Capital Punishment

[Acriku]

I spent 4 hours in a jail for a project to see what it was like, and it was pretty bad, but not bad enough. For one, I got three meals a day. The quality of the food was left to be desired but it was food nonetheless. You get a warm bed with a pillow. Sometimes you get a window. You get an exercise yard to, well exercise and socialize. The guards treat you like crap, though. Basically, any bum who is fighting to survive on the streets would welcome jail with open arms. This is one of the errors of the jailing system, making it too easy to live with. Not that it is easy, though.

Maximum prison though, is the bad jail. I saw a documentary on it, and it was pretty bad. Would you want someone who is innocent live their lives through that hell? There is always the X factor, and any percentage of the people sent to this hell for a crime they didn't commit is unacceptable. It is worth than death. Death, you aren't alive to whine about it. It's only the people around you who are affected. But, life in prison is the worst for you. I am just turning the argument around and using it on you. Death has its advantages, though.

[Terror]

Half and half. I agree with the death penalty as it is a good deterant. But like Nav says, you can never be sure that someone is guilty. Personally, I think that if you want to teach someone a lesson, it's probably best not to kill them. But that doesn't mean that you have to be nice to them. There are things far worse than death.

(Just think how someone would react at learning they've been sentanced to 84,000 years for cruelty to animals. Let's see them try good behaviour for that! )

I mostly agree with your opinion

[Caid Ivik]

Altough sometimes we can be 100% sure a crime was committed by a suspect, even if it was a maniac with machine gun coming to a bank and just for some action killing everyone who moves, he doesn't deserve artificial death. But if he'll be put to prison for whole life, maybe there he finds a peace for his mind. Lifelong regreting should make him a perfect monk. Like on that NationStates web: reaching God trough guilt...

[nampigai]

shouldn't this have been in prp?

anywho Acriku you say that without capital punishment killing would raise. I'd like to see proof of that? Last time people was executed in Denmark was just after ww2 where the capital punishment was reinstated for a short time. However I'd bet you a lager that our rate of murders in percentage is smaller than that of the USA and I bet it is in other countries as well.

2nd before you are 101% sure that the guy isn't innocent how can we kill them? an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will get us no where, look at the middle east where the practise this law, need I say more?

I would believe it would hurt if you lost someone near to you, hell I'd probably want to kill the man myself if I was in the situation, but I don't believe it solves anything.

[Dante]

No killing! If you want to punish someone, make them miserable. But if you want to teach someone to be a better person... I'm not sure. But in any case, making them miserable but not killing them means that if you got it wrong they can be released.

[Timenn]

Hehe, monday I got an Dutch exam with a text about this subject.

However, my opinion is this:

There are 3 reasons why you want to punish someone for a crime

1) the fact that you need to punish someone for a crime

2) to scare of other potential criminals who can do the same

3) to teach the criminal how to behave, so when they are released, they will be good citizens.

It scares me that most people only seem to think about reason 1. Are you really so barbaric that you blindly follow your instincts and you just want to punish someone?

And now the problem with death penalty with those 3 reasons:

1) this is a matter of what every one thinks as the hardest punishment, for me being locked up for the rest of your life is far worse then dead. For other it seems that their killing mood should be satisfied.

2) After much research you can conclude that the death penalty doesn't scare people more then life-long prison. For example, the amount of murders in the USA is far higher then the countries in West-Europe without the death penalty.

So this means that the death penalty doesn't scare people to NOT commit the crime, but they still scare people, but it makes them feel threatened more times, and will quicker kill someone they feel threatened by. (And those stupid gun-law makes it even worse)

3)And how can you teach a criminal to behave if that criminal is dead??

And then there are plenty of other reasons why you shouldn't have the death penalty:

Never, NEVER will a court be 100% right. They always can make mistakes. So if you put someone to death who wasn't guilty then it is quite stupid don't you think? And this has happened some times before!

And when someone is in prison for 16 years, for example, and then released, that person can still have a life after this (however I won't deny that much damage is done to this person, but the person isn't killed!)

How can a government be good if it kills. Like Edric said, killing is wrong, and if you do, we will kill you. You can expect from people that they can show barbaric and instinctive actions. But you can't expect it from a government, a government must be a collection of the good and smart sides of people. And the government must not be driven by pure emotions.

And did you know that giving a death penalty costs more then imprison someone for the rest of his/her life?

And at the end you can always ask yourself this ethic question: What would you do if your whole family was killed?

I would still want that person put to prison. Because in my eyes that is the worst what can happen. Although I wouldn't say that on that moment and if I got my hands on that person I wouldn't know what I was going to do, but therefore such prisoners are guarded.

And most important: Killing the murderer will not bring the murdered back!

[Anathema]

Acriku, even if you get the basics of life (food, shelter), it is still a prison. You also contradict yourself when you say that death is merciful and that prisonment is to soft.

First, it's difficult for me to imagine how a christian could sentence someone to death. I mean, a man that just killed a whole bunch of people 5 days ago is obviously not sorry for it, and by killing him you take away the chance of making him see the errors he made. Life inprisonment would be far better.

For non christians, justice is an artificial concept. Once someone is murdered or whatever, the harm is done, the only thing left to do is make sure it doesn't happen again. There are only 3 reasons to terminate the life of the criminal. One is that it would make people happy, wich is sick and irrational. The other is that it is plain cheaper to kill the criminal instead of inprisoning him, wich is rational but still sick. The third one would be detterence, but looking at the situation in the US it's pretty obvious that it's not effective, and crimes that may or may not be committed by others have nothing to do with the crime that has been committed.

Btw, I read somewhere that 1 on 7 people put to death in the US turns out to be innocent.

[Acriku]

That argument of mine wasn't really mine, just that person's turned around on them. But death is what people fear the most, and a lesser punishment for killing somebody might seem tolerable to those who consider it. Unless you include torture into the sentence ;)

How in the world can they get that statistic when a case, after closed, does not open again, and the fact that if they can prove 1 in 7 people sent to death to be innocent, they should be doing that before they are sentenced. It just doesn't add up.

[DjCiD]

There was a big case about the Death Penalty and Death Row inmates a few months ago. It seems a study was done and it revealed the 25% of the ppl on Death Row (forget what State it was in) were actually innocent. That percentage is too high every 25 people out of a hundred were locked up falsely and some have already been put to death. I am for Capital Punishment when the crime calls for it. But the method in which we find them guilty or not seems to need to be fixed or else we wouldn't have so many innocent on DR. In that study done, 3 people were released from jail altogether and one other guy was sent to regular jail for a prior crime.

2 big questions. What about the mentally ill? What about those stupid people that ry and use mentally ill as an insanity plea?

"If you put someone in the electric chair and they say 'Where are we going?' that's too retarded." --JIM NORTON

[Acriku]

Dj, how did they find out that if they were innocent? If the defense council didn't do a good enough job that a study can do, then they are the problem, not the system.

Mentally ill should be put into facilities where they can't hurt anybody. But they should be studied excessively before admitted, and not after they start to drug him.

People who claim insanity are just bullsh*t, and can't reap what they sow. One of the worst, indeed.

[nampigai]

Still acriku, many european countries don't have the death penalty, and I believe our killing rates are lower than those of the USA. I think the issue is the american policy about guns.

[Acriku]

Do you know the differences between America and those countries? Cultural differences, government differences, judicial differences, size differences, population differences, etc. It's hard to compare countries with so much differentiation between them accurately.

[DjCiD]

Acriku- After the study was done they found out about numerous accounts of Police beating people into confessions. Others were proved by DNA test which weren't around back when they were locked up. Two others the real people confessesed.

[nampigai]

yes there are cultural differences, here we can't just go buy ourselves a gun or pepper spray. I still do not believe that you can solve killings by having death penalty, I really don't. Maybe you should look at the lobbyists that love guns so much.

[Acriku]

As for the first few, it's the local state's issue to fix. The last one, though, is the one that the system seems to be weak at. This is the problem, but I don't think it can be completely perfect so that no innocent people can be sentenced, but only minimized. How we can do that, I have no idea.

Namp, I think I understand your side, so what do you suggest to be in place of it?

[nampigai]

if it can not be completely safe so no innocent will be executed then how can you be pro death penalty? I'm sorry I just have a really hard time understanding this.

[Acriku]

Because I don't think any system can weed out all of the innocent. It is an issue we must minimize, though. I am not pro-kill-the-innocents, but when the predicament has that horrible of bad luck for the innocent accused what system can remedy the situation? I'm curious.

[nampigai]

put you self in the situation. You lay on the board and wait for the injection knowing that you are innocent. what will you say? what if you was on the other side watching and the "killer" turned over with red eyes telling you he was innocent, could you live with it?

[Acriku]

NaMp, emotions are irrational, so please do not try to appeal them to me :-

[nampigai]

sorry but I have a hard time not to. This is one of the reasons I'm against it. My morals wont allow me. As long as I'm not 100% sure I can't accept capital punishment, and I don't think I could even if I was 100% sure.

[DjCiD]

Kinda on topic kinda off topic but still funny :D What can I say it's a Tough Crowd...no respect ;D

rtsp://st21g1.services.att-idns.net/v1/494/1742/2597/toughcrowd/1019_300.rm

I have no idead how to link this with the thing it doest work....

[Egeides]

A Canadian research showed a direct relation between capital punishment and violence. When they officially banned capital punishment in Canada, it seems violence went down consequently. This is what the reasearch says.

[Acriku]

What works in Canada may not work in America, you have to understand this. Also, banning capital punishment would be a state issue, so not all states may do it.

[Tezcatlipoca]

If you take away death penalty, more and more murders will rise, because who wouldn't want that life in prison? Hell, if you're a bum living on the streets, you would literally KILL someone to spend your life in the better home - prison. The death penalty is effective, and does the job.

Perhaps a min-security prison. Although I have no direct experience of prison, I know multiple people that do. One currently in fact. So, if you prefer getting beaten to a pulp every few days, either by the guy next door during rec time, or by the guard because you didn't say "hi" to em this morning, and maybe a little sodomy every now and then.. sure.. prison life is great.

[Acriku]

Problem is Tez, people don't know about it until they get into the slammer. Maybe a required visit to the maximum prison for everybody would set things in motion ;)