Not me (see above). I don’t care about anything else. I’m opposed for the sole reason of accuracy.
Of course it’s not. I made that point rather ironically, mainly to demonstrate that Starving Artist’s assertions correlating increased enforcement of the death penalty with a safer society cannot be logically sustained.
But there are some kernels that can be gained from such statistics. You are correct that murder rates and execution rates will naturally decline together, because fewer murders means fewer occasions for using the death penalty. But the evidence from the 1920s and 1930s, which shows that murder rates and executions rates were both high, does at least provide some counter to SA’s assertions that rigorously enforcing the death penalty will lead to a safer society.
Furthermore, this study, examining California’s rate of homicide increase against its rate of executions, noted that:
1952-1967: During this period, California executed about one person every two months, and homicides increased at an average rate of 10% per year.
1967-1991: No executions took place in California, and the homicide rate increased by an average of 4.8% per year.
Again, i’m not arguing that the changing rates can be attributed to the dropping of the death penalty, only pointing out that this provides contrary evidence to those who would argue that the death penalty makes us safer.
I made very clear that i was distinguishing between your beliefs, on the one hand, and your factual assertions on the other. Your continual refusal to make any such distinction does you no credit.
As a whole, that might be a true statement. But i think we can draw reasonable conclusions, based on the evidence, about whether or not the death penalty makes society safer, which is one of the key factual assertions that you made.
For example, if we could prove conclusively that the death penalty, properly enforced, would lead to fewer murders, then we might reasonably argue that the death penalty makes society safer. I might still disagree with the death penalty on moral grounds, but i would be forced to accept that the death penalty at least has some tangible, practical benefit.
Conversely, if we could prove conclusively that the death penalty, properly enforced, would lead to the same number of murders, or to more murders, then we might reasonably argue that the death penalty doesn’t make society safer. You might still support the death penalty for moral reasons, but you should be forced to accept that the death penalty has no tangible, practical affect on societal safety.
I’ve never asked you for evidence to support your moral or emotional beliefs about the death penalty. I know that such things shouldn’t require evidence, and i believe that you are perfectly entitled to your beliefs. What i have asked for is evidence to back up your factual assertion that the death penalty makes society safer.
I’ve highlighted that word on purpose, because it’s here that you are being slippery.
You see, there’s a difference between arguing that the death penalty makes people feel safer, on the one hand, and arguing that the death penalty makes society safer, on the other.
I have no trouble believing that some people feel safer in a society where the death penalty exists. I also have no trouble believing that people you knew in the 1960s felt safer than the people you know now.
But that’s not the only claim you made. You said that society was safer back then, and that this could be attributed to the enforcement of the death penalty. This is a rather different assertion, and one that can be examined empirically, even if the conclusions we draw from examining the evidence might still only be tentative. What people feel, and what actually is, are often two different things.
So you refuse even to engage with the evidence i find that calls your assertions into question, and yet you expect me simply to accept your own position becuase it’s “common sense”?
If it’s common sense that people are less likely to commit murder when the death penalty is being enforced, tell me why the murder rate in America was higher at a time (1920s, 1930s) when the death penalty was being enforced the most stringently in the country’s history.
And again you’re obscuring the fact that i never asked you for a citation to support your opinion that the death penalty was right. I simply asked you to support the factual assertion you made that enforcing the death penalty makes society safer.
OK, where’s your evidence that the death penalty is actually more effective as a deterrent? The statistics in this thread seem to show otherwise.
And let me repeat the quote I was replying to:
Gee, do you think he was talking about the DP’s value as a deterrent there? Or do you think he was talking about revenge, making someone pay for what he’s already done? “It ain’t nearly enough for the heinous wrong they have done” - not the heinous wrong someone else might think about doing.
I don’t have any, and I’m not trying to support that argument. But you were pretending that there was no deterrent effect, which is disingenuous.
Yes, actually. Just because he talks about the heinous wrong in the past tense doesn’t mean he’s not hoping to deter future heinous wrongs with the more severe punishment. It’s pretty obvious that, if a punishment is a deterrent, making the punishment even worse potentially makes it an even greater deterrent. Whether or not the deterrent is effective enough to warrant the more severe punishment is a seperate argument. It exists, that’s all.
What I was doing is addressing the post I quoted. If you think you can read minds, try it out on James Randi first - I don’t have a million bucks for you.
It’s one of those things that seems obvious but may not, in fact, be true. You need to consider the thought processes that lead someone to commit these crimes, and ask whether they are likely to be influenced by harsher punishments. Many people would consider life imprisonment worse than death, for example.
Not quite. It is my opinion and my observation that the country is safer when it has a history of consistent application of the death penalty. You are the one claiming it’s a factual assertion.
Sorry, but you are misconstruing what I mean so as to make your own analysis plausible. The distinction you are drawing is one of your own making.
Firstly, no such proof exists either way does it? So your point is…? Again, we are back to the realm of opinion and belief.
How delightful for our reading audience that you are here to point out my slippery semantic deceptions. Or could it be that you just can’t accept as legitimate any point of view you can’t bring yourself to see the merit in?
I can’t believe the silly direction this discussion is taking. So now we’re going to get bogged down on whether people felt safer erroneously, or whether they actually were safer. Well, gee…let me think. Do you suppose, just for a second, that perhaps they felt safer because they were safer? Do you recall a time in the late '70s or early '80s when the average time a convict did for murder was 16 years? Do you suppose, just for a second, that when time had gone from the 1950s to the 1980s, people were saying things like “People do less time now for murder than they did for stealing a car when I was a kid” just because they pulled it out of their hat? People are not stupid. They feel safe when they perceive they are in a safe environment and they feel unsafe when they perceive they are in a threatening environment. These perceptions do not spring full-blown from a whim. It takes time after time after time of seeing their safety eroded and replaced by an environment that makes them feel unsafe. This is what has happened during the “we must understand and rehabilitate” phase of jurisprudence that was inflicted on this country from roughly the period of the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties, and elements of it linger now. This laxity in the punishment of criminals is exactly what brought about the overwhelming desire of the majority in this country to adopt the lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality that has resulted in mandatory sentencing and life-without-parole. It is society’s way of trying to regain control of its own safety. Clearly, they wanted to take decision making in regard to criminal punishment out of the hands of the judiciary and corrections agencies. This feeling of being unsafe and unprotected from crime is not something I just made out of whole cloth; it’s a feeling held by a great many people and one which swept the country and forced a harder line to be taken in dealing with criminals.
I never said it could be attributed to the enforcement of the death penalty. I said enforcement of the death penalty was an element in society’s feeling safer during that time.
I have no quarrel with that…in the main, that is. What I do have a quarrel with is the fact that you have apparently set yourself up as the arbiter of who’s right or wrong when they say they feel safe. And the reason you feel you have the standing to do so is that you think you’ve found statisical proof to support or even define the conclusions you’ve come to. But your statistical proof is frought with inaccuracies and omissions. All the elements that go into whether or not a society feels it is safe (and/or actually is safe) are far too complex and multi-faceted for some simple survey or recitation of executions per capita vs. murders committed to address.
Yes, and for the reasons I just mentioned.
No, I don’t expect you, personally, to do anything. I expect to put forth my opinions and beliefs along with an explanation of why I hold them, and then I expect people to look at and derive whatever conclusions they think are appropriate from them.
Here is an excellent example of what’s wrong with finding some fact and extrapolating a conclusion from it. In the first place, societies are extremely complex and unpredictable entities and they don’t respond immediately and in unison to whatever stimuli they are subjected. Murder rates and execution rates to not rise and fall in exact unison. As I said earlier, these things take time. And furthermore, your statistics don’t take into account whatever effect the economy at the time might have played in the crime rate; they don’t take into account the political climate; they don’t take into account whatever effect current or recent wars might have played in the crime rate and/or relative feeling of safety among the populace; etc., etc., etc.
And again, I never made an assertion of statistical fact (although one may exist, obscure and complicated though it may be) that enforcing the death penalty makes society safer. I made the common sense claim that enforcing the death penalty makes society safer. Adverse reaction, remember?
Okay, then lets look at it from the other direction: where’s your evidence that ticketing a jaywalker is not intended to act as a deterrent? And where is your evidence that ticketing a jaywalker is supposed to undo the jaywalking? Or where sending a man to prison for stealing a car he subsequently totals restores the car to its rightful owner? People are not given tickets or sent to prison in order to bring things or people back, as you seemed to imply in your question that asks:
Quote:
“How exactly does ‘playing bigger cards’ help anyone? No matter how much you punish a murderer, you aren’t gonna bring his victims back to life.”
People are punished for crimes for two reasons. One is as a punishment! It is retribution. It is vengeance. It is making them suffer because they committed a wrong. Nothing at all wrong with that; it has been the case since humans began to live by laws and it’s integral to the way people all over the world feel. If you wrong somebody, you deserve to suffer consequences for it. Pure and simple.
The second is because it’s a deterrent to both them and others not to do the same if they want to avoid that punishment. This is simple human nature and it’s not complicated. If you give people a reason to fear the consequences of a certain action, they will be that much more reluctant to engage in that action.
I have none, but luckily for me, I didn’t say it wasn’t. I’m not saying that deterrent value isn’t important… in fact, if you look back to the post where I mentioned criteria for an appropriate penalty, you’ll see that deterrence was one of them.
Yes, and it’s barbaric. It adds to the total of human suffering and it helps no one.
Sorry, I don’t think anyone “deserves” to suffer. Sure, when someone wrongs me, I feel the urge to take revenge - but I realize that, like many other human urges, that one ought to be suppressed in a civilized society.
I don’t have to be able to read your mind to see that you completely and totally dismissed deterrent value when you made this statement:
Had you not dismissed deterrence, you would not have asked “how exactly” playing bigger cards helps.
Well, now that you know I was talking about playing cards upon people who have already committed the crime, your misconception should be all cleared up.
If I had dismissed deterrent value, I wouldn’t have put deterrence in my post about criteria, now would I?
Oh, I would disagree quite strongly with you on that one. It keeps people in line, and it helps to provide closure and a sense of justice having been done for those who have been wronged. What kind of repressed time-bombs would we be living in in this country if criminals were no longer made to suffer? You want to talk about increasing human suffering? Can you imagine how many millions of resentful, frustrated and hate-filled people would be walking around seething over the fact that someone robbed, raped and/or killed their daughters or sons or parents, and nothing was done about it because we as a society have evolved past the point where we make our criminals suffer? I don’t think “civilized” is the word that would describe the society we would be living in under those circumstances.
Do you realize what you’re saying? Any form of action taken against a criminal is going to result in the criminal suffering. Financial penalties, imprisonment, and/or the death penalty is going to cause suffering. The only alternative to making a criminal suffer is to do nothing whatsoever to him. Is that really what you propose? And if so, please refer back again to the paragraph above.
I feel badly when I get into conversations like this with people like you. You have a good heart and it’s really too bad that we don’t live in a world where the types of things you propose would work. But unfortunately, like it or not, we’re animals. Some of us sexually or physically abuse our children. Some of us are belligerent bullies spoiling for a fight. Some of us like to beat up our women. And some of us rape and rob and kill. Civility is all well and good up to a point and it’s certainly something that makes life much more pleasant to live, but there are times where it breaks down and an attempt to be civilized only makes things worse. I’ve known guys in my life that would beat the shit out of you for no other reason than they’ve had a few beers and they felt like doing it. And I’m not talking about your regular run-of-the-mill beating either. I’m talking about hooking their fingers in your mouth and ripping it back to your ear; I’m talking about sticking their fingers into your eye sockets till your eyeballs popped out. There are mean, viscious people out there and all the high road approach will get you with them is a hearty laugh before they rape your wife and kill you.
I couldn’t care less about providing “a sense of justice” for them (i.e. slaking their thirst for revenge). They aren’t judges or jurors; their opinion on what should happen to the criminal is irrelevant.
I’m not suggesting we do nothing about it, only that we focus on the aspects of punishment that actually benefit the rest of us, rather than just satisfying the victims’ families’ lust for vengeance.
If someone is resentful or frustrated because his relative’s killer was “only” sentenced to life in prison instead of being executed, well, too bad. Let him take a Valium or something. He doesn’t need to kill someone with my tax dollars just to make himself feel better.
I agree. Any penalty is going to involve some suffering, and that’s acceptable; in fact, that’s necessary for it to be a deterrent. It’d be nice if we could get the deterrent effect without actually harming anyone, but I don’t think that’s possible.
However, suffering and deterrence aren’t the same. There comes a point where the additional suffering inflicted by a harsher punishment outweighs the additional deterrent effect. Inflicting more suffering just for suffering’s sake is pointless and despicable.
OK, and after they rape my hypothetical wife and kill me, how would “playing the biggest card we got” help the situation? It’d be more productive to put the guy to work paying for a funeral for me, and an abortion and pension for her.
Charming. It appears you’re not averse to increasing human suffering, after all. Too bad you don’t show the same compassion for people who have lost family members to the most horrific types of crime that you do to the perpetrators. I’m gonna have to rethink the part where I said you had a good heart.
That isn’t what you said. In regard to punishment, you said:
Quote:
“Yes, and it’s barbaric. It adds to the total of human suffering and it helps no one.”
You then said:
Quote:
“Sorry, I don’t think anyone “deserves” to suffer. Sure, when someone wrongs me, I feel the urge to take revenge - but I realize that, like many other human urges, that one ought to be suppressed in a civilized society.”
Remember? You appeared to be saying that no one deserves to suffer and that punishment is barbaric. Now you’re saying punishment is justified but only when it helps the rest of us. So apparently you’re okay with punishment after all. Got it.
No, my reference to a nation full of frustrated, bitter relatives was made regarding your apparent desire to inflict no suffering whatsoever on the perpetrator. You have since amended your stance so that no longer applies.
Well, now I’m totally bumfuzzled! You’ve gone from calling any punishment whatsoever barbaric to now saying its acceptable…and not only that, but it’s a deterrent! Wtf?? Is this not what I’ve been saying all along! What are we arguing about? Next thing you know, you’ll be agreeing that the purpose of punishment and deterrence isn’t to bring back the dead!
Here we go with the things that don’t make sense again! If there’s no suffering, there’s no deterrence! On the other hand, if I see you getting your ass handed to you over some crime you’ve committed, I’m going to be a hell of a lot more averse to committing such a crime myself.
How on Earth can anyone make the determination that “x” amount of suffering is just the right amount for the deterrent effect desired, and that any suffering beyond that is excessive? I’d say the only equitable way would be by making it roughly the equivalent of the offense, i.e. the death penalty for murder.
Well, let’s just suppose a hypothetical situation here just for fun, shall we? Let’s say we’re in America and the year is 1955 and you are the rapist/killer. There is a report of your execution in the local newspaper. It details how you were screaming and crying and pleading for your life as you were dragged bodily into the death chamber by guards who were clearly disgusted with your terrified, unmanly behavior. You then continued to plead for your life and cry and thrash around in panic as you were strapped into the electric chair. Then you went through a two or three minute period of jerking and thrashing around while the electricity necessary to kill you does its job, with wisps of smoke wafting out from under the leather mask they put over your head.
You think after reading that I’m going to go shoot some guy in a $50 convenience store robbery? Hell, no! You think I’m gonna do it because some guy cut me off in traffic and I’m in the middle of a road rage episode? Nope, not on your life. You think I’m gonna get a buddy and break into a house and rob and rape and kill whoever I find is there just for the hell of it and because I happen to hold the power of life and death in my hand? Hell, no! In fact, I’m gonna carry the image of that kind of thing around in the back of my mind for the rest of my life…or however long it is until we start putting killers to sleep like beloved family pets. And you can bet that a hell of a lot of lives going to be saved because would-be killers knew what awaited them when they got caught.
I’m sure you and most of the rest of the people here who read this post are gonna think the above scenario is abhorrent, and it is. But it’s nowhere near as abhorrent as what happens when some asshole kills a totally innocent person and takes away from them forever the joys and experinces of life that they would have had had they not been killed, and it’s not nearly as abhorrent as what their families and loved ones have to live with for the rest of their lives (your total lack of compassion for them notwithstanding).
And would I trade off a return to the type of execution I just described in return for the lives that would be saved by its deterrent effect? Without the slightest doubt.
How silly. And what about after your funeral had been paid and her pension provided for? Just cut him loose and wish him well?
Ahhh…to be young and naive. :rolleyes:
There’s a difference between the “suffering” that comes when someone can’t have a third party commit a horrible act on his behalf, and the actual suffering that comes when someone is directly harmed by the government.
Is my writing really that unclear? I said that in response to “It is retribution. It is vengeance. It is making them suffer because they committed a wrong.” Retribution, vengeance, making someone suffer as payback… that’s barbaric.
Punishment is fine as long as it inflicts no more suffering than is necessary for its legitimate goals. Inflicting suffering is not a legitimate goal in itself.
Correction: I have explained my stance so you understand what it’s been all along.
My point is, more suffering does not always mean more deterrence. Specifically, there’s no evidence that the DP is actually a more effective deterrent than imprisonment, except apparently in your tales about the good ol’ days, where everyone’s gut feelings of safety are always 100% accurate.
Well, we can start by eliminating the suffering that provides no deterrent effect at all - see above.
What do you mean, “after”? That guy is going to provide my hypothetical wife the money I would’ve brought home for the rest of my life, had I not been killed. Unless license plates and road work pay a hell of a lot more than computer programming, he’s gonna be at it for the rest of his life (and then some).
Ahhh, to be ageist and bloodthirsty. 
I quite agree (well, I don’t know about “most”) - I am one such person. I don’t see that this means my practical arguments should be ignored, though. I accept that the emotional and philosophical debate is one on which reasonable people will disagree (and perpetually so), which is why I rely on the argument of practicalities. It is a happy coincidence that something which I morally oppose is also something we appear incapable of practically, fairly or justly wielding. If it is ever demonstrated that we are capable of 100% accuracy, I shall set about trying to persuade people of my moral case. Until such a thing is shown, however, I believe the moral argument is simply moot. As with most things, I believe practicality overrides idealism, particularly when those idealistic considerations are so subjective and so polarised.
That’s a great story. Well, it could be better: it’s absurd to think that an enraged driver, or anyone else in the heat of the moment, is going to pause and say to himself “Oh, I’d make that bastard pay if I’d only go to prison for 75 years, but since I might go to death row for 10 years and then be executed, I guess I won’t.”
But no matter how many gory details you throw in, it’s still just a story. No matter how much it might seem like common sense to you, it’s still fiction. You haven’t shown that the DP actually does reduce crime in real life. You say “a hell of a lot of lives going to be saved because would-be killers knew what awaited them”, and yet you can’t show that it really does save lives.
This is all well and good, but you are a rational person*, and you’re not going to do these things anyway. Criminals, by and large, are not rational, and the thing with criminals is that they don’t expect to be caught. Do you think a man who murders for $50 in a non-DP state is thinking “well, it’s a life sentence - but fifty bucks is fifty bucks”? No, he’s thinking how he’ll get away with it, if he’s thinking at all. The death penalty is no different. As I pointed out, when only 1 murderer in 1000 eligible is even sentenced to death, and even fewer of those actually executed, it is difficult to see how even a rational criminal will be deterred by the prospect of execution. Increased rates will increase the error rate, and bring forward the point at which we must face the horrible truth that we are killing innocent men for nebulous benefit.
Appeals to reason simply will not prove deterrence, because criminals are not reasonable. Reasonable people are already deterred by their morals, and by the prospect of spending their life in a box.
This asterisk denotes a gold star for extra rationality. Or a typo, you choose.
If you really can’t see why this distinction is important, then your obtuseness knows no bounds.
So, first you say that it’s silly of me to make distinctrions between whether people feel safer and whether they actually are safer, and then you launch into a long spiel attempting to convince me that people feel safer because they are safer. Is it important or not?
If you’ve spent more than three minutes looking at studies regarding crimes levels and people’s perceptions of danger, you’ll know that people sometimes feel unsafe when there is very little cause to do so. A variety of factors contribute to people’s relative feelings of safety in society, and sometimes those factors are a product not of society’s actual safety level, but rather of paranoia and irrational fears caused by the publicity and notoriety gained by a few sensational cases, or by news reporting that focuses disproportionately on a relatively small number of crimes.
And again, you assert that the “lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality” makes some people feel safer. I believe you. But you still can’t demonstrate that they are safer.
Please stop lying. I have affirmed, time and again, that i am not the arbiter of whether people are “right or wrong when they say they feel safe.” How they feel is how they feel. But i think it’s reasonable to try to examine whether those feelings are, in fact, a reflection of the actual levels of safety in society.
Again, you pretend that feeling safe and being safe are the same thing.
Let me ask you a very simple question: Do you believe that society is safer when the murder rate is low than when the murder rate is high? And, if your answer is yes, do you believe that this level of safety is independent of, or dependent upon, how safe people feel? Do you believe that our level of safety is something concrete, or that it is nothing more than the product of our fears?
So, first you say that my evidence is pointless because you were just talking about your own feelings. Now you claim that my evidence doesn’t show what i say it shows. I guess i should be thankful that you have at last attempted to actually address the issue.
OK, if “these things take time” (a comment i agree with), why don’t you look at the figures for executions and murder rates and show how they support your conclusion that the death penalty makes society safer?
Now i know you’re not even reading what i write. From my earlier post:
I’ve made very clear my belief that crime rates are influenced by a multitude of factors. At least, in doing this, i have offered some historical evidence to support my claims. All you have done is make even stronger claims, with even less appeal to logic and history.
And this conclusion rests on the premise that criminals use some sort of calculated rational choice theory in deciding whether or not to commit their crimes. Throughout this thread, you have referred to the people who commit these awful crimes as “idiot” and “moron,” and yet you now expect us to believe that these people make a cost-benefit analysis before they decide to kill someone.
Sure, there probably are some very deliberate, calculating killers out there who carefully plan their crimes and make deliberate decisions based on the chance of getting caught versus the benefit of commiting the crime. But do you really think that this sort of rational planning and weighing of costs and benefits occurs in the mind of most murderers? If they are so rational, why don’t all the murderers move to non-death penalty states to commit their crimes? Hell, if they’re as rational as you say, then Texas should have almost no murders at all.
Starving Artist, you keep saying that statistics don’t matter, and that correlations can’t be drawn (and then you contradict yourself by drawing correlations, but that’s a different point). So if all statistics are meaningless, and we can’t ever really know if the death penalty is useful, then why should we have it? If we truly can’t tell whether society benefits by the state killing people, then wouldn’t it be more reasonable to not kill people? Why do we default to state-sanctioned murder when we don’t know?
Ah, but you had a feeling in the 60s. And you’re asking us to accept that over facts and statistics. Sorry, that shit doesn’t fly on this board, and it better not fly in society. As you said, we’re not talking about the Gross National Product Romania. Nope. We’re talking about taking human life. If we do so, we’d better be damn well sure we know what we’re doing. We’d better collect all of the statistics we are able to. Giving the general populace a warm fuzzy feeling is not a substitute for doing one’s homework.