a risk you accept when you get on the plane. Nobody agrees to accept the risk they’ll be convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. (I guess the counterargument would be that if you live in a society you agree to accept the risk the justice system might fail you completely, but I don’t think most people would accept that reasoning.)
I’m not comparing the individual, I’m comparing society as a whole. Society values high speed travel and so it accepts that some people will die to achieve it. Similarly, if society values justice, it should accept that some people may die to achieve it. Justice isn’t something that so much exists on an individual basis, as on any individual transation, it is either just or it is unjust. It is the collection of all of the actions of all of the individuals in a society where that determine if the society is just or not.
And if you want to make it individual, though I actually believe that there are certain risks that come along with the benefits that go with being part of a society, that’s sort of a derailing. Instead, if you’d like, ignore the plane example and go with something else where there’s no so much an opportunity to accept a risk. For instance, just like society tends to value justice, it also tends to value free speech and yet I don’t think anyone really chooses to accept the risk of racist, sexist, or any manner of other hateful things being spewed at them. In both cases, society has decided those are values worth having and has imposed the risks that come with them on everyone.
None. I think too many people are falsly accused. People that are falsly accused have a rough time proving their innocence, especially in cases of rape where it often comes down to “he-said/she-said” cases.
Whatever “society” chooses, the risks in plane crashes are still borne by the people who decide to fly. Making exceptions for children, there’s basically no risk you will die in a plane crash if you don’t decide to get on a plane. You can’t opt out of the risk of being convicted of a crime you didn’t commit, much less being executed for it. So society can accept one level of risk for a voluntary activity and tolerate much less from an impersonal justice system, particularly when the justice system has options that don’t involve killing anybody at all.
I actually agree on that point, people in jail just rot and are usually unable to be improved and it often is a training ground for criminals.
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Yes, its point it seems to me was not punishment but was to find out the truth about human rights violations.
I wouldn’t say that. I was talking largely about Europe and the rest of the Western world. Russia for example seems to prefer “extra-judicial killings” while in Mexico the Green Party is demanding capital punishment back.
We have gotten tougher on crime in general since the '70s
If nobody is willing to commit murder that’s great, but if there is even one murderer than it is necessary than society be capable of violence.
Obviously, Jesus is never quoted as having said, “I support the death penalty”. However, he did say that he didn’t come to destroy the law, part of which included the death penalty. And if he was
the son of God and really opposed the death penalty, he could have saved the two thieves from crucifixion.
Many innocent people are convicted. Would you want to see innocent people face the death penalty?
Many people convicted of serious offenses are put in prison. That is enough. Besides, there could also be a chance that they are innocent.
The death penalty is wrong because it’s barbaric. People convicted of crimes are already facing jail time. Shouldn’t that be enough? People convicted of crimes are already removed from society. Some people convicted of serious crimes are already permanently removed from society without the possibility of parole. I do not believe in an eye for an eye. Sorry. I believe that jail time is a harsh enough punishment for those convicted of crimes.
But we, as a society, do not take risks that aren’t necessary for some other benefit. And we certainly don’t allow risks to individuals that are avoidable for a reasonable cost. It seems to me that is the entire basis for some of the punitive damages we have in civil cases. We accept certain risks for plane travel because of the benefit to society. What benefit to society does the death penalty convey?
It isn’t just a matter of risk, although it is a part of it. It is a matter of risk vs. reward and cost.
