So you believe in the death penalty after all.

There is a Polish film maker who made a series of movies about the ten commandments. For "You shall not kill", he tells the story of a young man who becomes a murder and gets caught, sentenced, and executed. Unfortunately, I neither do remember the title, nor the name of that guy. Kozlowski, maybe? The prison scenes, the sheer absurdity of the civilized "ceremony" of bringing someone to execution and ritually lead him through his final minutes, unmasks the pervertion that is behind any consideration of death as a "penalty". One moment that guys smokes his last cigarette, guards around him, standing together like old friends, smiling - the next moment he is fighting for his life, yelling, pushing, guards grabbing him, and the others handling the rope. Grotesque.

Never said I didn't.

I agree. Its takes along time for me to be angry, but someone just needs to threaten my family and im Rambo - minus the muscles. Its easy for ppl to say killing is not good etc., but if they saw someone trying to kill one of their own family members, i think the "Thou shall not kill" theory would go right out the window.:yep:

Ok, it's the same game of revenge you've been playing with me all day. The only difference is the severity of the penalty. You take a life, your life is forfeit.

Any psychologist and behaviourist tells you that it is hard solid fact from experimental research that the more time lies between the event that is sanctioned, and the experience of the sanction, the more the probability that the subject will "learn" something from it is declining: the probability that it will chnage it's behavior as a reaction to the penalty falls constantly, and quickly with time. that's why it is especially important with young ones who for example have stolen, that they are brought to court and feel a sanction as soon as possible - best would be the next day. Also, there must be an "aversive stimulus" that can be felt, that is a must: to impose just a suspended sentence is contra-productive. It would be better, if for some pedagogical reasons a penalty is not suspended, but cut shorter. I would send a 15 year old teenager who has stolen for the first time to prison, but only for a couple of days, say half or full a week. But common practise is that for extremely questionable pedagogical reasons and concerns that the future of this young and still developing person could suffer harm, any penalty is suspended, or is transformed into some social work - that the offender may not be used to, but probably do not think of as a really aversive stimulus that a penalty by definition should be. It's mor elikely that he learns another lesson: "I can get away with it."

All this implies that the penalty does not prevent the penalised person from further existing. Your argument that a shorter time between deed and execution would be a deterrent to others, or the offender, is a non-starter, for that reason. When you are dead, you cannot be deterred, and you cannot change your behaviour in reacting to a penalising stimulus. Deterrence should work in advance, to prevent a deed. Penalty should work after the deed has been done, to prevent that it is repeated. So, you can't avoid seeing that death never can be a penalty. and since no one committing a crime on which there is death penalty expects or even plans to get caught, also for this reason death cannot be a deterrent for him, or others. and that may be the reason why death penalty has no effects of crime rates in those countries that practise it.

My feeling is that the quicker death is applied to those convicted of capital crimes the more the deterent effect on others. If the deterent effect doesn't exist then why wait to execute the sentance? Two years may be too long to wait.

I suspect that murder/homicide is not the first crime committed by the individuals on death row. Perhaps we aught to try making an example of a few condemed individuals so that others think twice B4 murdering someone.

As you stated the death of a convicted muderer after ten plus years after the conviction is not a deterent to others.

If someone killed your loved one(s) and you in turn killed them, you would be no better in God's eyes and have to live the rest of your life as well as take to your grave your spiritual convictions. Do you think that you would be in Heaven with your loved ones that had their lives taken innocently? I think not and I think you would have failed your personal test in life and your punishment would end up being a Hell created of your own surroundings of misery and loss for all eternity.

It's sad that we have to lose loved ones in life. The emotional pain is almost too much to bear sometimes. However, loved ones do not belong to us. They belong to God just as you do and just as whatever or whoever killed them. Do you curse God and seek revenge against him when a loved one gets struck by lightning in a storm and killed? Do you curse God for disease and starvation that is happening around the world if it claimed one of your loved ones?

It is funny how we as people think of ourselves, who we know, and what we have as the most important things in life. I say let God take over your heart and confide in him for the right answers and choices and you shall be saved.

No, don't morph my statement. The importance of a short time gap between deed and sanction/penalty is with regard to the subject that is penalized - not with regard to any witnesses, observers. and if that subject is killed during the penalty, it all becomes meaningless. Others have nothing to do with it. The deterring effect for others is not increased by a shorter time gap.

Simply understand it: death by all reasons of logic cannot be a penalty. It simply is not. Pain is a penalty, if the pain is survived, or imprisonement, loosing somehting precious (money), but not death. Criterion for a penalty is that there is a time after it's execution. Obviously, this is not true for death. Death can only be a püenalty for the subject - if it is the death of someone he loves. The resulting pain and despair about that loss is the aversive stimulus, and it is survived by the offender who got sanctioned that way.

Sorry, you stand on lost ground here. ;) You have all logic against you, and the theory of penalty and how to manipulate the behaviour of a subject by ppositive or negative reinforcement is one of the few things behaviouristic theory has rocksolid ground it can claim, by extremely solid experimental data (the far-leading conclusions they oftehn draw from them - that is something different). All this stuff has found extremely detailed experimental elaboration from the late 50s to early or mid-70s, to give a very rough time scale.

Your got a good heart SubSerpent. And your correct. But what im saying is, its a reaction to the event, if i saw someone stabbing my sons or about to shoot them i would react in a way where i would probably kill him. I would not be able to control myself or sit back. I dont think any parent would if they saw there wife/son/daughter about to be killed - their reaction would be to protect & kill that person. But if it happened and i wasn't around only to see the killer later in court i dont think i would want to kill him, i would hope he gets a very long jail term and i would probably hate him for years. Forgiveness would take a long time.

Better to torture them instead? Because the pain is punishment.

If you want to put it that way, yes. Being imprisoned in a cell 3x3 m for 15 or 20 years or the rest of your life, is a form of torture, less on the physical and more on the psychological and mental level.

In fact, mild forms of tortures is what many parents still are using occasionally if their kids misbehaved :lol:

Psychologists simply talk of aversive stimuli that function as a penalty. You could also penalize not by inflicting a negative stimulus, but by ending the sensation of a positve stimulus.

In the end, a penalty is meant to change the behavior of the subject, in the way the experimenter thinks it to be more acceptable/wishable/correct. A penalty is a process of conditioning, and when it is over, the behavior, the reactions to a given stimulus should have been changed by the subject, in order to avoid the re-inflicting of the negative/aversive stimuli or the denial of positive stimuli. Limiting somebody's freedom, for example. It's all about shapening a preferred behavior pattern. In the understanding of behavioursim, this is the exclusive meaning of "learning".

The Polish film author I talked of somehwere above is Krzysztof Kieślowski , the movie is part of the so-called "Decalog" and has the title "A short film about killing".

german wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_kur...das_T%C3%B6ten

It won the european film award 1988, and the special prize of the jury in Cannes 1988.

I can imagine that the rage you would feel would be enough to do something so foolish. However, as humans and spiritual beings we have to remain focused on our faith. God is there for us no matter what and it is he who we should confide in during difficult times. It's alright on your part to want to prevent death (saving your loved one(s), but how can you prevent death when you bring death (Killing a person whom you assumed was going to kill your loved ones)?

If the person had already killed your loved one(s), then there is nothing you could do about it except to accept it as it is. It was in God's will that it happened that way. Your test would be on how well you handled it. Did you keep your faith and trust in God or did you take the easy solution and go astray? Either way your loved ones are with the Lord and you and the murderer remain. Now what do you do? Do you kill him? Do you allow your rage and hate to consume you so much that you lose all connection to your faith? To do so would be just as sinful as what he had done.

No doubt, it would be a difficult path to have to stay on considering there are times and things beyond our control that make it oh so easy to go astray. You just gotta try to stay focused on your faith and let God consume your heart and soul and be rest assured that the guilty do pay.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...ceid=zeitgeist

I agree. If you are going to have a death penalty it should be administered quickly. When the UK had the death penalty, the convicted person had one appeal to the Home Secretary, if that failed, after three clear Sundays the convict would hang. Basically between trial and execution would be no more than three weeks.

Nemo