Capital Punishment - What do you think?

[Skgoa]

Since my ethics (very generally) are that the only legitimate reason to kill another human being is self-defense or defense of others I can't condone capital punishment unless there is no means to safely confine a criminal so that he (or she) can no longer harm others.

In other words, no matter how heinous the criminal I don't fee it's right for the state to execute him.

This is how feel about it. Also, think about what its like to be told you are going to be killed. Think about what its like to know for years. To my leftwing european pussy ethics this is torture. State imposed torture - NO government should ever be allowed to do such onto its subjects.
Actualy, no government should be allowed to murder either. Is it really so bad to put dangerous people behind bars instead of getting revenge, so that we don't risk killing the odd false positive?

[Alyrium Denryle]

I am in principle and in practice opposed to the death penalty. Of course I am also opposed to lay juries, and our entire prison system...

1)Our goal ought to be to maximize The Good obtained from any given situation.
2)Killing a murderer provides minimal real benefit for the families of the victim, and given the length of the necessary appeals does little to protect the overall prison population who frankly are in more danger from the factious nature of various ethnic groups, gangs, and often the guards than they are from a serial killer who is not surrounded by his preferred victim archetype.
3)Killing a murderer causes very real grief and sadness on the part of their families, brutalizes the executor, and degrades us as a society. We also lose any benefit from possible rehabilitation--even if we keep them locked up forever.
4)Therefore the death penalty only decreases The Good, namely utility found in an already bad situation.

Our justice system needs to be focused around containment of those who are dangerous, and reformation of those who can be reformed. Even a serial killer can sometimes produce stunning works of art, and gang leaders can write childrens books. Justice should not be about punishment, but paying back the debt to society that was incurred by the crime and becoming a better person for it. As it stands now even non-violent and otherwise good people with criminal records cannot become employed and must re-resort to crime, even with good vocational training and rehabilitation programs in some prisons. Those programs by the way have largely been defunded due to budget cuts and wanting to appear tough on crime. They worked very well, and if they were funded better and had more research behind them to make them more effective then we may be able to do remarkable things. Even for a murderer or rapist.

As far as those that cannot be fixed... No one sits around twirling an Evil Mustache(tm). Serial killers, child rapists... those people were born with serious mental conditions, or made that way by years of systematic abuse and trauma. Free will is an illusion. If the part of the brain that mediates emotions like compassion is fucked up in some way, or impulse control is fried, a person literally CANNOT choose to do anything but act on the darker impulses that all humans have but which never reach our conscious thoughts due to subconscious vetoes by other parts of the brain.

Does such a person deserve to die? Do they deserve to themselves be further victimized (because they are often victims of abuse themselves) by having the shattered remains of their human dignity and sanity stripped from them by solitary confinement (which is torture BTW) and forced over-medication? No. You may say it is necessary, but that is something very different. Is it even necessary? No. You protect the less violent inmates by separating out crimes into different facilities. You embezzled? You go to the white collar prison for a specific treatment regime. Murder? You go to the high security prison which keeps inmates in small groups (avoids violence through large groups, but avoids solitary confinement). Different sorts of murders will require different treatment to deal with the underlying problem, and these should be categorized and placed in separate blocks. Crimes of passion get one wing, semi-justifiable but still illegal homicides get another etc. You will make up a large part of the cost in the lack of recidivism. Keep in mind, these are pulled out of my ass. The point is, treatment and rehabilitation>>>punishment.

This is of course not even going into the fact that Illinois IIRC has a moratorium on the death penalty because 50% of their death row inmates were exonerated.

[Simon_Jester]

I oppose it because I don't trust the justice system that much; the justice system is racist, sexist, and classist and which of those categories you fit into determines whether or not you get the death penalty; not what you crime you committed.

And also because it appears to me to be an overly expensive indulgence in indiscriminate vengeance. I say "indiscriminate" because so many of the death penalty supporters I run into don't seem to really care if the system is bigoted or if the death penalty does any good or not or even if the person being executed is actually guilty. They just want blood, and if that blood turns out to be innocent "that's just the price we have to pay".

Since I oppose the death penalty except in cases where the convict demonstrably remains a threat to others even in prison... I don't think I qualify as part of this group.

How many people are so dangerous that they lash out at anyone who comes within arms reach? Not that I disagree with the argument, but the way you present it is exactly what I'm talking about: blowing the problem out of proportion by appealing to an almost comically exaggerated stereotype.

I imagine there are extremely few people that dangerous. I also imagine that there are more than zero of them, though I'd be very happy to learn otherwise because it would slightly improve my overall faith in humanity.

-Imprisoning them is exceptionally expensive and difficult, again because of the danger they pose to others.

Except that, again, the real reason imprisoning people is so expensive because our system just throws everyone in jail for every minor offense, leading to a prison population that is unsustainable. In other words, this is a problem now, but need not remain a problem in the future.

...Why would shrinking the prison population drastically cut the costs per inmate? Especially for inmates who have to be kept in solitary and who thus aren't using the same facilities as the other inmates?

I disagree. When you get down to it, the reason government works at all (and the reason some people seem to resent its very existence) is its monopoly on force.

Self defense law disagrees with this over-simplification.

I do not think so. Self-defense is a specifically allowed exception to a general rule. One that exists for a number of very specific reasons:

1) The alternative is unenforceable. In a legal system that doesn't invoke hideous and utterly unjust punishments, you can't make a law that will deter people from trying to resist being killed, any more than you can make a law that will convince them to leap off of cliffs. Since we can't make anyone stop doing it by having a law against it, having a law against it is just a way to encourage contempt for the law.

2) Individuals who kill in self-defense are unlikely to impinge on the government monopoly on force in other ways, compared to individuals who kill for money, for hatred, or for pleasure. Each case of self-defense is an isolated, self-contained incident that does not increase the risk of similar incidents happening in the future, so there is no need to punish individual cases to prevent a general problem from arising.

3) There is also no need to rehabilitate people who kill in self-defense, because they haven't done anything that makes them a persistent long-term problem for society. They haven't done anything you need to make them stop doing, the way that a thief or an arsonist has. I mean yes they killed someone in self-defense, but they probably aren't going to do it again unless someone else attacks them again.

:facepalm: You've missed the point entirely. First, we live in a democratic society. The perceptions of the people directly impact public policy. Second, and building from this, is the fact that the culture we live in glorifies violence. You can see this in our media, you can in the very successful "tough on crime" rhetoric of our politicians (especially on the right) use, you can see this in the fact that we can barely go two decades without going to war with someone.

What makes you think all these things are causally linked to the execution of criminals? That because we are willing to kill people we see as heinous criminals*, we become willing to watch violent action movies, or to be tough on crime**, or to declare war on other countries?

*Including many I would argue should not be killed, because they would stop being a threat once thrown in prison because they're not complete maniacs...
**It's not like "tough on crime" always translates to "execute more criminals!" There are a lot of ways to be tough on crime without laying a finger on a single inmate, because inmates have a lot of rights to strip away other than "freedom from being killed."

The problem is NOT just that our system does not conform to your pie in the sky "carefully monitored government," its that the government is but a tool of society. A society that wouldn't know justice from a smoking hole in the ground where an Afghani village once stood.

Umm... did you notice the part where I don't trust the US government with the death penalty? Well, actually, the US federal government teeters right on the edge of what I might consider trusting but probably wouldn't. Many of the state governments in the US are completely untrustworthy.

Also, you're strawmanning. I am NOT advocating that the government should never use lethal force. I argued that it should limit its use of lethal force because the death penalty, being part of the culture of "tough on crime" bullshit that is endemic here in america, effects the larger perceptions of what the legal system is for. When people keep hearing about the serial killer under every bed, the child molester hiding behind every curtain, or the psychopath lurking in the shadows of every alleyway, there is no way you're going to convince the voters of the utility of rehabilitation.

How would not executing these people make the American public fear them less? Would we become less afraid of the imaginary psycho in the alleyway if we knew that the crimes we imagine him to be capable of are not punishable by death under our laws?

All that would change is that the "tough on crime" blowhards would instead be advocating the resumption of the death penalty instead of its continuation. You're mistaking a symptom for a cause.

This is definitely an excellent case for limiting the death penalty sharply, especially in societies where the just treatment of people suspected of crimes is not guaranteed.
The degree to which a state should be trusted with the death penalty is more or less inverse to how good it is at protecting the rights of the citizen and at not punishing the innocent in general. In practice, of course, most of the states that are good enough about these things that I would trust them with the death penalty are the same ones that refuse to use the death penalty in the first place... which is probably the strongest argument against my position- I have to admit the possibility that this is not a coincidence.

... so you don't actually disagree with my larger point.

Well that depends. Is your point about American politics, or about the ethics of the death penalty in general?

---

Oh come on you're not trying to pass off attitude inoculation as agreement are you?? You added a little rider that one would have to be "loath to be directly responsible for their death" which implies moral cowardice.

I don't think it does. I am loath to be directly responsible for someone drowning to death; that does not mean I would be a coward for hauling them out of the water.

But under some circumstances, while it would not be moral cowardice to haul someone out of the water for any reasonable definition of "cowardice..." it would still be an incorrect or at least a questionable decision. As in the classic lifeboat scenario: at some point, my trying to save more people from drowning has bad consequences that I am not considering. But I don't call that cowardice and I don't think you shouldn't either.

In your case, I think that keeping the most incorrigible criminals alive has bad consequences that you are not considering. I think that you are letting a natural revulsion for something no one desires to see happen blind you to the consequences of preventing it from happening.

That's ridiculous, it would take more moral fortitude to support an ongoing system of rehabilitation than a system that provides the quick and easy solution execution represents.

And yet this I take exception with. It does not always require more courage to favor a difficult solution than to favor an easy one. The fact that X is more work, or more unpleasant, than Y does not make X the braver solution to the problem. You can't buy "bravery credit" at a fixed exchange rate by arbitrarily making your task more difficult.

The question is: what's the point? You object to my having a deficit of "commitment to ideals." What ideal is being served here? Is the ideal "nobody dies, ever, and failing that all deaths are prolonged to the very limit of our civilization's ability to provide resources to stave them off?"

The ideal would be that crime is a reversible phenomenon, obviously, the result of behaviors that can be rehabilitated. Capitol punishment is pretty much "Nope, some people are beyond hope and too much trouble to keep around"

Capital.

Spelling nitpicks aside, this strikes me as an article of faith, and of a faith that I'm not sure I should choose to join. Taken by itself it's just a statement: all crime is reversible. Why do you believe that to be true?

Because at that point you fall prey to some of the same arguments raised in the euthanasia debate: quality of life issues. Is it worth burning every last penny of an old man's savings to keep him alive as his body shuts down around him and his mind falls apart at the seams, even if he himself wished it otherwise?

Well why be afraid of that discussion?

Because it might undermine your argument? If you are not necessarily doing someone a favor by keeping them alive, it undermines the claim that we should always and forever strive to keep everyone alive by any means available.

It does not, however, undermine the article-of-faith claim that all crime is reversible. I wasn't expecting you to take that tack, not least because it struck me as a less compelling argument than "death is bad so we should avoid it whenever possible by any means necessary." I can understand being opposed to death on general principles. I cannot understand assuming that all crime is reversible on general principles.

That is a strawman as you have substituted a more elaborate means of incarceration for actual attempts at rehabilitation.

Given a hypothetical criminal who likes to kill and will keep trying unless he is doped into near-insensibility, what form would such an attempt take?

There are mentally ill people who medical science cannot cure. I do not think we should assume that the potential of medical science is unlimited, that all mental illnesses are curable.

I like that you bothered to scale the definition of sane to the relative population, but i don't see why you decided to use it with such a permanent connotation in reference to a rehabilitation scenario. Mental health follows an illness model. Someone who is "insane" can become sane again, and unfortunately vice versa. When you assert that "not every member of the species is sane enough" you are accepting a point in time assessment that again completely misses the core tenet of rehabilitation. your argument boils down to "insanity isn't reversible" and I would love to see you produce evidence of that. beyond the obvious, its not reversible if you execute them.

Not all physical illnesses are reversible, even if they do not kill the patient. Why should all mental illnesses be reversible?

But if the ideal here is just "nobody dies, ever..." well, I don't really have a lot of respect for that ideal, not when it puts us in situations that come out as a net utilitarian bad in any system that doesn't define death as infinite and utter evil that is worth paying any price to avoid.

You are talking an entirely different language from me. I said I don't see execution has having any value, not "death is evil."

I know. Instead your reasoning is something different, and frankly something I respect even less: an absolute faith in humanity's power to cure all ills. "Death is evil" may be irrational in some cases, but at least there's a core to it I can empathize with: death is usually bad. But "we can fix everything!" doesn't have such a core: there is no other field of human endeavour where we turn out to be omnipotent if we just try hard enough, so I don't understand why you expect psychology to be the first.

Well it could be about that, but you've been seriously on about who "can" be rehabilitated and who "can't". What kinds of criminals are "too dangerous" which obviously begs the question as to which crimes are worse. You are arguing on two fronts here, quality of life during treatment, and risk management.

Yes, I am, because they're connected. If, to adequately manage the risk posed by a criminally insane person, we must place them under conditions so miserable that they might reasonably prefer death, AND if there is no real likelihood of their rehabilitation... then at some point, executing them becomes a utilitarian net good.

Rehabilitation is the main mission of a good prison system. But where rehabilitation isn't possible, the secondary goal must be neutralization: we must protect those we can rehabilitate (or those we don't need to) from those we can't rehabilitate. If keeping a prisoner neutralized requires placing them under pitiful conditions (locked in a cement box and pumped full of sedatives) at great expense, then, again, we're in a different situation.

Apparently we have moved into a situation where life has a dollar value now... so, quality of life, risk management, and expense are your objections.

Pretty much.

Keeping someone alive and miserable at great expense may not be justified, because no one benefits. They aren't benefiting because they're no better off alive than they would be dead; we aren't benefiting because they aren't contributing anything (they're kept locked up in solitary under sedation, remember?) and we're having to pay for it anyway.

It's one thing to keep someone alive when they are doing something, or might be doing something in the future, or are enjoying their life, or might enjoy it in the future. But when there is no prospect of their life ever being a net positive, either in terms of business OR in terms of pleasure, at that point, one has to wonder about the wisdom of expending resources to sustain life. Unless life is arbitrarily defined as an intrinsic good, such that the world is always better with more people in it no matter what, that has to stop making sense sooner or later.

Is that objectively true? Is that an accurate statement about reality, that we can treat every person in ways that will teach them not to behave badly? Or is that just an article of faith for you?

Thanks for wasting my time with a no true Scottsman fail. i don't have to prove that everyone in the world can be saved, I only have to prove that mental health treatment can be effective, in order to justify a model that proceeds on that assertion. because the your converse argument would be that execution is more effective treatment for the subject. Good luck with that one...

Nonsense.

First of all, your claim that my argument is a "no true Scottsman fail" is blatant nonsense, because at no point have I claimed that you or your argument is not a "true" anything. Your argument is not part of a category. It stands or falls alone, on its own merits.

Second, proving that "mental health treatment can be effective, in order to justify a model that proceeds on that assertion" is absurdly vague.

Imagine, hypothetically, that there was a horrible disease that we could cure with a medicine when right-handed people had it, but that the medicine did not work on left-handed people. You would have to be a complete fool to say that "because the medicine is effective, we should use it on everyone." The medicine is effective: it cures the disease in something like 90% of patients. But on the other 10% it is useless, and there is no conceivable reason to give them the medicine, because it does not work on them.

Likewise, mental health treatment may be effective on 90%, or 95%, or 99%, or even 99.999% of all patients... and yet still useless on the tiny minority remaining.

So when you say that you advocate "a model that proceeds on that assertion" that "mental health treatment can be effective," you are ignoring a critical point: that your model advocates keeping all mentally ill people around for treatment, regardless of whether treatment works on them. Which makes your statement even more nonsensical, because it misrepresents your own position.

Third and finally, your argument that "because the your converse argument would be that execution is more effective treatment for the subject. Good luck with that one..." is likewise nonsense, and not just because of its interesting grammatical content.

You completely overlook the fact that a treatment may be more effective for society without being more effective for the patient. For instance, in the 19th century, no one knew how to cure infectious diseases like scarlet fever. The usual response was "quarantine:" barring the patient from contact with others, for fear they would catch the disease. This was not effective for the patient: placing you under quarantine does not make you get well faster. But it does affect the danger your illness presents to others, because they can't catch it from you if they aren't there.

Thus, quarantine is a very effective way to limit the damage caused by infectious diseases, while doing nothing whatsoever for the patients who already have them.

Likewise, execution is an extremely effective way to keep incorrigibly violent people from being violent, while doing nothing whatsoever for the incorrigibly violent person... except, perhaps, saving them from a long stint of being trapped in a cement box and pumped full of sedatives to no good effect.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Unrehabilitatable individuals, which should be statuatorily defined as those who kill in prison at the very least. Social isolation makes it utterly impossible to effectively rehabilitate people, and anyone whose behaviour makes it impossible for them to be held anywhere except in an isolation ward is both being subject to the severe mental torture of total confinement without human contact, and in a position of being unable to receive any help to reintegrate in society. Generally speaking, anyone who cannot be rehabilitated and allowed to safely live in (any) human society again should be killed. I would extend the death penalty also to those whose crimes are both heinous and for whom there is a general professional consensus that no rehabilitation is possible, which usually would qualify as serial killers. In both cases the evidence is usual rock hard, when the world of serial killers comes apart we frequently end up with more than enough proof to justify shooting them, and the same is true with the very confined environment of prison murders. Generally speaking, however, I would go further and say that anyone who would normally be convicted of life imprisonment should be executed if an extremely rigorous appeals process (mandatory DNA testing, multiple investigations of prosecutorial procedure, special evidentiary requirements), show they are guilty... Simply because it makes no sense whatsoever to hold people in a penitentiary who we have no intention of releasing back into society.

I have come to firmly believe that the real purpose of prisons should be rehabilitation, and that the United States should copy, for instance, Norwegian prisons in the focus on education, rehabilitation, and integration on society with more hostel style living and a comfortable environment in which social workers and therapists intermingle with the prisons. The corollary to that, however, is that anyone who is too violent to function in such an environment must be put to death so as not to place him in an environment in which he can commit more crimes... And anyone who does commit more crimes in that environment is by definition unrehabilitatable (as we have no other means of rehabilitation) and so also must be put to death. Strict isolation from all other contact with other humans is... completely contrary to the nature of the human animal, and constitutes severe psychological torture. Experiments done in rhesus monkeys have shown that, the primate psyche is extremely vulnerable to isolation, and it rapidly results in a decline into psychosis.

If we can't help someone in a nurturing and compassionate environment to return to society, then the best thing to do is put them under with a sharp shot to the head, both for the sake of their fellow prisoners who are capable of rehabilitation, and for humane considerations of avoiding sustained psychological torture.

[Formless]

Except that, again, the real reason imprisoning people is so expensive because our system just throws everyone in jail for every minor offense, leading to a prison population that is unsustainable. In other words, this is a problem now, but need not remain a problem in the future.

...Why would shrinking the prison population drastically cut the costs per inmate? Especially for inmates who have to be kept in solitary and who thus aren't using the same facilities as the other inmates?

The cost per inmate is irrelevant. There are prisons out there that are underfunded when measured per inmate, causing social and even legal problems (e.g. inmates sleeping on the floor). But the system as a whole still costs an inordinately large amount for the benefit we see. If we lowered the total population, we could afford to spend more per inmate.

Self defense law disagrees with this over-simplification.

I do not think so. Self-defense is a specifically allowed exception to a general rule. One that exists for a number of very specific reasons:

Regardless of why it is allowed, the point is that it represents situations where the government is not the sole entity that is justified in using lethal force. Note also my use of the word justified: the government does NOT have carte blanch to use lethal force either, and as it is a tool of society we cannot afford to give people the impression that it does lest they either throw it down in a fit of paranoia or hijack it so as to gain access to the government's tools of force by proxy.

:facepalm: You've missed the point entirely. First, we live in a democratic society. The perceptions of the people directly impact public policy. Second, and building from this, is the fact that the culture we live in glorifies violence. You can see this in our media, you can in the very successful "tough on crime" rhetoric of our politicians (especially on the right) use, you can see this in the fact that we can barely go two decades without going to war with someone.

What makes you think all these things are causally linked to the execution of criminals? That because we are willing to kill people we see as heinous criminals*, we become willing to watch violent action movies, or to be tough on crime**, or to declare war on other countries?

Because our society has become inured to the use of force to solve social/political problems that aren't so simple that more guns or prisons will fix them. Its a feedback loop: we put politicians in office who are "tough on crime" or advocate war, systematic violence becomes more commonplace and perceived as "how things should be," so we put more politicians who are tough on crime or pro-war who enact laws that are more tough than the previous ones, it becomes the status quo, so we elect politicians that are tough on crime... and so on. Capitol punishment is one of many contributing causes, but its significant in that it and the rhetoric that accompanies it neatly symbolizes the mindset at its worst.

**It's not like "tough on crime" always translates to "execute more criminals!" There are a lot of ways to be tough on crime without laying a finger on a single inmate, because inmates have a lot of rights to strip away other than "freedom from being killed."

There are states where questioning the validity of capital punishment would be political suicide. Its not hard to see how it is significant.

Also, you're strawmanning. I am NOT advocating that the government should never use lethal force. I argued that it should limit its use of lethal force because the death penalty, being part of the culture of "tough on crime" bullshit that is endemic here in america, effects the larger perceptions of what the legal system is for. When people keep hearing about the serial killer under every bed, the child molester hiding behind every curtain, or the psychopath lurking in the shadows of every alleyway, there is no way you're going to convince the voters of the utility of rehabilitation.

How would not executing these people make the American public fear them less? Would we become less afraid of the imaginary psycho in the alleyway if we knew that the crimes we imagine him to be capable of are not punishable by death under our laws?

Its the fact that the punishment, and the mental hoops people are willing to jump through to defend it, puts those crimes on a perverse kind of pedestal. A fear fueled, crypto-terrorism like pedestal. If you suggest that a murderer of a dozen people is no less human than the rest of the species you take away the mystique that surrounds his actions. When you put him on the electric chair, it tells people that the guy is somehow noteworthy, and thus representative of a larger problem. Like the "million is a statistic" effect, where people pay an inordinate amount of attention to a single death and ignore the war, only applied to the perpetrator rather than the victim.

All that would change is that the "tough on crime" blowhards would instead be advocating the resumption of the death penalty instead of its continuation. You're mistaking a symptom for a cause.

It is both a cause and a symptom. That's what makes it so dangerous.

Well that depends. Is your point about American politics, or about the ethics of the death penalty in general?

Both. You can't talk about the death penalty without considering the greater political/social/cultural context it exists in, because those factors effect how its applied and it in turn changes those factors.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Very well put Duchess

Personally, I think I would have to define MURDER differently. For instance, I would, as a judge, sentence someone to death for a pre-meditated murder, but not for a heat-of-the-moment crime of passion. I feel it is necessary to use the American system of having different degrees of murder, but expanding them (if they do not already contain such measures) to cover the type of the murder. Premeditated vs crime-of-passion vs accidental "it went too far" and so on

[General Mung Beans]

I oppose it because I don't trust the justice system that much; the justice system is racist, sexist, and classist and which of those categories you fit into determines whether or not you get the death penalty; not what you crime you committed.

And also because it appears to me to be an overly expensive indulgence in indiscriminate vengeance. I say "indiscriminate" because so many of the death penalty supporters I run into don't seem to really care if the system is bigoted or if the death penalty does any good or not or even if the person being executed is actually guilty. They just want blood, and if that blood turns out to be innocent "that's just the price we have to pay".

Suppose there is undeniable evidence that a person is guilty for instance a videotape of the suspect stabbing someone to death-would you support the death penalty than?

[Eternal_Freedom]

With unequivocal evidence it is clearly justified. But I would imagine such unequivocal evidence is quite rare in such cases

[Simon_Jester]

I would go further and say that anyone who would normally be convicted of life imprisonment should be executed if an extremely rigorous appeals process (mandatory DNA testing, multiple investigations of prosecutorial procedure, special evidentiary requirements), show they are guilty... Simply because it makes no sense whatsoever to hold people in a penitentiary who we have no intention of releasing back into society.

And I would take exception to this, because it is still possible to organize a prison that allows people to contribute in some way. Being too dangerous to ever be allowed to live unsupervised is not the same as being too dangerous to be allowed to live.

And anyone who does commit more crimes in that environment is by definition unrehabilitatable (as we have no other means of rehabilitation) and so also must be put to death.

I think that would have to depend on the magnitude of the crime. Someone who fights or steals people's possessions in prison isn't necessarily an impossibly hardened criminal. Someone who kills people in prison might be. Exemptions for self-defense would obviously apply, for instance, and I'd argue an exemption for cases where there isn't evidence of lethal intent- the sort of thing that gets one convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the outside world.

At some point we get into a very blurry situation, of course, where it would be a question of detailed case law, not general principles.

Except that, again, the real reason imprisoning people is so expensive because our system just throws everyone in jail for every minor offense, leading to a prison population that is unsustainable. In other words, this is a problem now, but need not remain a problem in the future.

...Why would shrinking the prison population drastically cut the costs per inmate? Especially for inmates who have to be kept in solitary and who thus aren't using the same facilities as the other inmates?

The cost per inmate is irrelevant. There are prisons out there that are underfunded when measured per inmate, causing social and even legal problems (e.g. inmates sleeping on the floor). But the system as a whole still costs an inordinately large amount for the benefit we see. If we lowered the total population, we could afford to spend more per inmate.

But if we're talking about what to do with a specific inmate, what matters is the cost of that one inmate, not of the whole system.

Imprisoning a person is not expensive because our system just throws everyone in jail for every minor offense. Imprisoning all the people we imprison, total, is, but that's a different question and one we can't solve by changing our policies when it comes to the death penalty.

Regardless of why it is allowed, the point is that it represents situations where the government is not the sole entity that is justified in using lethal force. Note also my use of the word justified: the government does NOT have carte blanch to use lethal force either, and as it is a tool of society we cannot afford to give people the impression that it does lest they either throw it down in a fit of paranoia or hijack it so as to gain access to the government's tools of force by proxy.

Someone deranged enough to think that the government can or should kill just anyone because it kills murderers is deranged enough to think anything, for any reason or none. We can't base policy on "but crazy people might take it as a sign that they should do X!" That's a recipe for paralysis.

What bothers me here is that if the government can never be justified in using the death penalty in criminal cases, it is questionable when, if ever, they would be justified in using it. Should a government that cannot be trusted to execute people be trusted with an army that it might misuse?

Because our society has become inured to the use of force to solve social/political problems that aren't so simple that more guns or prisons will fix them. Its a feedback loop: we put politicians in office who are "tough on crime" or advocate war, systematic violence becomes more commonplace and perceived as "how things should be," so we put more politicians who are tough on crime or pro-war who enact laws that are more tough than the previous ones, it becomes the status quo, so we elect politicians that are tough on crime... and so on. Capitol punishment is one of many contributing causes, but its significant in that it and the rhetoric that accompanies it neatly symbolizes the mindset at its worst.

Do we see this in other societies as well? Do all countries that execute criminals also tend to be warlike with high violent crime rates? I'm not convinced that the death penalty is a contributing factor to this violent culture, or that it is a big enough contributor to justify abolishing it regardless of other questions.

There are states where questioning the validity of capital punishment would be political suicide. Its not hard to see how it is significant.

...So, because there are states where capital punishment is supported, its presence in a society makes that society more violent and brutal? That strikes me as a reversal of cause and effect- I'd expect more brutal societies to execute people whether or not executions make them more brutal.

Its the fact that the punishment, and the mental hoops people are willing to jump through to defend it, puts those crimes on a perverse kind of pedestal. A fear fueled, crypto-terrorism like pedestal. If you suggest that a murderer of a dozen people is no less human than the rest of the species you take away the mystique that surrounds his actions. When you put him on the electric chair, it tells people that the guy is somehow noteworthy, and thus representative of a larger problem. Like the "million is a statistic" effect, where people pay an inordinate amount of attention to a single death and ignore the war, only applied to the perpetrator rather than the victim.

I am really not convinced of the merits of this argument. My impression has always been that people fear violent crime because they do not want to be killed, not because of some perverse glamour that surrounds the people doing the killing.

I'd expect that the real source of the fear is an exaggerated sense of the frequency with which the crimes occur, not the high profile granted the criminal by their execution. As a rule, the execution itself draws far less attention than the crimes and the execution.

Look at it this way. Are mass murderers who don't get sentenced to death any less infamous? Do they have less effect on the national psyche? Is Charles Manson less infamous because he is still alive, for example?

All that would change is that the "tough on crime" blowhards would instead be advocating the resumption of the death penalty instead of its continuation. You're mistaking a symptom for a cause.

It is both a cause and a symptom. That's what makes it so dangerous.

And I'm still not convinced. This sounds too much like magical thinking: if we make this particular symptom of the problem go away, the problem will go away, because this symptom is actually a major cause of the problem!

Very well put Duchess

Personally, I think I would have to define MURDER differently. For instance, I would, as a judge, sentence someone to death for a pre-meditated murder, but not for a heat-of-the-moment crime of passion. I feel it is necessary to use the American system of having different degrees of murder, but expanding them (if they do not already contain such measures) to cover the type of the murder. Premeditated vs crime-of-passion vs accidental "it went too far" and so on

...Um, we already do that to a large extent. I mean, premeditated murder in the US is first degree, crime-of-passion is generally second degree, and accidental killings are manslaughter.

Are you sure you've adequately researched the existing laws on the subject?

[Knife]

I don't see it as a revenge thing, although vengeance is a needed factor in justice, rather there are some people just too toxic to be in any social group.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think vengence is needed but mercy and forgiveness not? Or is it, in your opinion?

I never said mercy or forgiveness are not part of justice, I said vengeance is a factor in justice.

Vengeance is part of the balancing scales, if the aggrieved party doesn't feel like they've gotten 'back at' whom ever has wronged them, then they won't feel like justice is served. It is not all of justice, but a part of it, to make the harmed party feel like they've been avenged.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Simon_Jester, I know of the laws in the United Kingdom since that is where I live. Not being an American I do not know your laws. Hence why I said it should differentiate types of murder (IF the american system doesnt already). My lack of knowledge of the views and laws on capital punishment in america and other countries was my reason for starting the thread. I had planned to learn something of value

[General Mung Beans]

With unequivocal evidence it is clearly justified. But I would imagine such unequivocal evidence is quite rare in such cases

That's quite true, in most cases when there is such evidence the defendant eagerly admits the crime but claims it was justified and good.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Very well put Duchess

Personally, I think I would have to define MURDER differently. For instance, I would, as a judge, sentence someone to death for a pre-meditated murder, but not for a heat-of-the-moment crime of passion. I feel it is necessary to use the American system of having different degrees of murder, but expanding them (if they do not already contain such measures) to cover the type of the murder. Premeditated vs crime-of-passion vs accidental "it went too far" and so on

That is fairly well implicit in what she said. A person who murders their wife when they find them in bed with another man, or who kills their brother in law when they find out that their brother in law brought a doctor over from Egypt to circumcise his daughter (Yes I have been watching Law and Order) will probably never commit a serious crime again. In fact, even in the later case the person will probably never commit a serious crime again.

Most pedophiles too actually wont ever commit a crime if their pathology is properly treated with drugs like depo-provera. There is of course a difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Pedophiles have a pathology that causes them to be sexually attracted to children. They go through courting behavior much like adults do etc. Child molesters are actually predatory and delight in the suffering of the children...

I could go on (Yay for courses in criminology). Now, the number of people who with adequate prison reforms that will commit a crime in prison is pretty damn low. None of that requires that the ones who are not able to be rehabilitated be executed. Most of them have very particular types of victim that are not found in male prisons (children, women etc. There are few female serial killers, those that exist tend to prey on men.). Barring very special cases, they should not be a danger to their fellow inmates.

Even in those cases, it is possible to segregate them without isolation. Keep them in structured environments etc

Suppose there is undeniable evidence that a person is guilty for instance a videotape of the suspect stabbing someone to death-would you support the death penalty than?

No.

[eion]

Most of my reasons for unequivocally not supporting the death penalty have already been stated: likelihood of wrongful conviction, increased cost of housing death roll inmates, decades of appeals defeating the immediacy of the sentence, etc.

But one that I don't think has been mentioned is that (in the U.S. at least) in any crime that can carry the death penalty you must empanel a "death-qualified" jury. Which means that all 12 members of the jury must already support the death penalty. This is a problem because such juries have been shown to be overwhelming white, male, and eager to convict. This tips the scales of justices out of balance.

There is no golden mean of wrongly executed men. One is too many, especially when it is demonstrable cheaper to incarcerate someone for the remainder of their life than it is to spend 20 years trying to kill them in a shoddily performed, unsupervised by any doctor, state sanctioned killing.

Lock them up, put them in solitary for the rest of their lives if they pose a threat to other prisoners and staff. If you really wish to punish someone, might I quote Mr. Josh Lyman:

I'd put 'em in a small cell, and make them watch home movies of the birthdays and baptisms and weddings of every single person they killed, over and over, every day, for the rest of their lives. And then they'd get punched in the mouth every night at bedtime. By a different person, every night. There'd be a long list of volunteers, but that's all right. We'll wait.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And I would take exception to this, because it is still possible to organize a prison that allows people to contribute in some way. Being too dangerous to ever be allowed to live unsupervised is not the same as being too dangerous to be allowed to live.

If there can be a social prison environment in which they can function (or better yet, we convert some Alaskan islands to exile communities consisting of criminals of a particular type who together would not pose a problem to each other, with a regular town/village for them to live in and the only confinement being the fact there's no way to leave the island, with regular deliveries of necessary supplies), then, certainly, such individuals should be spared and perhaps in such an environment can go on to make meaningful contributions to society and minimize their own cost of confinement.

That is fairly well implicit in what she said. A person who murders their wife when they find them in bed with another man, or who kills their brother in law when they find out that their brother in law brought a doctor over from Egypt to circumcise his daughter (Yes I have been watching Law and Order) will probably never commit a serious crime again. In fact, even in the later case the person will probably never commit a serious crime again.

Most pedophiles too actually wont ever commit a crime if their pathology is properly treated with drugs like depo-provera. There is of course a difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Pedophiles have a pathology that causes them to be sexually attracted to children. They go through courting behavior much like adults do etc. Child molesters are actually predatory and delight in the suffering of the children...

I could go on (Yay for courses in criminology). Now, the number of people who with adequate prison reforms that will commit a crime in prison is pretty damn low. None of that requires that the ones who are not able to be rehabilitated be executed. Most of them have very particular types of victim that are not found in male prisons (children, women etc. There are few female serial killers, those that exist tend to prey on men.). Barring very special cases, they should not be a danger to their fellow inmates.

I certainly agree to this, and have no objection to finding as many ways as possible to avoid putting people to death by creating confined structured communities which nonetheless allow for some modicum of social functioning. however...

Even in those cases, it is possible to segregate them without isolation. Keep them in structured environments etc

Is it really? Let's examine the case of one man who was in tight supermax lockup, didn't have anything that could be used as a weapon. What did he do? He patiently, for months on end, collected all the little pieces of seran wrap that each of his meals was covered by. When he had enough, he put them over his space heater and melted and shaped them, until he had a plastic shiv he was able to stab someone with. How the fuck do you create an environment structured enough to keep a guy like that from shiving someone? That is the kind of person I believe the death penalty still has validity for, getting rid of people that innately violent and cunning and completely uncontrollable.

NOTE: I have in fact come to support a moratorium on the current US death penalty, as our appeals process is fucked to hell and needs to be thoroughly reviewed and revamped, our standards of evidence need to be extensively tightened, and last but not least we need to have professional juries trying crimes in general, but especially death penalty cases. Nine professional judges instead of the retarded lay jury system which is essentially a medieval institution and results in many of the problems in our current justice system.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That is the kind of person I believe the death penalty still has validity for, getting rid of people that innately violent and cunning and completely uncontrollable.

I would need the context. As it stands our prisons are pressure cookers of violence, someone who goes in for petty larceny may e driven to that. If he IS just like that, then would it not be better to study him?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That is the kind of person I believe the death penalty still has validity for, getting rid of people that innately violent and cunning and completely uncontrollable.

I would need the context. As it stands our prisons are pressure cookers of violence, someone who goes in for petty larceny may e driven to that. If he IS just like that, then would it not be better to study him?

Would you support the death penalty for someone who behaved like that in a reformed, Scandinavian style prison? When we had studied and understood his condition and currently had no effective treatment for it? Certainly the number of people who need to be put to death is very small, and should be made as small as possible with every reasonable resource... I expect based on the behaviour of certain sets of violent psychopaths that we would still have a small segment, perhaps just a dozen or two a year, of individuals in the United States completely unredeemable and requiring the ultimate sanction.

[Formless]

But if we're talking about what to do with a specific inmate, what matters is the cost of that one inmate, not of the whole system.

Imprisoning a person is not expensive because our system just throws everyone in jail for every minor offense. Imprisoning all the people we imprison, total, is, but that's a different question and one we can't solve by changing our policies when it comes to the death penalty.

You aren't getting my point. Every prisoner costs differently from every other prisoner. You could try and find the price of the average prisoner, but what's the point? Why not just look at the cost of the whole system on society, since that's easier and more accurate a measurement than on a per-prisoner basis? Its like asking a business to buy a product one unit at at time when its more efficient to buy in bulk. The individual prisoner is irrelevant to the cost benifit analysis of the wole system. And if the whole system is no real burden on society, there is no need to get so worked up about prisoner x being particularly expensive. In the scale of things, it evens out.

Someone deranged enough to think that the government can or should kill just anyone because it kills murderers is deranged enough to think anything, for any reason or none. We can't base policy on "but crazy people might take it as a sign that they should do X!" That's a recipe for paralysis.

You realize I'm talking about larger trends here than just the death penalty, right?

Right?

...

See, this is why it helps to read an entire post in context before hacking into its constituent quote spaghetti for cheap nitpicks.

What bothers me here is that if the government can never be justified in using the death penalty in criminal cases, it is questionable when, if ever, they would be justified in using it. Should a government that cannot be trusted to execute people be trusted with an army that it might misuse?

If a government cannot be trusted to police its own citizens justly, then no, its not to be trusted with an army capable of starting wars of aggression. My what a wonderful concept you've discovered.

Do we see this in other societies as well? Do all countries that execute criminals also tend to be warlike with high violent crime rates? I'm not convinced that the death penalty is a contributing factor to this violent culture, or that it is a big enough contributor to justify abolishing it regardless of other questions.

First of all, even if it wasn't seen in other cultures the fact that it has been seen in ours means its at least relevant when discussing ours. The fact that no president in his right mind would seriously question the death penalty at the federal level and expect to be re-elected is evidence enough that something is going on here, at least in america.

Second of all, (although this does not directly prove the point) what was the last war of aggression the Norwegians fought? The Germans? Japan? All of those have justice systems that are much less harsh than the US in the sense that they focus on rehabilitation. Do they have less violent cultures? Google "american kirby is angry." What exactly do you think is going through the minds of Nintendo's marketing department when they put angry eyebrows on an otherwise pink puffball? Or have child Link brandish his sword for the american crowd while in europe he's actually doing what the game's title would suggest (i.e. riding a goddamn train)?

Now you might think that Nintendo's marketing department is just overcompensating, but I think that if you look even a little broader the correlation between a peaceful society, low crime rates, and having a merciful justice system that doesn't resort to capital punishment in any but the most extreme cases holds.

So how exactly can the death penalty be influencing our culture? Because of the Status Quo Bias. Once something has become entrenched into people's minds, whether its a personal preference or a cultural ideal, they are primed to defend it even against reason. Incidently, this is why rhetoric designed to pursuade looks so vastly different from rhetoric meant to discredit, and why its so hard to change people's minds using the latter.

...So, because there are states where capital punishment is supported, its presence in a society makes that society more violent and brutal? That strikes me as a reversal of cause and effect- I'd expect more brutal societies to execute people whether or not executions make them more brutal.

All causes themselves have a cause. In this case, whatever started america's spiral downward towards the "tough on crime" paradigm, said paradigm is now the status quo and something that people are willing to go to great lengths to protect. You do understand how a feedback loop works, right?

I am really not convinced of the merits of this argument. My impression has always been that people fear violent crime because they do not want to be killed, not because of some perverse glamour that surrounds the people doing the killing.

I'd expect that the real source of the fear is an exaggerated sense of the frequency with which the crimes occur, not the high profile granted the criminal by their execution. As a rule, the execution itself draws far less attention than the crimes and the execution.

Look at it this way. Are mass murderers who don't get sentenced to death any less infamous? Do they have less effect on the national psyche? Is Charles Manson less infamous because he is still alive, for example?

The infamy comes from the trial. So? Death penalty cases come from the segment of crimes that are practically guarunteed a famous trial. That's why you always see people tout out the serial killer archetype-- lots of famous serial killers were sentenced to death. The fact that you are not convinced says absolutely nothing. Human intuition is a notoriously bad indicator of truth.

And I'm still not convinced. This sounds too much like magical thinking: if we make this particular symptom of the problem go away, the problem will go away, because this symptom is actually a major cause of the problem!

Do I have to beat it into your skull with an egg whisk that I'm talking about larger social trends besides just the death penalty? FFS, of course I don't think it will all be magically better if we only didn't have capital punishment. But we can't ignore it either. Complex problems call for complex solutions; you are advocating for exactly no solution.

I never said mercy or forgiveness are not part of justice, I said vengeance is a factor in justice.

Vengeance is part of the balancing scales, if the aggrieved party doesn't feel like they've gotten 'back at' whom ever has wronged them, then they won't feel like justice is served. It is not all of justice, but a part of it, to make the harmed party feel like they've been avenged.

My understanding is that what many victems really want is closure, and that while that can manifest itself in the form of wanting revenge that's only one of multiple responses to crime. Thinking of justice in terms of "a balancing of the scales" seems kinda simplistic to me, coming from the viewpoint that the legal system is a social tool for enacting an ethical standard everyone can abide by. But eh, maybe that's just me.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Would you support the death penalty for someone who behaved like that in a reformed, Scandinavian style prison? When we had studied and understood his condition and currently had no effective treatment for it? Certainly the number of people who need to be put to death is very small, and should be made as small as possible with every reasonable resource... I expect based on the behaviour of certain sets of violent psychopaths that we would still have a small segment, perhaps just a dozen or two a year, of individuals in the United States completely unredeemable and requiring the ultimate sanction.

Even then, no. One can keep very very small actual prisons for such people. If they never get out of their cell (but still have human contact) they are a danger to no one. It is still sub-optimal in terms of utility to kill them. Your argument is predicated on the notion that they will ever again be in a position to harm someone. If you put one of those monsters in a Hannibal Lecter Cell and allow them human contact (though no touching) and give them a view, in addition to allowing them to write draw etc then you still have a better option.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I do not believe you can do that without inflicting torture on the individual, simply put. Human contact is a normal part of the human psyche, and that's not just talking through a plexiglass wall.

[Simon_Jester]

But one that I don't think has been mentioned is that (in the U.S. at least) in any crime that can carry the death penalty you must empanel a "death-qualified" jury. Which means that all 12 members of the jury must already support the death penalty. This is a problem because such juries have been shown to be overwhelming white, male, and eager to convict. This tips the scales of justices out of balance.

Now that is so perverse and retarded that it should automatically indicate that the US had best abandon the death penalty immediately because of the inherent bias created by that kind of jury.

You aren't getting my point. Every prisoner costs differently from every other prisoner. You could try and find the price of the average prisoner, but what's the point? Why not just look at the cost of the whole system on society, since that's easier and more accurate a measurement than on a per-prisoner basis? Its like asking a business to buy a product one unit at at time when its more efficient to buy in bulk. The individual prisoner is irrelevant to the cost benifit analysis of the wole system. And if the whole system is no real burden on society, there is no need to get so worked up about prisoner x being particularly expensive. In the scale of things, it evens out.

Since we are talking only about death row prisoners, it is disingenuous to talk about the cost of the system as a whole as a substitute for talking about the individuals in question. The point remains that in the extreme limit of highly dangerous prisoners, we are talking about great individual expense to keep them alive under miserable conditions when there is no realistic chance of rehabilitating them, just on the general principle that we should never ever ever execute a prisoner.

That strikes me as incredibly irrational by utilitarian standards.

Someone deranged enough to think that the government can or should kill just anyone because it kills murderers is deranged enough to think anything, for any reason or none. We can't base policy on "but crazy people might take it as a sign that they should do X!" That's a recipe for paralysis.

You realize I'm talking about larger trends here than just the death penalty, right?

Yes, but it is (again) disingenuous to fold those issues into the issue of capital punishment and say: "the death penalty is wrong because of the culture of violence in America!" Which is where your argument seems to be going, insofar as it hasn't just flat out drifted off topic.

All your talk about the culture of violence in America seems to revolve around the assumption that if we could just do... something... it would fix this problem and we wouldn't study war no more and so on. And there's a very strong implication, to me at least, that you believe in abolishing the death penalty pursuant to solving this problem. And I question both whether the problem exists in the form you claim, and whether abolishing the death penalty would help appreciably even if it did.

Also, your argument has no bearing on countries other than the US, as far as I can tell... and I'm trying to keep my argument general, because the US specifically lacks a justice system refined enough to be permitted the death penalty. That's a problem for court reform, though; eliminating the death penalty would only be a preliminary to the necessary judicial reforms. And once those reforms were complete, I think the death penalty could (in principle) be resumed, if we saw fit to do so.

If a government cannot be trusted to police its own citizens justly, then no, its not to be trusted with an army capable of starting wars of aggression. My what a wonderful concept you've discovered.

What about an army capable of defending the state against outside aggression? Even a minimalist defensive army would be a very effective asset for state oppression of the public... but without such an army, the state is completely useless, nothing more than a large and flashy parasite on the body politic.

Do you advocate disbanding practically all the world's militaries on the grounds that the nations in question do not have adequate court systems to meet your satisfaction? I'm really not sure how far you're taking this notion.

Do we see this in other societies as well? Do all countries that execute criminals also tend to be warlike with high violent crime rates? I'm not convinced that the death penalty is a contributing factor to this violent culture, or that it is a big enough contributor to justify abolishing it regardless of other questions.

First of all, even if it wasn't seen in other cultures the fact that it has been seen in ours means its at least relevant when discussing ours. The fact that no president in his right mind would seriously question the death penalty at the federal level and expect to be re-elected is evidence enough that something is going on here, at least in america.

It is evidence of ONE thing:

Second of all, (although this does not directly prove the point) what was the last war of aggression the Norwegians fought? The Germans? Japan? All of those have justice systems that are much less harsh than the US in the sense that they focus on rehabilitation. Do they have less violent cultures? Google "american kirby is angry." What exactly do you think is going through the minds of Nintendo's marketing department when they put angry eyebrows on an otherwise pink puffball? Or have child Link brandish his sword for the american crowd while in europe he's actually doing what the game's title would suggest (i.e. riding a goddamn train)?

What bothers me still is that you seem indifferent to cause and effect when talking about this issue. What makes you think the US's attachment to the death penalty (which is unhealthy for the US because of its antiquated prison and judiciary systems) has any causal role in explaining the US's higher cultural predilection towards violence? What if it's the other way around? Or if the cultural predilection towards violence is caused by other factors that are only vaguely related to the death penalty?

...So, because there are states where capital punishment is supported, its presence in a society makes that society more violent and brutal? That strikes me as a reversal of cause and effect- I'd expect more brutal societies to execute people whether or not executions make them more brutal.

All causes themselves have a cause. In this case, whatever started america's spiral downward towards the "tough on crime" paradigm, said paradigm is now the status quo and something that people are willing to go to great lengths to protect. You do understand how a feedback loop works, right?

Quite well, but at this point I'm not convinced that campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty is a cost-effective way to break the loop.

The infamy comes from the trial. So? Death penalty cases come from the segment of crimes that are practically guarunteed a famous trial. That's why you always see people tout out the serial killer archetype-- lots of famous serial killers were sentenced to death. The fact that you are not convinced says absolutely nothing. Human intuition is a notoriously bad indicator of truth.

How is yours better than mine.

Seriously, would serial killers get lower publicity trials if they were in no danger of being executed? You seem to be asserting this, and I would love to see it demonstrated.

Do I have to beat it into your skull with an egg whisk that I'm talking about larger social trends besides just the death penalty? FFS, of course I don't think it will all be magically better if we only didn't have capital punishment. But we can't ignore it either. Complex problems call for complex solutions; you are advocating for exactly no solution.

I am arguing that I don't think the death penalty is a significant part of the problem. Trying to change it before the problem has been attacked to good effect by other means will prove useless, because it is too small an issue in the American political consciousness to be a major source of the problem. At most, it is a minor outpost of the problem that, if attacked, will create intense conflict without actually shifting the battle lines.

As to why I'm not proposing a solution? I'm not the one who identifies this problem and claims to understand it. I am in a poor position to prescribe means to solve it, since I'm not the one who thinks he knows how it works.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I do not believe you can do that without inflicting torture on the individual, simply put. Human contact is a normal part of the human psyche, and that's not just talking through a plexiglass wall.

It would not be pleasant by any stretch, but the insanity from isolation comes from the silence more than anything. Even so, there are ways of allowing personal contact. Not with other prisoners of course, and only after very thorough searches.

[Formless]

Since we are talking only about death row prisoners, it is disingenuous to talk about the cost of the system as a whole as a substitute for talking about the individuals in question. The point remains that in the extreme limit of highly dangerous prisoners, we are talking about great individual expense to keep them alive under miserable conditions when there is no realistic chance of rehabilitating them, just on the general principle that we should never ever ever execute a prisoner.

That strikes me as incredibly irrational by utilitarian standards.

Why the hell is it a good idea to encourage a system that cuts corners for no good reason? We're talking about the lives of human beings here. The dollar value of a human being, if it can be calculated at all, should be quite hefty. Since we as a society are already willing to throw money at such things as two wars of aggression, the world's largest military industrial complex, an overcrowded as-it-is prison system, and so on, why not instead use that money for something good? I don't see the relevance of your argument.

How it should be done:

• Society spends x money on social programs to deal with crime. Prisons are one of them.
• The prison system recieves and allocates funding as necessary to specific in-house problems.
• One of those problems is the particularly nasty cases who have specific needs to ensure the safety of themselves and others.
• The prison system finds they need more money to deal with the problem, so they ask for it.

Unless society has found the expense of the system as a whole particularly odious for whatever reason, why shouldn't we put that money to good use so those prisoners can live at least somewhat meaningful lives? Why write them off prematurely based on some perception that they are hopelessly expensive to take care of? The same would be true of a disabled inmate in, say, a wheelchair, since he would have physical needs to have taken care of. Should we give the death penalty to disabled inmates to cut costs on dealing with their needs? What kind of a cold hearted thing (I dare not call this intelligence human) thinks this way?

Yes, but it is (again) disingenuous to fold those issues into the issue of capital punishment and say: "the death penalty is wrong because of the culture of violence in America!" Which is where your argument seems to be going, insofar as it hasn't just flat out drifted off topic.

Goddamn man, have you never fucking heard of virtue ethics? How we behave to one segment of the population effects our perceptions of the rest of the population, and thus how we treat the rest of the population. The more willing we are to write off the worst offenders permenantly (I should stress that: permenantly), the more likely it is we'll see the rest as despensible as well. The result is a system that doesn't give a shit about human life, as long as you've crossed an imaginary line that no one can see nor justify.

All your talk about the culture of violence in America seems to revolve around the assumption that if we could just do... something... it would fix this problem and we wouldn't study war no more and so on. And there's a very strong implication, to me at least, that you believe in abolishing the death penalty pursuant to solving this problem. And I question both whether the problem exists in the form you claim, and whether abolishing the death penalty would help appreciably even if it did.

And this, folks, is how a strawman is built. Assume you know what the other party is talking about based on what your gut says he's talking about, rather than his own goddamn words.

Where the fucking hell did I ever make this oversimplification that the only thing we need to do to deal with the US culture is abolish the death penalty? And why, given that it is status quo in the US and that the rhetoric of the death penalty is frequently paired and tied with the rhetoric of tough on crime bullshit, should we not try to tackle the two problems together?

Also, your argument has no bearing on countries other than the US, as far as I can tell... and I'm trying to keep my argument general, because the US specifically lacks a justice system refined enough to be permitted the death penalty.

And you yourself noted that the same countries that you would trust with the death penalty do not have a death penalty. This argument is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand and you know it.

What about an army capable of defending the state against outside aggression? Even a minimalist defensive army would be a very effective asset for state oppression of the public... but without such an army, the state is completely useless, nothing more than a large and flashy parasite on the body politic.

Do you advocate disbanding practically all the world's militaries on the grounds that the nations in question do not have adequate court systems to meet your satisfaction? I'm really not sure how far you're taking this notion.

What part of "War of aggression" did you not understand? For that matter, why is it that when I said "governments must be justified in using force as much as people are" with the implication being that the death penalty, when seen as a way of showing society's disapproval, obscures this fact you instantly jumped on the idea that I think that governments are never justified in using force? Are you pathologically incapable of not putting words into my mouth? Are you incapable of not inferring strange new interpretations of my arguments that I obviously never inteneded? One must ask what the hell is going on inside that head of yours that you can't understand arguments that aren't spelled out for you in small words.

What bothers me still is that you seem indifferent to cause and effect when talking about this issue. What makes you think the US's attachment to the death penalty (which is unhealthy for the US because of its antiquated prison and judiciary systems) has any causal role in explaining the US's higher cultural predilection towards violence? What if it's the other way around? Or if the cultural predilection towards violence is caused by other factors that are only vaguely related to the death penalty?

Such as? I understand the issue of mistaking correlation for causation, but at the very least it seems your arguments have gone further than that to dispute that there exists a possible mechanism for what I'm talking about. I've shown it; what better explanation do you propose for this phenomenon?

Quite well, but at this point I'm not convinced that campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty is a cost-effective way to break the loop.

If we value human life, then the breaking of the loop is but an instrumental value. An added bonus if you will.

How is yours better than mine.

Seriously, would serial killers get lower publicity trials if they were in no danger of being executed? You seem to be asserting this, and I would love to see it demonstrated.

Because one of the very justifications for the legal system in the first place is to draw attention to potential or real issues, and the theory goes that this will show our disapproval of certain behaviors. The problem I'm trying to get at is that this conclusion does not follow.

If it does not in fact draw attention to them, we face the problem that the legal system does not actually serve one of its goals. Not that its impossible that the populace is ignorant of how the system works, but that's a topic for another time.

I am arguing that I don't think the death penalty is a significant part of the problem. Trying to change it before the problem has been attacked to good effect by other means will prove useless, because it is too small an issue in the American political consciousness to be a major source of the problem. At most, it is a minor outpost of the problem that, if attacked, will create intense conflict without actually shifting the battle lines.

Its a problem unto itself, for a veriety of reasons. Its also a sub-problem within a larger problem, and one that must be fixed alongside those larger problems. The shifting of the battle lines, as it were, is an inevitable problem in American politics thanks to the tactics of teh Right, so if you are afraid of that I don't see how you expect to solve anything.

[Simon_Jester]

How it should be done:

• Society spends x money on social programs to deal with crime. Prisons are one of them.
• The prison system recieves and allocates funding as necessary to specific in-house problems.
• One of those problems is the particularly nasty cases who have specific needs to ensure the safety of themselves and others.
• The prison system finds they need more money to deal with the problem, so they ask for it.

Unless society has found the expense of the system as a whole particularly odious for whatever reason, why shouldn't we put that money to good use so those prisoners can live at least somewhat meaningful lives? Why write them off prematurely based on some perception that they are hopelessly expensive to take care of? The same would be true of a disabled inmate in, say, a wheelchair, since he would have physical needs to have taken care of. Should we give the death penalty to disabled inmates to cut costs on dealing with their needs? What kind of a cold hearted thing (I dare not call this intelligence human) thinks this way?

It is not about the expense. It is about a horrible combination of factors: an inmate who cannot be rehabilitated by any known or foreseeable means (thus making the primary legitimate purpose of the prison system impossible for him), who poses a consistent threat to other inmates who can be rehabilitated (which makes simply leaving him in the prison environment to contribute to society from there impossible), and who cannot be prevented from posing such a threat save by restraining him under conditions where existence is guaranteed misery.

That last is important: it is not just that keeping him alive in a concrete box is expensive, it is that it becomes questionable whether we are doing him any favors by doing so. Keeping someone alive in a wheelchair, when they can otherwise do all the things anyone else can do, doesn't qualify. People can be quite happy to be alive in a wheelchair. Will they be happy to be a sedated husk in a cement box for thirty years? I don't know. I think it's a legitimate question.

Yes, but it is (again) disingenuous to fold those issues into the issue of capital punishment and say: "the death penalty is wrong because of the culture of violence in America!" Which is where your argument seems to be going, insofar as it hasn't just flat out drifted off topic.

Goddamn man, have you never fucking heard of virtue ethics? How we behave to one segment of the population effects our perceptions of the rest of the population, and thus how we treat the rest of the population. The more willing we are to write off the worst offenders permenantly (I should stress that: permenantly), the more likely it is we'll see the rest as despensible as well. The result is a system that doesn't give a shit about human life, as long as you've crossed an imaginary line that no one can see nor justify.

The problem I have always had with this line of reasoning is that is difficult to find the point where we can stop invoking it. Is it only violence towards human beings that promotes more violence towards human beings? Or is eating animals also a contributing factor? What about blowing up mountainsides for roads? Where does it end?

I'm willing to believe you have an answer for that. I certainly hope so. But I'd like to know where.

All your talk about the culture of violence in America seems to revolve around the assumption that if we could just do... something... it would fix this problem and we wouldn't study war no more and so on. And there's a very strong implication, to me at least, that you believe in abolishing the death penalty pursuant to solving this problem. And I question both whether the problem exists in the form you claim, and whether abolishing the death penalty would help appreciably even if it did.

And this, folks, is how a strawman is built. Assume you know what the other party is talking about based on what your gut says he's talking about, rather than his own goddamn words.

Unfortunately, I am having trouble comprehending what your reasoning is, building a coherent model of it. It seems sort of... well, formless to me. I'm dubious of the cause-effect reasoning (and yes, I heard you the first times, it's a feedback loop; feedback loops still rely on cause-effect). I'm dubious of the proposition that you are indeed attacking a relevant link in the feedback chain. I'm even more dubious of the proposition that this tells us much of anything about the general case of whether capital punishment in societies that aren't the turn of the millenium United States.

Also, your argument has no bearing on countries other than the US, as far as I can tell... and I'm trying to keep my argument general, because the US specifically lacks a justice system refined enough to be permitted the death penalty.

And you yourself noted that the same countries that you would trust with the death penalty do not have a death penalty. This argument is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand and you know it.

I do not believe it to be irrelevant. I think that what's wrong with the US would still exist if we didn't have the death penalty, would not go away if we abolished it, could be made to go away without abolishing it, and would not come back if we reinstituted it after it went away, even assuming we had abolished it.

I do not think that excessive fascination with the death penalty is a major cause or effect of the deep flaws in American culture that make us a warlike and corrupt nation by modern First World standards. I think you have let yourself become distracted by a side issue, and are now insisting that your distraction dominate any and all discussion of whether the death penalty can be ethical.

What part of "War of aggression" did you not understand? For that matter, why is it that when I said "governments must be justified in using force as much as people are" with the implication being that the death penalty, when seen as a way of showing society's disapproval, obscures this fact you instantly jumped on the idea that I think that governments are never justified in using force? Are you pathologically incapable of not putting words into my mouth? Are you incapable of not inferring strange new interpretations of my arguments that I obviously never inteneded? One must ask what the hell is going on inside that head of yours that you can't understand arguments that aren't spelled out for you in small words.

I am easily distracted into paying attention to the wrong bits, as are you. See above when you drew an analogy between an inmate who could not be safely kept in a prison except sedated in a cement box and an inmate in a wheelchair, because you focused on the expense. When my real argument was the combination of quality of life and expense, that it is perverse to spend large sums to keep someone alive-and-miserable... which has nothing to do with saying we should not pay large sums to keep someone alive when they have the chance for happiness or productivity or the other things that make life worthwhile for normal people.

What bothers me still is that you seem indifferent to cause and effect when talking about this issue. What makes you think the US's attachment to the death penalty (which is unhealthy for the US because of its antiquated prison and judiciary systems) has any causal role in explaining the US's higher cultural predilection towards violence? What if it's the other way around? Or if the cultural predilection towards violence is caused by other factors that are only vaguely related to the death penalty?

Such as? I understand the issue of mistaking correlation for causation, but at the very least it seems your arguments have gone further than that to dispute that there exists a possible mechanism for what I'm talking about. I've shown it; what better explanation do you propose for this phenomenon?

The problem I see is that the nature of the phenomenon is itself subject to debate. Is America's high violent crime rate an effect of its violent culture? Or is it a product of a vicious combination of factors like Gini coefficient, economic and social ghettoization, illegalized drugs creating a thriving criminal underworld that can't be suppressed, and so on?

Is America's tendency to fight colonial wars an effect of its violent culture? Or is it a product of a corrupt government that is easily bought out by corporate interests, including oil and military-industrial corporations? Of a lack of the systematic aversion therapy against war and colonialism that almost every other Western nation got in the form of brutal beatings in the World Wars and the colonial revolts of the '50s and '60s? Of the fact that we just happen to have a large population to draw volunteer troops from (unlike, say, Britain, which has 20% of our population and thus is in no position to conquer and occupy Third World countries in this day and age), plenty of surplus wealth that can be spent on the military without hurting our standard of living (unlike, say, China or Russia, though for different reasons), and this residual notion of somehow being responsible for what happens in random corners of the globe?

I'm not sure there is a powerful feedback mechanism that can be labeled "culture of violence" at all. I see a lot of phenomena that could be but need not be connected. My "better explanation" is the null hypothesis, because I don't see why any more is called for.

How is yours better than mine.

Seriously, would serial killers get lower publicity trials if they were in no danger of being executed? You seem to be asserting this, and I would love to see it demonstrated.

Because one of the very justifications for the legal system in the first place is to draw attention to potential or real issues, and the theory goes that this will show our disapproval of certain behaviors. The problem I'm trying to get at is that this conclusion does not follow.

Do we need showy trials for serial killers? Will serial killers be any less feared, or any less infamous, if there was no chance of them being executed? Your argument started to the effect that it is the fact that we execute serial killers that make them special, and therefore powerful and feared in the eyes of the public, and that this contributes to the "culture of fear" (which feeds into the culture of violence).

That chain is a lot less strong if serial killers would be no less intimidating if we stopped executing them.

[IvanTih]

I think that Capital Punishemt should be only used for worst crimes like mass murder,murder of a child etc...
Simple opinion.
I think that it should be administrated by cyanide or some other poison.