My moral objection to the death penalty is basically a practical one. Like you, if the evidence is lined up, the process is fair, and there is no real room for doubt, in some situations it wouldn’t bother me.
Humans are social animals that have multiplied in huge number. Some portion of animals in all social species are unfit to live in the society of those animals. In nature / pre-historic times we could just drive this person off and they’d maybe die of exposure or maybe survive on their own. But we wouldn’t have to get messy and kill them unless we were concerned they’d come back to try and kill us in our sleep. But once we started living in settled societies, the “bad eggs” of society had to be dealt with in some way. I don’t have a particular moral problem with death being the most appropriate, and perhaps even the merciful, approach for the worst offenders who are irredeemable killers for example.
But if a State cannot implement the criminal justice system in a fair way, then it’s deeply immoral to kill people within that system. If you read about Canadian reforms taken I believe in the 1990s to address the problem of wrongful convictions, they’ve actually worked very very well. If we had protections like that in place I might be a little more inclined to support it. But honestly I’m at the point now that until we can put someone in a machine that basically pulls their memory and loads it into a video file and shows us exactly what they did or didn’t do, I’m not comfortable with judicial executions.
yeah, basically that’s what I’m saying. I’m all for restricting it to very specific cases that have very strong evidence
but not abolishing it. I think it also sends a moral message to people in general. Then again, as a libertarian I’m not for the government taking moral positions
Places like Texas use it, and they defend the practice strongly, but they use it too easily, too many cases where the guy might be innocent. I think on some level, they know each execution has a very broad deterrent effect on the populace as a whole, and implicitly, even if they don’t realize it, they don’t care if an innocent here or there is sacrificed to maintain the deterrent effect and message. But I think part of that is reactionary to snotty liberal/leftyism. Because rarely do you have people level-headedly saying they should lower the number of executions.
Where you see a difference, I do not.
What else is the legal/societal purpose of punishment but deterrence? There are a few other elements to it that made/make it stable across societies, like for one by removing a desire for revenge from the victim’s family, so they won’t go out and do their own punishment and cause trouble. But the main purpose of punishment is to deter crime
Greetings and welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board. I hope you find your time here entertaining and enlightening. Unfortunately, you’ve broken one of the rules of the Great Debates forum. It is never acceptable to insult another poster outside of our BBQ Pit forum. Please don’t do so again.
Repeated breaking of our rules can lead to warnings, suspension or even banning. No one wants that.
Slow down there, amigo. You’re confusing me with another poster, but the points he made were good ones, and were not “ad hominems”. I’m the poster who asked you which statistics “clearly show” what you claimed.
A commentor at reason.com on an article mentioned it a couple of times, I think he gave a link to the statistic. It may have been a simple breakdown of murder rates, with the “control” being states with vs. without the death penalty, with deliberate witness-murders usked out of the data.
Anyway, it should be self-obvious why that tendency/effect would exist. Witness murders, where you murder witnesses for the sake of being witnesses, will tend to be a LOT more pre-meditated; the criminal is actually considering all the repercussions involved. And indeed, by the sound of it, maybe the statistic involved mostly mafia/mob murders
Putting the issue aside, this is a weak argument to make. If the death penalty is right or wrong, the issue should be argued on its own merits not on the basis of how many other countries are doing it.
Only twenty-five countries are characterized as full democracies. Does that mean they should abandon democratic government and join the non-democratic majority?
When you do, be sure to note how many murders are likely to committed by the stupid, drugged up or mentally ill who can easily and legally purchase a whole arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, vs. those in countries where they wouldn’t even be allowed to own a pop-gun.
Whatever it thinks of itself as, it’s a shameful laggard in most areas of social policy and social welfare. At one time views like those of many US states on issues ranging from the death penalty to women’s reproductive rights were prevalent throughout the world, but over time enlightenment prevailed and rationally grounded policies were instituted. The most regressive US states on social issues tend to be much more aligned with third-world backwaters than with most of the first world.
What an utter load of crap. First of all I don’t know anywhere that has the death penalty for pickpocketing. The US however has higher crime rates than most OECD countries and tends to be highest in the most serious crimes. For instance the US trails only Estonia and Mexico among this group in the rate of intentional homicide.
It might be instructive to look north to Canada, a culturally similar country. Canada abolished the death penalty many decades ago, and in general has much lower rates of incarceration and a much greater focus on rehabilitation instead of draconian penalties; the result is a significantly lower recidivism rate and lower crime rate pretty much across the board.
Why should it not? It satisfies a very human need for retributive justice and if such a penalty eases the pain of those who have lost loved ones in the most barbarous and unthinkable circumstances possible then why deny them that? It also serves the salutary purpose of ridding the planet of the vermin who committed those crimes. The fact that the rest of the world find it intensely annoying that the US won’t abide by their judgment is an added bonus.
You went a bridge too far, a lot of assumptions are loaded into what you’re saying here.
For one, that Canada is the most appropriate country to compare the United States to.
For two, while not explicitly stated you paint the picture of the U.S. having an out of whack general crime rate in compared to other OECD countries–this is only true for the crime of intentional homicide. It is not true for any other crime, and in particular for other violent crimes like rape, robbery and assault several other large OECD countries out rank the United States, and while the U.S. isn’t on the low end for any of those crimes, its peers suggest lots of countries with rehabilitation focused criminal justice systems have comparable violent crime rates to the United States for all violent crimes other than homicide. Sweden for example has almost four times the assault rate of the United States, and is considered a pioneer in rehabilitative prison systems.
FWIW, my position is rehabilitation is a good thing to have in your prison system for any prisoners you plan on releasing. However, I do not believe the way we handle prisoners, either harshly or leniently, is really a big mover of crime rates. I think those are more determined by what happens in society before someone gets to the point of being convicted of a crime than what happens to them after that point.
For three, that rehabilitation works for the problems we have. A large number of persons who end up becoming repeat criminals for major offenses are actually tied into deleterious cultures. Typically a culture of criminality. I’m not speaking in a euphemism here for “urban black culture”, but yes, one subset of that is indeed the urban black gang culture. There are also urban latino gangs and in some cities that are whiter than the norm (like Columbus, OH) there are pretty well known white gangs. In those cultures prison is either seen as something that is probably just going to happen as a cost of doing business, or even a badge of honor. These aren’t people who slip into crime due to a few bad decisions, but people who are steeped in it from so young they cannot know any better. It’s also not exclusively urban, there’s a whole meth manufacturing/selling culture in rural Virginia that is just as pernicious once someone is in that culture. Right/wrong is different in those worlds than it is outside of them, and I don’t think prison rehabilitation programs applied 10 years after someone has started down that path are as effective as many might wish they could be.
I think the countries with the lowest crime rates typically are the ones where you are least likely to find these large sub-society that operate in the criminal mode. Lessons from those societies are of minimal value to societies where such criminal sub-societies are common place.
Is it not obvious on the face it of it that this (that DP prevents witness-murder) would be so?
I’m not going out of my way to look for it because I really don’t care, it wasn’t my main point why I don’t think the death penalty should be abolished, it was just an added. I googled it, but didn’t find anything, nor would I expect to, since the text of my searches inevitably involves words that are used in any death penalty article
do you think being a stickler on minor side points will get you far?
The only salutary purpose it serves is promulgating a culture of savagery. I recommend reviving crucifixions, too, and an entertaining old sport involving hungry lions.
I doubt that the rest of the world gives a shit. It influences their diplomatic policies, though, such invalidating extradition for someone who would face the death penalty in the US. It also undermines US moral authority when they try to get sanctimonious about “human rights” with countries like China that have their own history of savagery. It must amuse them to no end.
Dude, stop. The nature of all policing and incarceration is violent and brutal. Unless you’re suggesting we end government period, you’re not any better. Cops don’t carry around bananas in their holster.
You believe in prison only? Guess what happens in prisons.
There’s nothing barbaric whatsoever about executing someone who actually murdered a couple of people or raped and murdered a woman or something equally horrible. That we may be executing innocent people is an issue, but you’re attacking the practice even in the situations where the guy is guilty. Neither me nor scores of people around the world think executing a murderer is barbaric. you are not going to get us to believe you just by asserting it repeatedly and then being a self-righteous dick about it
And let’s also not forget that we don’t really KNOW how many people in those countries truly do not believe in the death penalty, since a government policy is not the same thing as popular opinion. Did the people of these countries vote on those policies? Or did the politicians pass them on their own? This point is important if you’re going to keep using the world’s policies as a popular-opinion bludgeon
If you’re going to compare America to China just becuase of one loose association that we both have the death penalty, then YOU’VE lost all moral, logical, and argumentative validity/respect.
It’s like saying, “Hey, that baby has black hair. Hitler had black hair! Get that Hitler baby!”
A minor point that you made in 2 separate posts. What was your major point-- the nonsense about pick-pockets? It’s a lot easier to just admit you’re wrong.
No, I had to continue talking about it because you guys were
Well, you could go up and look it up again.
I only ever said one thing about pick-pockets, and that’s generally I’ve heard from people you should watch your wallet when walking around travelling in Europe. Since you guys can’t debate honestly, you claimed I said more stuff that I actually didn’t
Again, I outright said I don’t have that statistic for you. It isn’t easy to look up given the nature of the text search. But no one who actually cares about talking about the OP really cares.
How about you stop being a smart-ass and actually argue, you know, on whether the death penalty is right or wrong?
If you want to be a sniveling pedant I can have at you right back all day long