This is Why I Support the Death Penalty

[August]

A couple points Haplo.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

The death penalty is not - and never has been - a punishment that is successful to dissuade a criminal from committing his capital crime.

Yes there are people that have ignored the potential consequences of their actions, usually because they don't think they will be caught and sure there are those that don't care either way, but one thing is undeniable. The murderer that has been put to death will never murder again. What other criminal punishment can produce these results?

Yet the DOJ's data says recidivism for violent felons was last closely tracked at 67.5%. So basically you let 100 murderers go to spare one innocent man - and guess what - you just killed 67 or 68 more people.....

You are stretching those statistics way beyond accuracy. First off "violent felons" includes a lot more crimes than just murder and nobody is advocating executing muggers, and recidivism among violent felons does not automatically mean they got out and committed murder so your "guess what" example does not hold water.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by August

I dunno GR. I don't think I'd really want cost to be a factor in sentencing.

well of course not... cost shouldnt be a factor in sentencing.

but august i want you to think of something.

spoke to a medic today about this very story... ok so here goes because this is gross.

you are a paramedic and you show up on the scene of an "unresponsive infant" call.

you examine the child and he has clearly been physically abused.

but how do you determine he has been "raped"?

the medic's answer was simple but disgusting.

"because the infants horribly mutilated, bloody wound of an anus will be stretched out to about 2 - 2.5 inches across. "i've seen it before in baby boys AND baby girls." he said

THE GUILTY PARTY...

....DESERVES....

...TO DIE.

im sorry august but you cannot convince me that he deserves to sit in prison and watch TV/ play basketball and eat 3 square meals all day for the rest of his life on anyone's dollar.

[August]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

im sorry august but you cannot convince me that he deserves to sit in prison and watch TV/ play basketball and eat 3 square meals all day for the rest of his life on anyone's dollar.

Of course not, but the DP has never just been applied to such inhuman monsters. It has been repeatedly abused throughout human history by both governments and individuals and as such is just not something I want the state to be engaging in.

However, I do agree with you about living the good life in prison. Rather than giving said monsters a quick clean death, i'd much rather lock them up in a very small cell for the rest of their lives in solitary confinement and withOUT TV, books, newspapers or other amenities. They should have nothing but time to reflect on the crime that put them there and without outside input I think that time will be a heavy burden for them to bear.

In fact I think prison in general should be made as difficult and unpleasant as possible. Convicts should be worked like dogs every waking hour, if for no other reason than to make them so worn out that they won't have the energy left to prey on each other.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Why?

Very well, I shall elaborate further.

It doesn't replace the person lost, but it removes the person who took their life and can at least put the minds of the family to rest with the knowledge that the murderer no longer lives. And death is the ultimatum because of the fear it inflicts upon the criminal in most cases. It MAKES them sorry.

What good is being sorry for a few months, or even a few years? Make them sorry for the rest of their lives, and then ensure that they are miserable lives.

The criminal's fear.

That hardly seems like penance. I think you overestimate the effects of fear on people who are capable of such atrocious acts.

Depends on what type of labor camp you're referencing. If you mean a Communist-Russian labor camp with no hygienic stations, horrid food, and terrible conditions, then I would agree. It has plenty of ups to it. Taxpayers wouldn't have to pour money into the system to support these bastards (as we do now) and the nation as a whole would benefit from their work more than it would suffer (somewhat like the penal system the French had set up during the 19th and 20th centuries; you've seen Papillon, I assume).

Yes, I've seen Papillon. No, I do not mean something like that or a gulag in the Soviet style (well at least, not totally)
In order to be Constitutional, the camp could not practice anything regarded as cruel and unusual punishment. So all we have to do is find state-sponsored employment with terrible standards, and we have the worst possible environment for them whilst remaining legal through precedent. The military should serve admirably as a precedent for the measures needed. It would be a hard case to argue but it could be done if Congress backed it.
The gulag had doctors and libraries and al kinds of amenities, they were just so bad that no one would ever use them.

Unfortunately, labor camps will never be established for political reasons. We'd look like demons to the outside world.

It all depends on how the case is presented, and whether or not it has media support.

I agree here. There would also need to be places where discipline could be carried out, preferably a public area. If a prisoner was caught say trying to escape, he should be taken up onto a stage-like area in front of all the prisoners and have his legs broken, or be beaten severely and denied medical care.

No, you can't break people's legs. That would be cruel and unusual punishment. What you can do is break their spirit, and push them to the limits of physical endurance. Impose very long solitary confinement periods for disobedience and then give them the choice between that and some almost equally unpleasant alternative.

If one caused trouble in general, they should be thrown into a small building and locked in for days on end, denied of all the basics (save for half a loaf a bread per day, a bottle of water per week, and no proper furnishings, such as beds or toilets; rations could also be determined by the camp's warden and could be based off the severity of the infraction). If one assaulted a guard, that same stage area should be the location to shoot the assailant.

That's pretty much what solitary confinement is, but with a little more food, a lot more water and it has to be the same for everyone, with an acceptable caloric intake. But nobody said anything about sleep deprivation

One more thing I forgot to mention; No shooting people. All uses of force should be non-lethal except in the most extreme circumstances. You don't want captives escaping their fate by taking suicidal actions, do you? Truncheons, tazers, and CS gas should serve well enough.

Agreed here. Perhaps make it 12 hours a day on the working time to make even higher profits and the prisoners more miserable, but 8 is just as good.

12 hrs might be hard to pass of as not being cruel and unusual, but if it could be done, I say go for it.

Do you think the possession of amenities should be made an offense punishable by time in "the hole"?

That, or particularly undesireable duties. Perhaps even a few hours of forced excercise.

Or better yet they WILL die in the camps. We might be able to find something to do with the bodies as well. Perhaps donate them to science.

Well, if it's a life sentence in the literal sense, they're going to die in the camps one way or the other. I'm pretty sure using the bodies in any way other than what they desire would be a violation of human rights, though.

Liquidates criminals, lol.

Why liquidate them when you can break them?

The justice is that they will feel a fear no one innocent can ever possibly feel when it comes time for them to die, and society will be rid of another trouble maker for good. They will have regret for what they've done, they will wish things could be different, and they will have to suffer from the pain of not knowing what will happen to them. Not only that, but it intimidates people on the outside to obey the law or face death for their actions.

There are worse things than death. Since death is a fate we all suffer, why not precede it with a hellish life repaying one's debt to society? Which is more punitive in the end?
One of Stalin's favorite tricks was to give a person a tenner or a quarter, and if they survived it, tack on another sentence. While this is not permissable under the U.S. Justice system, there's no rule against insinuating that one's sentence might be commuted, only to dash their hopes on the day before the expect to be released.
A lifetime with a broken spirit and mind is more hellish than a few moments with a broken body.

If there's a hell, then good. They burn forever in it.

I personally don't think there is, and because I'm a down-to-Earth person and don't think about what is not a certainty, I think they should be executed because I KNOW the last things they'll feel forever will be too terrible to conceive for we citizens in good standing. That is the very substance of the death penalty. Fright, anger, helplessness, and remorse; I'm aware of that much. But what it would feel like to actually experience these things all at once and not just examine the words and ponder their meanings and what it would be like to feel them all at once is something I shall never go through.

Well then, if you're a down to Earth person that does not trust uncertainty, you should love the idea of labor camps. It guarantees adequate punishment while the guilty are amongst the living. I take it that you like the idea already.

Agreed on the exoneration part (I think they should be given a little more than money for their time wrongfully served), but not so much on the execution part.

What part of the execution part? The money we would save? I'll admit that remains in doubt until we know exactly how much product we can squeeze out of these felons, but it has to be better than the current system, where they produce virtually nothing.
The death penalty is very expensive and time-consuming, I can only assume that a reversible lifetime labor sentence would not warrant so much debate, and with production factored in, would be cheaper.

In my opinion on what should happen after a person is convicted of murder and sentenced to death, they should spend one day in their jail cell. The next day, they are to be taken out into either a courtyard with either concrete walls or a special sand mound or a concrete room and will be shot. It's cheap, it doesn't take a lot of time, and it's effective.

Yeah, but we have an appeals system to prevent that. Bear in mind the nature of the U.S. Justice system before you go around shooting people for the first conviction of a transgression.
Labor camps preserve the lives of the innocent until they can be exonerated. The death penalty is irreversible.

Not only that, but there would be a backlash from the rest of the world on it. It would not be a healthy political thing to do.

We already suffer from backlash for retaining the death penalty. I doubt we'd suffer more for using a system that productively incarcerates heinous criminals while not breaching the taboo against cruel and unusual punishment.
Then again, who knows? It depends on the spin.

Unfortunately, people aren't as strict as they used to be anymore and seem to have weaker stomachs for crueler punishments. The justice system of the United States anymore seems to focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Well yes, it does. Remember that the U.S. Justice system was founded upon the protection of the defendant, rather than furthering the goals of the prosecutor. That is because injustice is so much more harmful than flawed justice.
Rehabilitation is a natural extension of that philosophy, but prone to abuse by those who really deserve terrible punishments.
I think that labor camps, in the context I have presented, are a happy medium. Miserable enough for the guilty, and hopeful enough for the innocent.
The important thing is that they be reserved only for those who are found gulty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of crimes like premeditated murder, rape, slave trafficking, and the like.

[Skybird]

He who thinks he can decide in a state of aroused emotions, is wrong. He gets decided.

Eventually it happens that an offender really realises the wrong he did, and truly regrets and changes. I do not say this happens in all cases, I say that it does happen in some cases. That'S why the door usually should not get closed forever. If such a true change takes place in somebody, he indeed is no longer the person he has been before.

Eventually it happens that the person most affected by a crime - the victim - forgives as well.

And for once I agree with August. Costs should be no argument in sentencing. It would be an extremely dangerous precedence that easily could spread from death penalties to all kind of law cases and penalties in general. You should think twice before accepting that to happen, else we end up with putting people into coffins, linking them to life-support system inside (if that is not too expensive), and stacking the boxes near the garbage dump.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

There is an appeals process.

they have X number of times to appeal their sentence and can serve X number of years in order for the defense to accumulate evidence which will clear their name.

The appeals process very often failed, and still fails. The numbers of death sentences proven to have been wrong, are telltaling. The system does not work precise and flawless enough to allow acceptance of terminal, irreversible "penalties". A residual risk for a false sentence remains in most court cases. That's why one should stay away from making irreversible sentences a regular routine. And I do not accept something like "I can live with 1 innocent killed per 5 criminals executed, that is a good rate, that's the price of justice."

What would be next?

[CaptainHaplo]

August,

I am in agreement that the death penalty has its good points. My issue above regarding its use as a deterent is that the argument holds no water in a historical view. But I touched on recividism later, as you noted. I personally am fine with the death penalty, provided the process itself underwent a review.

As far as my taking statistics inaccurately, I noted that the stats were for violent felons - not murderers. There is no data quickly found on murder recividism. However, that means there is nothing to suggest that the percentage is somehow lower for the MOST VIOLENT kind of crime. Even if we cut that number in half - to 33% - your still talking 33 dead people....

I agree that the numbers could be viewed with some question on how it relates to murder - but even being generous with the idea that murderers that get out are somehow "rehabilitated" at twice the rate as muggers - your still looking at way too many innocents dead.

Simply put - I have no problem with a death for a death - provided the accused is given every REAL opportunity to true, blind justice. My objection to the Death Penalty as it is today - is that the system is currently flawed in a way where its doubtful that the trials in question are truly impartial.

Well we, along with a whole host of countries, don't have the death penalty and the last I looked our violent crime levels are not particularly high in comparison to the US. I think it would be fair to say that the death penalty doesn't work, it doesn't reduce violent crime.

If what you claim is true about recidivism there should be a lot of it here, but there isn't.

[Wolfehunter]

I would support death penalties if these issues where solved first.

Government corruption.
Police state.
Bias, corrupted and racist laws.
Absolute proof!

Then I would consider death penalties worth while. Because there would be no margin of errors.

One theory is that in a way criminals who are caught and imprisoned should be viewed very much like disease carriers. They are isolated from the society when they are 'active' but once the disease has been cured they could re-join the society. The way it can be seen from a sociological viewpoint is that crime is like a disease or a social malaise and once we know what makes a criminal 'tick' we've learned something and that data can be used to prevent similar crimes from happening in the future, in a way creating a 'vaccine' against that particular crime.

IMO it is the sign of a societies strenght that it can take a criminal and make that person into a good citizen, not just kill him off in some horrid ceremony used to thirst some collective bloodlust akin to the ancient times when people were sacrificed to whatever diety.

I think people should be allowed to go with the 'biblical' rule, "eye for an eye" etc., that the death penalty represents. But then they shouldn't use any aspect of sociological sciences in their societies. Or any aspects of modern society. They should live like the Amish and kill off the criminals of their little backward community.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by OneToughHerring

Well we, along with a whole host of countries, don't have the death penalty and the last I looked our violent crime levels are not particularly high in comparison to the US. I think it would be fair to say that the death penalty doesn't work, it doesn't reduce violent crime.

If what you claim is true about recidivism there should be a lot of it here, but there isn't.

I've had this discussion with several people professionally. There are many, many factors that contribute to violent crime rates, the least relevent of which is the death penalty. In many cases, it is cultural.

[CaptainHaplo]

Not to mention - most murderers end up spending life in prison anyway. The issue then becomes is the expedience of termination before nature the proper option? But thats another question entirely.

[August]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

What good is being sorry for a few months, or even a few years? Make them sorry for the rest of their lives, and then ensure that they are miserable lives.

The Lance Corporal gets it.

[GoldenRivet]

I would be for that... the problem here is that most judges would rather the criminals had cable TV and ping pong tables and weight sets and libraries and movie night and similar luxuries.



when you are sentenced life in prison, you should be placed in an 8x8 white room with concrete walls, floor, and ceiling, no window.

your first day on the grounds you will dig a hole using a regular garden shovel.

the hole will measure 7 feet long by 3 feet wide by 6feet deep.

you are allowed 30 minutes per day in a 20x20 exercise room which is equipped with a treadmill.

your food will be your choice of white or wheat bread, a single serving of vegetable, and a single serving of "mystery meat" served with room temp water.

you are allowed to bring 5 books for entertainment ... make them good ones.

your cell will be equipped with a single cotton sheet and a seat with a small hole for defication.

your only chore will be to clean out the sewage trap beneath this hole once per week equipped with rubber gloves, a single sponge and a regular garden hose.

when you die of old age, you will be placed into a pine box and thrown into the hole you dug on day one

[Aramike]

I have no problem with, rather than the death penalty, making prison life damned near unbearable. But sadly, that's not what we have. If we were to put into place the systems that most of us agree upon, ultra left groups would go nuts. I seem to remember that a few years ago there was a politician in Europe that claimed that a prison without a chance of escape leaves the prisoners no hope, and, as such, is inhumane.

As such, there are indeed some offenders that should just be put to death I believe.