The Death Penality, Old Age, Denial and Lifer Violence

[Mr Bean]

Yes it's that time of year again. Boys and girls, children of all ages, it's the Anti/Pro Death Penality thread, and rather than wading in with my own opinion on page 2 or 7 I'm going to make them the very purpose of this thread.

I have two main statements which I will now make for the Pro-Death Penalty side.

1. All Nations of the World already have the Death Penalty
In any justice system where it is possible to sentance someone to more than one hundred years of prison time, there exists a default death penalty. That death penalty is a slow one. As age is not a quick killer, but it is no less effective than the chair, the lethal injection or the firing squad in ensuring death. Perhaps not quick, perhaps not painless, but dead non the less. If you for whatever crime sentance a man to a prison term twenty years longer than an optimistic projection says he will live, then you have sentance him to die in jail, ten, thirty or fifty years down the road. If a forty year old man gets a one hundred year sentance with no parole for kidnapping and rapping a child, then you have sentances your murder to death by old age while telling yourself that he is simply being put in prison.

Why? Do you expect him to be able to be released at some point? All you've done is decided that this man shall die, but die years from now with the best medical treatment trying to keep him alive and living all his days, eating and sleeping with materials and buildings provided by the public as tax. This man will never be release if he is guilty, if he is innocent perhaps, but if you are opposed to the death penality on grounds an Innocent man might be killed in placed of a guilty one stay tuned for point two.

Please note this is not a debate on the merits of what kind of death penalty enforcement technique one uses, be it lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad or shark tank, this is a discussion on the very issue of the death penalty itself.

2. Without a death penalty, what to do with someone who commits a Capital offense who is already in jail for committing another Capital offense.

Throw into Google Search, "Life in Prison Inmate Kills" and you'll find a few hundred cases of people in jail killing guards, fellow-inmates or sometimes even visitors. What do you... anti-death penalty folks believe should be done with such people. You can assume they are already in a maximum security prison, what with being in jail for life. Perhaps they had the possibility of parole, perhaps not. But what do you do to a man(Or woman) who already knows they will be spending the rest of their life in jail? Put him in a meaner jail? Chances are there not staying at the Hilton as it is. Lock them in solitary for the rest of their life? Human's can't take that or they go insane... in more likely in our example more insane.

What do you do with a inmate who is already in jail for the remainder of their adult life and kills again? You can't make their punishment worse, your stuck their is no other punishment option you can exercise except to hope that the guards will "be forced to shoot the prisoner trying to escape" thus again letting you tell yourselves your hands are clean.


Summary
If you support being able to jail someone for the remainder of their life you support the death penalty. But in a half arsed way, your content to let a man be confined in jail for the remainder of his life, a constant danger to other in-mates, the guards and the unlikley but possible escape senario because you don't want to grasp the simple truth that Death by old Age is just a sure a killer as the gas chamber.

The only reason we can sentance someone to two hundred years in jail and not think that the person has been sentenced to death is via cognitive dissonance that to lock someone away for a hundred years is not ordering them dead via a very slow and very boring method of execution... Except these people have already proven they won't be law abiding citizins, more to the point what do they have to lose? They are a danger to others as long as they live and the reason they are is because people don't regard Old Age as the Death Penalty.....


Yeah if you can't tell by now, one of the few places I'm a hard core radical on is the Death Penalty issue, come on people knock me down if you believe you can.

[Singular Intellect]

I agree pretty much with all your points. Any crime that warrants sentencing someone to a prison term that ensures they will never be free again...what's the fucking point? They will literally have a free roof over their heads, free food, free medical coverage, in some cases access to things like gyms and recreational activities...I have to work my fucking ass off for those rights in society, but they get them all for free because they killed/brutalized someone?

By executing a irredeemable and inarguably guilty criminal, you save all the costs of supporting them for life which includes everything from building facilities, personnel, medical benefits, recreational activities, etc.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

You know, your diatribe about how life sentencing is a very slow form of the death penalty would be totally and completely accurate, Mr. Bean, except it seems you might be forgetting that the person would die of old age whether they were sent to prison or not. It's not killing them to lock them away forever, any more than it is killing someone to let them be born. You are keeping them alive, albiet locked away and kept seperate from the general population. People die of old age, whether or not they're sent to prison.

I have conflicting thoughts on the Death sentence, most of which are heavily based on personal morals and feelings and thus are largely subjective, so that's basically the sum contribution of my post. You made good points, but that one point irked me.

[Mr Bean]

the person would die of old age whether they were sent to prison or not. It's not killing them to lock them away forever, any more than it is killing someone to let them be born. You are keeping them alive, albiet locked away and kept seperate from the general population. People die of old age, whether or not they're sent to prison.

Would they have died as quickly? I can make a good scientific case that prison inmates rarely live as long as non-prison in-mates. More-over my points are tied togther. Your locking up a person to die from old age for ten, twenty, maybe even fifty years. Years in which he must be guarded 24/7, years in which he may commit more crimes against others. And years spent with him knowing has no future to look forward to. A lifer who is simply hanged(Or Gas, or electricity or shot or whatever) is at least a end-sum. You never know when that Lifer is going to commit another crime or how long you'll be forced to try to keep in alive and take up valuable resources to help a otherwise worthless inmate.


Also let me repeat something here
It's not killing them to lock them away forever, any more than it is killing someone to let them be born.
By that logic what point is living since we all die
No... you miss the point, if you lock someone away forever you have killed them, It may take a year, or ten, or twenty but they will die and they will die after spending years draining society of resources to keep their existence going with no return on the investment.

[Alyrium Denryle]

1. All Nations of the World already have the Death Penalty

Last I checked this was not true. There are some countries if I am remembering correctly, that do not have prison sentences longer than twenty years.

So this factual statement is probably not true.

The first problem is that by your logic, life is a death sentence and as a result one should not care whether they die from being stabbed or die of old age. One is just more efficient than the other.

That having been said, there is a difference between death in prison, and death via direct execution. The first is that life in prison is not inherently cruel and unusual. Our current prison system certainly is. We create worse criminals than we put in to our current prisons. This is actually something I would like to bring up in relation to your second point.

Killing someone is. It is the most inhumane, degrading, and cruel thing we can do to someone next to torture.

The second difference is that it costs less to keep someone in prison than it does to execute them.

The last problem is the degree to which we can rectify a mistake. If we execute an innocent man, we can never, ever take that back, and there is a reduced likelyhood due to the reduced life-span that an innocent person can prove their innocence. Bear in mind, save for all of the most dangerous offenders (serial killers and the like) I am against life in prison. For reasons I will go into in my own exposition of my position.

2. Without a death penalty, what to do with someone who commits a Capital offense who is already in jail for committing another Capital offense.

Blame ourselves. Seriously. Only a very very small percentage of all prisoners are like Snidely Whiplash, tying girls to railroad tracks while cackling in manic fashion. We have set up a situation where we cannot expect prisoners, lifers and non-lifers not to kill eachother. Every murder that takes place in a prison is our collective responsibility.

We have set up a prison system in which just to survive, low status individuals have to resort to prostitution. We have set up a system where one has to join a violent, often racist prison gang just to avoid being gang-raped, or having their food stolen. What the fuck do we expect? Maybe if we took the time and effort to reform our prisons, we would be confronted with this problem significantly less often.

If the prisoners have things they actually value, we can remove them (negative reinforcement, taking away a positive stimulus). Ans subsequently give these things back for good behavior (positive reinforcement)

If the only thing we can do is drive them insane with sensory deprivation and lack of human contact, there is something wrong with the entire system. The problems go beyond the relative presence or absence of the death penalty.

We can restructure our prisons so we are not mixing violent and non-violent offenders. We can engage in what can only be called psychological reconditioning to rebuild the personal identity of prisoners into something constructive. As opposed to punishing "them" we should try to help them become one of "us " again. We should treat prisoners like human beings and solve this so-called problem before it starts. The funny thing is, in jurisdictions where this sort of thing has been tried (as far as I remember, I will have to dig up the sources) it works pretty well. If you so much as allow a local community college or university to offer degree programs through the prison, violence drops and so does recidivism. AND you have leverage for bad behavior. "If you get into fights, we take away your Philosophy collection"

That is my answer.

Plus, your post does not include any evidence that prisoners killing prisoners is more common in countries or even US states that do not have the death penalty. So you are suffering from evidentiary issues, and your position may be constructed on something that is a complete non-issue. In addition, it begs the question that something SHOULD be done about

My position:

The death penalty is not necessary to affect the goal of removing a dangerous person from society. Life in prison does work just as well, and seeing as life itself is a death sentence your argument while appealing at first glance falls flat on its face when someone subjects it to a bit of scrutiny. Actual escapes are rare enough that their frequency is insignificant and can probably be fixed by changes to the way we run our prisons (not making them hell on earth is one way...)

The primary goal of a justice system should not necessarily be punishment. From a utilitarian standpoint, there is nothing but suffering in our current prison system. If our goal is to reduce suffering, then our current prison system is not consistent with this goal. It should be to make the best of a already bad situation. As such the goals of an integrated justice system

1) Reduce Crime on the outside
2) Rehabilitate criminals when possible
3) Gather information to make it possible to rehabilitate types of criminals that are not able to be rehabilitated at a given time
4)Protect the law-abiding population.

Our current system only accomplishes goal number 4

The death penalty is at odds with all of these goals. It does not, if murder rates in dp states are to be relied upon, act as anything even resembling a deterrent. It does not rehabilitate criminals. It does not have any research applications toward treatment, plus there is the very real risk of killing an innocent person.

All it does is create more pain. All our entire system does is create more pain. The family of the death row inmate suffers, the inmate suffers, and the victim and their family are not helped in any appreciable way.

There is no reason to kill..

More to come.

[Mr Bean]

I'll answer Alyrium in more depth tomorrow morning since I'm off to bed, but i will post two things.

First, If your prison sentences can add up to over a hundred years you can be sentences to death. Yes some countries you might need to kill twenty people before you collective sentences add up to a hundred plus years, but no country has a "max" sentance law that says you can only commit so many crimes before the extra ones don't count. It may be very hard in some countries to get sentences to death via old age, but it is possible in all countries. I never said all countries on the planet have actual death penalties on the book just that effectively if you can imprison someone longer than they can live long enough to serve, then yes your sentences them to die in prison.

Two
Alyrium, as many anti-death penalty proponents do begins with the assumption that there exists no method by which a person can lose rights. That one can not forfeit any right. No matter the crimes, no matter the circumstances. A criminal always has the same rights as his/her victims, no matter how vile, no matter how many victims.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

We can restructure our prisons so we are not mixing violent and non-violent offenders. We can engage in what can only be called psychological reconditioning to rebuild the personal identity of prisoners into something constructive. As opposed to punishing "them" we should try to help them become one of "us " again. We should treat prisoners like human beings and solve this so-called problem before it starts. The funny thing is, in jurisdictions where this sort of thing has been tried (as far as I remember, I will have to dig up the sources) it works pretty well. If you so much as allow a local community college or university to offer degree programs through the prison, violence drops and so does recidivism. AND you have leverage for bad behavior. "If you get into fights, we take away your Philosophy collection"

Is it remotely possible to correct or even reconstruct some of the extremely violent criminals? Last I checked, some of these violent urges are a result of some defect in the brain caused by some past afliction/experience. I haven't followed up on that report but nothing thus far has suggested that such problems are correctable.

And is that going to work on the hard core gang members? To some of them, an education is more a chore than a boon.

[Zor]

Leaving aside issues of the fact that our criminal Justice system is not perfect. Has the Death Penalty Ever been an effective method of substatially reducing crime while not applied on a Joseph Stalin Level? There are plenty of First World Countries (European Nations, Canada, Australia) that have much lower crime rates than the US, and have rightfully done away with that Barbaric Anachronism and have substantially lower violent crime rates. This is not the goddamn middle ages, we can afford to keep a few people locked up.

Zor

[Melchior]

All Nations of the World already have the Death Penalty
In any justice system where it is possible to sentance someone to more than one hundred years of prison time, there exists a default death penalty.

Besides the fact that it would impossibile in practice due to how our joke of a legal systems works, Italy, AFAIK, doesn't (recently there was even an explicit moratorium on lifelong prison sentences). Other European countries could have similar situations.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Alyrium, as many anti-death penalty proponents do begins with the assumption that there exists no method by which a person can lose rights. That one can not forfeit any right. No matter the crimes, no matter the circumstances. A criminal always has the same rights as his/her victims, no matter how vile, no matter how many victims.

Um. My position does not depend on the existence of rights at all. I am a positivist. I dont think rights exist... At least not in any form other than as a legal construct...

It is just a matter of what the actual goal of a justice system should be

Is it remotely possible to correct or even reconstruct some of the extremely violent criminals? Last I checked, some of these violent urges are a result of some defect in the brain caused by some past afliction/experience. I haven't followed up on that report but nothing thus far has suggested that such problems are correctable.

That is why you need to treat different types of criminals differently. Sometimes, meds will fix the problem. Other times it is just best to put them in a psych ward...At least there, there can be treatment of some kind and research to see what is wrong with them so we can devise better treatments.

And is that going to work on the hard core gang members? To some of them, an education is more a chore than a boon.

A lot of that is the result of poor economic conditions. You can get people to come around from that... especially if you hire behavioral and social psychologists to manipulate your prisoners... (and yes, designing the system will have to be done by professionals...)

You can, with a small amount of coaxing, get anyone to torture another person to death. You should be able to go in reverse.

One suggestion along those lines to to separate them from their minions. Remove their power and make sure they do not obtain more...

[K. A. Pital]

Depends. The possibility of false conviction, for the categories of crimes it applies to (non-100% certifiable by DNA testing), should be enough of a reason to not use the death sentence on those people.

If guilt is 100% established, death penalty should be in effect. No real reason to support a dangerous element of society for his life when he is anyway convicted to lifetime imprisonment.

As for "20 years and release", that is a false strategy some nations adopted. It releases very dangerous elements back into society, which should never happen unless false conviction case is established.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Depends. The possibility of false conviction, for the categories of crimes it applies to (non-100% certifiable by DNA testing), should be enough of a reason to not use the death sentence on those people.

If guilt is 100% established, death penalty should be in effect. No real reason to support a dangerous element of society for his life when he is anyway convicted to lifetime imprisonment.

As for "20 years and release", that is a false strategy some nations adopted. It releases very dangerous elements back into society, which should never happen unless false conviction case is established.

What if you can make them non-dangerous?

[K. A. Pital]

What if you can make them non-dangerous?

The probability of failure bears a high price here. Just like the mere probability of killing an innocent human with a death penalty is enough to suspend it for most not 100% proof cases, so is the probability of failing to reform a criminal who may or may not have psychological issues, and the treatment may or may not be successful.

Here the potential for failure is even greater.

So if we ban death penalty because someone innocent might be killed, why would we release criminals, if someone innocent might be killed once again.

[Singular Intellect]

I absolutely hate the arguement that "executing someone is more expensive than keeping them alive for a lifetime".

What complete and utter bullshit. A non existent human does not consume the time and resources of an existent human being; decades worth of resources for keeping a human relatively alive comfortably is vastly more than the resources needed to execute them.

Of course, what they 'really' mean is that it's the costs of appeals, trials, reinvestigations, etc, etc that end up costing more than putting someone away for life.

It's a confirmation that so long as an individual is only going to be confined for the rest of their life (as Duchess has pointed out, an arguable form of psychological torture), the system will not invest the time and money to confirm their guilt or innocence to the degree they would in the other case.

So, if the anti death penalty people wish to assert that executing someone is more expensive than putting them away for life, they shoot themselves in the foot by admitting that locking someone up for the rest of their life means the justice system won't try as hard to determine their guilt or innocence.

[Vendetta]

It's a confirmation that so long as an individual is only going to be confined for the rest of their life (as Duchess has pointed out, an arguable form of psychological torture), the system will not invest the time and money to confirm their guilt or innocence to the degree they would in the other case.

So, if the anti death penalty people wish to assert that executing someone is more expensive than putting them away for life, they shoot themselves in the foot by admitting that locking someone up for the rest of their life means the justice system won't try as hard to determine their guilt or innocence.

So, you've noticed that a punishment of increased severity (and irrevocability) adds extra layers of due process before it can be carried out by the Justice system? Congratulations. What other point are you trying to make?

[Broomstick]

As I have stated in another thread, the only moral justification for killing another human being is self defense. If we can safely confine someone then we have no moral justification to execute them. If we can't confine them then, for the protection/defense of society at large we do have a moral justification to impose a death penalty.

1. All Nations of the World already have the Death Penalty
In any justice system where it is possible to sentance someone to more than one hundred years of prison time, there exists a default death penalty. That death penalty is a slow one.

And one to which we are all subject. The prisoner would age and die as a free man as well.

with the best medical treatment trying to keep him alive

Although prisoners in the US do get medical treatment, whether or not it is the "best" is arguable.

and living all his days, eating and sleeping with materials and buildings provided by the public as tax.

I have no objection to requiring prisoners to work, provided such labor is not unusually dangerous or cruel. In fact, prisoners that are low-risk for escape are used for labor, including recent flood fighting efforts in the US Midwest.

2. Without a death penalty, what to do with someone who commits a Capital offense who is already in jail for committing another Capital offense.

Throw into Google Search, "Life in Prison Inmate Kills" and you'll find a few hundred cases of people in jail killing guards, fellow-inmates or sometimes even visitors. What do you... anti-death penalty folks believe should be done with such people. You can assume they are already in a maximum security prison, what with being in jail for life. Perhaps they had the possibility of parole, perhaps not. But what do you do to a man(Or woman) who already knows they will be spending the rest of their life in jail? Put him in a meaner jail? Chances are there not staying at the Hilton as it is. Lock them in solitary for the rest of their life? Human's can't take that or they go insane... in more likely in our example more insane.

If you have an uber-criminal that can't be safely contained then, as I mentioned in my opening statement, you would have a justification for execution. However, even among killers this would be minority of inmates.

Look up "Nathan Leopold" for what a person sentenced to "life plus 99" can accomplish - he educated hundreds of inmates who then went out to society with more education than before, greatly improving their chances of an honest life, he assisted with malaria research, and was such a good boy in prison his sentence was later commuted to life parole. Upon his death he donated his organs for transplant. Not everyone sentenced to life is automatically slammed into solitary confinement, and as Leopold shows, a sentence can be later modified after several decades of positive behavior.

You are focusing on the worst-case scenario. I question if it is the typical scenario.

[Starglider]

People on the anti-death-penalty side; what do you propose to do if and when we develop anti-aging treatments and people have indefinite lifespans?

Are you still going to lock people up 'for life' if a life can be centuries or millenia? Or are you going to deny them the anti-aging treatment and thus really implement Mr Bean's 'death by 50 years of aging' penalty? Or are you going to punish murder with just a few decades of imprisonment, quite possibly less than 10% or even 1% of an average lifespan?

[Broomstick]

That's an intriguing question. Do you mind if I think about it before I answer?

Seriously, that does raise some interesting theoretical issues not only for "immortality" treatments but also for life-prolonging treatments we currently have, such as organ transplants.

[Vendetta]

People on the anti-death-penalty side; what do you propose to do if and when we develop anti-aging treatments and people have indefinite lifespans?

This is still the stuff of science fiction, of course, and so really isn't much of an impact to the debate.

Also, your point only addresses one facet of prison, punishment. Imprisonment is also, when carried out in an effective environment (which is clearly not in place), to segregate people who have shown that they are not willing or able to function in society from society.

[Dooey Jo]

People on the anti-death-penalty side; what do you propose to do if and when we develop anti-aging treatments and people have indefinite lifespans?

Develop perfect rehabilitation methods, obviously.

[Starglider]

This is still the stuff of science fiction, of course, and so really isn't much of an impact to the debate.

It has more impact than you might think, because it forces people to examine the validity of their premises.

Also, your point only addresses one facet of prison, punishment. Imprisonment is also, when carried out in an effective environment (which is clearly not in place), to segregate people who have shown that they are not willing or able to function in society from society.

I didn't even mention the purpose of the imprisonment, only the consequences. If you are locking people up to segregate them, then you are going to have to segregate immortal people for an indefinite length of time. Firstly how do you verify that they're actually safe to release and secondly what do you do when they're completely unrepentant?

In my opinion, the ideal answer is mind scans for verification and partial brain wipes for enforcement. Obviously we don't have that technology yet but it's closer than you might think (definitely less than a century out I'd say). In the mean time I do support the death penalty for extreme cases, but not for run-of-the-mill murders.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

People on the anti-death-penalty side; what do you propose to do if and when we develop anti-aging treatments and people have indefinite lifespans?

Develop perfect rehabilitation methods, obviously.

Erm... how sure are you willing to bet your money that rehabilitation methods are ever going to be at least 90% successful? Or are you willing to cough out lots of money for that to happen?

[Lancer]

I don't oppose the death penalty because I view it as overly cruel, I oppose it because I'm of the belief that life inprisonment can serve as a far more effective deterrent and method of punishment.

If we do develop anti-aging treatments, and they become commonplace enough to become a routine medical procedure as opposed to something only available to the fantastically rich, then the threat of being locked up for the remainder of their augmented lifespan becomes an even more effective deterrent. Furthermore, life imprisionment without the possibility of parole is reserved for the most henious of offenders; inmates would in all likelyhood still pose a risk to the rest of the population if released. One of the functions of a prison system is to isolate and contain those who are a threat to the rest of society, the increased lifespan should only be a factor with regards to determing whether or not they could safely be reintegrated into society.

[Dooey Jo]

Develop perfect rehabilitation methods, obviously.

Erm... how sure are you willing to bet your money that rehabilitation methods are ever going to be at least 90% successful? Or are you willing to cough out lots of money for that to happen?

I'd say 99% effective rehabilitation is at least as likely as humans attaining indefinite lifespans, so the pro-death penalty side might as well reconsider their premises in light of that hypothetical scenario.

[Darth Wong]

1. All Nations of the World already have the Death Penalty

Classifying life imprisonment as another form of death penalty is nothing more than rhetorical chicanery. The two are not equivalent.

2. Without a death penalty, what to do with someone who commits a Capital offense who is already in jail for committing another Capital offense.

Why don't you look at the countries which have already banned the death penalty and see what they do, instead of acting as if this is some kind of black void of knowledge into which we dare not tread?

Summary
If you support being able to jail someone for the remainder of their life you support the death penalty.

Bullshit. This is nothing more than a rhetorical game, totally ignorant of the fact that the recent death penalty ruling was over a case brought by a man who was desperately trying to fight for life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. Why would he do that, if the two are equivalent as you so absurdly claim?

But in a half arsed way, your content to let a man be confined in jail for the remainder of his life, a constant danger to other in-mates, the guards and the unlikley but possible escape senario because you don't want to grasp the simple truth that Death by old Age is just a sure a killer as the gas chamber.

Death by Old Age applies to us all. Referring to it as a form of death penalty is utter bullshit.

Yeah if you can't tell by now, one of the few places I'm a hard core radical on is the Death Penalty issue, come on people knock me down if you believe you can.

You clearly think your arguments are much stronger than they actually are.