h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The passionate conviction:

You come home from a night out. You're wife has been raped and slaughtered with an axe while you played pool with your friends. The neighbours have called the cops, cause they heard noises. Ugly noises. You bend down over your wife, touch her bloddied face. Cry. Your door bursts open. The cops see a man bending over a mutilated body, his (your) hands a bloody. The stench of smoke and alcohol fills the room. In a fit of rage, the detective puts a bullet through your head.
The detective becomes a hero for serving passionate justice. The murder is free to drink coffee with friends. You are dead. Justice is served, no?

But it would all be easier to differenciate between the badguys and the goodguys in a Tarantino World, 'cause the badguys would either be unshaved mexicans, or really ugly vampires...

Hi,

just been having a quick browse through this conversation, kinda new to this setup.

So we live in a hypothetical Tarantino world where all the murderers look ike Harvey Keitel. And we're going to execute them. Now I'll freely admit to being a bit of a lefty. One of the main objections I have about the death penalty even in cut & dried cases is that it is a form of state-condoned violence. As Michael Palin said, 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.' Yes, tax-payers money is spent on incarcerating individuals who have commited crimes we all find abhorrant, but with the death-penalty you are suggesting that taking human life is OK in a situation where there IS a viable option, ie incarceration. You don't think that this may have a sociological knock-on effect to the general populace?

K

Ok, this is the fifth time I hit the reply-button. This time I WILL write something. No matter how poorly articulated...

"With the death-penalty you are suggesting that taking human life is OK in a situation where there IS a viable option, ie incarceration. You don't think that this may have a sociological knock-on effect to the general populace?"

I would think it makes a mans life less valuable. In essence you (where "you" are the society in which the Death Penaly is used) are saying "do a bad thing and you're dead". It's like a computer game. Mess up, and BANG! Game over. No reposte. No mercy. I would even say no honor. (However "honor" is so vague and culture-biased it doesn't really hold any strength in this discussion)
In a society where life isn't valued, you can find numerous ways to die without even looking. Assaults, robberies become more and more common and the people demand the right to arm themselves for the protection of their own life. (What? we allready have that in a backwater nation called USA? Oh.) With the increased flow of arms, criminals get more arms, violence increases. Prisons fill up, taxmoney go to keeping alive prisoners of medium crimes while hospitals are shut down from lack of funding. The populace cries out for Death Penalty for armed robberies to stop that. The populace get their will. Armed robberers get increasingly desperate. They begin killing off their victims without giving them a chance at all, to avoid witnesses. Why not? They can't get any worse out it then they already are.
The police becomes better equipped, gelrounds are replaced by armourpiercering. Stunbatons are replaced by shock-grenades. Criminal elements at war with the governement. Policeofficers are awarded the right to shoot violent offenders to avoid getting shot themselves. Human right activists scream desperatly as teenagers sporting cell-phones are slain by the Justice. Things get out of hand.

That was overdone. I noticed it. Sorry.

My point: Violence begets violence.

Couldn't agree more.

In reply to the spelling mistake allegations:

Now I looked on the Amnesty International web site to find that no country at present considers a spelling mistake, or spelling mistakes for that matter, a crime punishable by execution.

Well, that's a load off. Now I can travel freely!

I'm thinking I might get killed(yeah, right) for saying this, but I actually think Death Penalty is a good thing in a minority of cases.
I.e.:
A notorious rapist/child-abuser/killer:
Has been in/out of jail for as long as he has lived, and isn't likely ever to "rejoin" society in an orderly fashion. Which is better:
- Putting him in jail for life, (which in Norway is only 22 years, and they get out after 16), where he'll cost a helluva lot of money.
or
- getting rid of the problem once and for all + you get a damn good preventive effect.

Now, I'm not saying that Death Penalty would be a good thing for all rapists, child-abusers or killers, but I think in some cases, where the criminal shows no remorse, and has shown that he/she will do it again, it can be the lesser evil.

"If we execute them MAYBE they will receive a reward rather than a punishment!"

If so, it's God's fault not ours. We did our part.

"The torture is in the drawing out. Which is the more cruel?"

The problem is that we must be careful. Deciding on an execution is the most drastic measure a society can take. It must be done carefully.

"Has been in/out of jail for as long as he has lived, and isn't likely ever to "rejoin" society in an orderly fashion. Which is better:
- Putting him in jail for life, (which in Norway is only 22 years, and they get out after 16), where he'll cost a helluva lot of money.
or getting rid of the problem once and for all + you get a damn good preventive effect."

The cost of executing someone is hirer than imprisoning them for life. That's probably a good thing. I'd like to have as much confidence in the system as possible. I don't know that the death penalty has ever been shown to be a particularly effective deterrent (Although it's a great way to incapacitate someone.)

I don't care to justify executions as a cost saving measure or as an effective general deterrent. I just think it's the morally correct response to a heinous act.

One-eye, I feel you are using outdated assumptions

- Putting someone in jail for life costs less than letting them run through years in the appeals process to avoid the death penalty. In the US, the appeals process for death row inmates is rarely less than a decade. The legal fees absorbed by the state are easily much higher than a lifetime of incarceration.

- Assigning the death penalty neither gets rid of the problem, nor provides any preventative effect. The problem is not inherent in the one person you kill. The problem lives on in thousands of criminals and future criminals. If this were not the case, murder, rape, and child abuse would have been eliminated long ago. I would also argue that repeat rapists/child-abusers/killers won't be deterred by anything, including the death penalty.

In the US system it the costs of the appeal-system exceed the costs of the life-sentence, yes. My arguments were related to hypothetical system, with say, one or two chances too appeal, and the costs of incarceration being the ones in Norway today. And they are extremely high, as Norwegian prisons are of very high "standard". Being an inmate in some of the newer prisons here is almost like being locked in a five-star hotel-room for a couple of years.

A serial rapist/child-abuser IS a problem. He/she is of course the result of another problem, but still this person is a problem that has to be dealt with. I would agree that serial killers are not deterred by a death sentence, but maybe the pedofile teacher would think twice before raping another kid. Anyway, the maximum penalty here in Norway for child-abuse is 16 years or thereabouts, and I don't think the maximum penalty has ever been used. In addition, almost all criminals here get out after serving 2/3rds of their sentence. The death-penalty would surely have a better preventive effect than that.

i think that capital punoshment shoild be made a little more severe as well. what we should do is take all the inmates on death row, throw them all in a big room maybe say 100 feet by 100 feet, that should hold about 90 to 100 of them, let them stay there for about a week, no food just water, they can eat each other if they'd like, and then after a week whichever ones were left would be the biggest and strongest and thats when you pump the mustard gas into the vents, after two mass executions you would definatly see a drop in the number of violent crimes because that would be a terrible way to die.

jingle bells

BLuE

The answer to that is surely that you keep the offender in prison if you believe that they're still dangerous, or if they've shown no remorse. Those are certainly the main factors taken into account when deciding whether or not to release someone on parole under the British system, and they're frankly so obvious that I'd have thought most countries applied similar logic. (Although there is a snag with the "remorse" factor, since it means that someone who has been wrongly convicted is obliged to show fake remorse for something they didn't really do in order to be released.)
As for the "cost" argument: this has been dealt with elsewhere in this debate, but the point is worth repeating. As death sentences are likely to lead to years of appeals and expensive court cases, it's actually often cheaper to keep someone alive than for the State to try to kill them.

As I said in my last posting, the cost-issue is dependent on how the system works. If the defendant gets an infinite number of appeals, continuances and so on, it will, of course, become very costly. It's all a matter of how you choose to handle it.

The reason for the early releases in Norway is overcrowded prisons, combined with a general opinion in the authorities that "there is something good in everyone - we just have to bring it out". The best example of this is what they call "Incarceration with freedom", which in practice means that they don't put the criminal in jail, instead they give this person an appartment, a job and so on. He/she is then under surveilance for the duration of the penalty. They even do this with rapists!!!! This has lead to a couple of episodes where people have been nearly killed, raped, robbed, etc., because the surveilance is faulty.

I agree that lazy surveillance is not enough punishment for a violent offender.

But here's the issue with the appeals process. You have to chose between two things, neither of which is very appealling. Either you have to spend lots of money confirming someone's guilt and the severity of their offense, or you open your system up to periodically killing innocent people in the name of justice. Sorry, but I'll pass.

Permanently deprived of liberty, subjected to a lifetime of contemplating their actions. Sounds like a fate worse than death. With the added advantage that if, as is all too frequently the case, you later find out the conviction was unsound - you can always release a live body. I'm sure Derek Bentley is very glad, sitting on his cloud, that he's been given a posthmous pardon, but I suspect he would rather not be dead all the same.

I'm totally agreeing on that point. The cases in which I would find it concievable too use the death penalty is the very rare cases where you have serial killers, rapists, child-abusers, etc. who have admitted to commiting these crimes in cold blood and show no remorse or possibility of rehabilitation. I too believe that it is morally wrong that the authorities should stand above all and rule over life and death (allthough it's not quite that drastic), but what are you going to do with the aforementioned type of offenders? No matter how small the likelyhood of their escape is, is society willing to take that risk? And as somebody said earlier (maybe it was in another thread), why should we risk the lives (not only in the physical sense) of their fellow inmates?

>Permanently deprived of liberty, subjected to a lifetime of contemplating their actions. Sounds like a fate worse than death.<

While they might be confined for their lives, they won't do any contemplation of their sins. The best you can expect out of a career criminal is for them to contemplate why the police singled them out, and how they were caught. The reason they're criminals is because they don't care about other people.

Incidentally, the term penitentiary comes from penitent. The Quakers thought that isolation would lead criminals reflecting on their crimes and reforming themselves.

>... and show no remorse or possibility of rehabilitation.<

If you have a perpetrator of a serious crime like multiple rapes, murders, etc., why should you care about their ability to rehabilitate. I don't care how rehabilitated they are, they have no business on the street.

"While they might be confined for their lives, they won't do any contemplation of their sins. The best you can expect out of a career criminal is for them to contemplate why the police singled them out, and how they were caught. The reason they're criminals
is because they don't care about other people."
- The reason they're criminals is maybe because nobody cared about them: Most of the criminals have either an educational, either a psychic problem. People who kill other people for the fun are an exception... And it wouldn't be fair to make a rule based on exceptions.
It's probably also because, like everyone, they care about themselves: if I had the choice between starving or being killed and killing someone else, what would I do? (BTW, have you ever heard of Farley Matchett? Being attacked, he knocked his opponent down, called the police and stayed there: he's now awaiting either death either a miracle)

"Incidentally, the term penitentiary comes from penitent. The Quakers thought that
isolation would lead criminals reflecting on their crimes and reforming themselves."
- Could you explain that bit?

"If you have a perpetrator of a serious crime like multiple rapes, murders, etc., why should you care about their ability to rehabilitate. I don't care how rehabilitated they are, they have no business on the street. "
- I'll try to quote Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor:
"Today, I'll meet a burglar, a murderer and a rapist and for each of them I'll have to remember they're still - and especially - human beings". And now, Jesus: "The one who has never done a sin may throw the first rock" (These are maybe not the exact words, I'm afraid...)
A man who has once driven a car drunk has no business on the street and surely not behind a steering wheel, but that seems less important. Why? He's also a potential killer. Fact is that being only men and women, we all make mistakes ('Errare humanum est'), but some mistakes are seen as being heinous, other aren't; some people get a second or third chance, some don't.
(Don't get me wrong, I don't call a murder a 'little mistake')

22 years versus actual life imprisonment...

early release due to overcrowding...

Reform the judicial and prison systems before using such arguments to support the death penalty.

No business out on the street? Sure. So throw away the key. But don't go for the moral relativism which says that killing is only OK if you went to law school.

I don't think that the relative costs of imprisonment or death penalty should even be an issue in the debate. Particularly in the states (the richest nation in the world). Hypothetical situation:

Judge: You have been sentenced to death
Prisoner: But why?
Judge: We've done a cost-benefit analysis and we've decided we can't afford to keep you alive. Killing you (and 10 others like you) means the military can buy a brand new, state of the art attack helicopter.

Seriously though, the debate shouldn't take cost into account, that would be inhuman.