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

"Nerd42, why not be consistent about it then? Shall we also send the tape to all those British and American leaders who gave him the weapons to kill all the innocent people?"
Hmm, which leaders are you referring to by what actions at what times?

I certainly don't mean to defend "British and American leaders" generically.
Nerd42

Well, that would be primarily Bush Snr. Reagan and Thatcher.

And sorry, but the death penalty is _not_ a deterant, never has been and never will be. It's purely an act of revenge. Plus personally I wouldn't trust any US court, or UK court or in fact any court in the world to be right to the level that the death penalty requires. Too many innocent people have been executed in the past, although even one innocent person is one too many.

A man, who I believe has been aquited and released now, was on death row recently despite overwhelming evidence that he was innocent. It is now known that the prosecution and the police withheld and concealed evidence and testimony which the original members of the jury have said would have led them to find the man innocent if they had been allowed to see it at the time. When it was put to the supreme court that this man should be given an appeal, or at the very least have his death sentence commuted they stated that there was no law that prevented them from executing an innocent person one that person has been convicted.


>>Then Americans have never been civilised. And it's a good thing.

You said it, that would explain why it took them so long to abbolish slavery, why the Klan is still so prevailent, why the rest of the world looks down on and laughs at them and why they get involved in things like Iraq and Vietnam when it took them so long to get involved in WWII. It would also explain why, despit GWB and the US aparently loving Democracy so much they have, on inumerable occasions, illegaly toppled democraticly elected governments and replaced them with people who they belive will be more sympathetic to the US even when that person is a vicious dictator who tortures and kills people who oppose him. Oh and why they illegaly provide arms and support to existing US sympathetic dictators who do that in order to help them suppress their own people.

Oh and just to clear things up, I don't think that all US citizens are retarded barbarians, just enough of them that it makes the whole country look bad.

Oh please. The death penalty in the United States isn't effective enough to do the job it was intended for. Criminals may know that if they get caught, they might end up in The Chair, but they also know that they'll have 20-30 years of free meals while a bunch of lawyers try to help them worm their way out of it first by sleezy legal manouvers, with the added possiblity of a book deal and being on TV.

"They know that by the time they get it, they'll probably be so old that it won't really matter by that time."
Have you got the average age for executions? I should imagine its around 40 or 50 at most. My grandmas 90 and she's still down the salvation army avin it large every week so that arguements out the window for a start.

"Then Americans have never been civilised. And it's a good thing."
Really? Let me interprate this rightly.
Americans not being civilised is a good thing - well, why? Dont get me wrong, Britian isnt exactly whiter then white (Churchill wanted to gas the kurds being a great example) but still the whole 'eye for an eye' thing is worn and old. Having said that, America is still what you could called a developing nation. I mean, the history of what is the united states of america goes back only 200 or so years (500 if you include the european history) - before that theres the native americans but they got thoughrily butchered so who cares.

I dunno. I'd like to see the UN actually do something productive to curb America. Like move the UN head quarters to Europe and kick America out until it stops being silly.

Asmodai, I have to agree wholly with you!

"I dunno. I'd like to see the UN actually do something productive to curb America. Like move the UN head quarters to Europe and kick America out until it stops being silly."

Yes, because ostracising the only remaining superpower on the planet from the one truly global peacekeeping organisation would be a fantastic idea. Just like it was when the League of Nations was set up in 1919 without American involvement. Obviously the lack of global wars between 1919 and 1945 when the US-less League of Nations was around compared to the horrors of the world post-1945 once the American led United Nations took over sets the precedent for this move?

Basically, without the resources, manpower and financial clout of the USA, the United Nations would be powerless, just like the League of Nations was powerless against Japan, Italy and Germany in the buildup to World War Two. Yes the President may be an idiot, and the regional basis of the American government system allows for abhoerations like the death penalty, but the United States is a democratic nation which forms the backbone of most UN aid missions. Plus if they left the UN they'd still be able to trade against nations under UN sanction. How much of a deterrent is "you're not allowed to trade with anyone. Oh, except the biggest and richest trading nation in human history."??

They might not be perfect but at the end of the day the Americans do help make the world a safer place. The only real problem with them is they're still in Cold War mode and are treating small fractured groups of extremists and rogue nations in the same way they treated the monolithic Soviet Union, and it's just not working.

A thought's just come to me. If the death penalty's going to be effective as a deterrent, you have to be guaranteed to get caught, and be proven guilty. I'm guessing that no police force and court system on the planet is 100% effective at catching and sentencing every criminal that ever breathed. So if you're gonna do something, all you have to worry about is whether you're going to get caught, and there've been people who are amazingly good at hiding.

Absolutely Nicky! That is the main argument against the death penalty as a deterrent - quite aside from the fact that no one ever believes s/he is going to get caught!



Vicky

But therefore nothing the criminal justice system can throw at you is a deterrent. Prison? Being forced to eat your own bodyweight in Cheesy Wotsits? Not a deterrent, because as you said, nobody's 100% guaranteed to be convicted.

Should we just scrap the whole concept of punishment?

(not that I'm pro-death penalty, it's just that you can't really apply the fact that the legal system isn't 100% effective to this debate)

You're right that the whole thing's not 100% effective. But it does scare me. You hear of people being in jail for a few years and then being found innocent. That's bad enough, but you can't bring someone back from the dead.

I was never supporting the death penalty, just questioning the anti-US sentiment here and the sloppy arguments.

Statisticaly, those states in the US which have the death penalty have a higher murder rate that those which don't. That would, to my mind indicate that it's not a deterant. Also, acording to the State of New Jersey, it costs more to execute someone than it does to give them a life sentence.

So in conclusion, if you live in a state with capital punishment then you pay more, in taxes, for a less effective deterant.

*points to TB*

Now class, that's what we call a proper debate, he's used evidence and everything!

Of course the death penalty is a deterrent. It would put you off murder, wouldn't it? It's obvious!

Obvious, yes, and wrong. You have to be very careful with common sense.

The problem is that we're working on the flawed assumption that criminals have logical minds and fully consider the consequences of their actions. C'mon, none of us do that properly, and criminals barely do it at all. They do not really consider the possibility that they will get caught, and so the strength of the punishment after capture is irrelevant.

If crime detection methods improved dramatically, this might change. Possibly. But we have no real way of knowing that until we try it. My guess is that the likelihood of capture would become a deterrent, but that the strength of punishment after capture would remain unimportant.

TRiG.

"My guess is that the likelihood of capture would become a deterrent, but that the strength of punishment after capture would remain unimportant."

So you're saying you can't see a difference between having a 99% chance of being caught and someone giving you a stern ticking off, and a 99% chance of being caught and someone putting a bullet through your brain? Honestly?

Relitavely unimportant.

Stern ticking off?

Sheesh.

TRiG.

Well with all the suspended sentences and 30 hours community service and that sort of thing, you do wonder if "a stern ticking off" is kinda the same thing.

Just out of interest NPY, have you ever done community service? Do you know anyone who has?

Actually, many comunity sevice punnishments can be likened to what used to be 'hard labour', for instance scrubbing paint off a wall is ing hard work, especially if it has become engrained into brickwork.

It might be more effective, though, to remand people into custody aswell as making them perform the comunity service elements of their sentence, or make it so that if you don't turn up to your comunity service you are remanded into custody and made to attend and if you then do hardly any work you only lose a small amount of your remaining sentence time, i.e. if you only do 30 minutes worth of work in one day your time remaining only goes down by 30 minutes.

In my experience (well, the experience of a family member), they stick a tag on your leg, arrest you if you leave the house between 9pm and 7am, and then have you doing the most menial tasks available for 5 hours a day, five days a week. Sounds like an absoloute piece of p*ss to me

Really? I knew someone who, with 2 or 3 other people, had to scrub a subway, walking variety, clean from all the graffiti, mostely tagging. He had 5 days of this and there were new people coming to do it as others left. They still hadn't cleaned it all when he left and from what he heard from other people they'd clean one tunnel and then move onto another and then another untill they were back where they started and start cleaning that one again.