The purpose of the Criminal Justice System

The moral contradiction? Well... "Killing another human being is the worst thing a person can possibly do, no matter what the provocation! So we should kill the people that do it."

That's a bit oversimplified of course, but do you honestly not see the strange contradiction there? On one hand, you're saying that killing people is evil. But on the other, you're advocating killing people as justice.

So there is the disconnect. It's not necessarily the "killing" bit that's the issue. If we could bring people back to life, it really wouldn't be nearly so big of a deal.

It's the "they can't go back and now have no rights or ability to experience the life they had to the fullest, because they're dead."

Therefore, the idea that we would then turn around and allow the killer to "redeem" himself and go out into society again is ludicrous to me. He knowingly ended another person's ability to experience life and exercise basic human rights. He, therefore, gets none himself. Rights for rights, and therefore a life for a life, because punishment should be proportional and fair, to me, anyhow. Unless he can replace the life he took, he must give something equal in return.

And a moral person would argue that human life is priceless, so life for life is the closest to what we can get.

Why must a moral person see human life as priceless?

Care to explain what kind of logic you're finding behind this...? Especially since you're arguing against capital punishment...

It's possible to make an estimation of a life's worth.

Personally, I would recommend against calculations like that, but it's possible to imagine a moral system in which such a calculation could be made. Again, not something I would advocate, but there you go.

@USAF: So then the state would have to be executed too, because they also knowingly (probably more knowingly than the murderer himself) took someone's life.

It's not a matter of "treating the murderer better than the victim". The victim doesn't matter at all by this point. They're dead. Nothing we do to the murderer can bring them back, thus it's not worth treating the murderer worse for the sake of the victim. The victim doesn't care.

@Milos: You seem to be ignoring the most famous story in the Western world.

Even if it's not literally true, it's definitely an example of someone giving up his life for murderers. And all kinds of other people.

When the US Government starts executing random people for no reason, we'll talk about toppling the government.

This argument is pointless, for this very reason: you don't care. We do. There is no changing either opinion.

This sentence, this here idea that the "victim doesn't matter?" That disgusts me as much as executing someone for murder disgusts you. Thus is why this entire debate is pointless.

edited 10th Aug '11 11:49:04 AM by USAF713

What could they possibly matter? They're dead. Nothing you or I do can possibly affect them, so we shouldn't do anything for them or to them. Because they won't appreciate it, because they're a corpse.

And the government does execute innocent people sometimes. I think that's already been well established, and by your own logic it means we have to execute the state itself.

edited 10th Aug '11 11:51:19 AM by BlackHumor

I'm not going to try and explain something to you that you do not comprehend. Our positions are completely incompatible.

I said "randomly for no reason." There's a reason those people are executed, it's just wrong. Hanlon's Razor. It's not maliciousness, it's incompetence of the system, and it's still rather limited compared to the entirety of it.

edited 25th Nov '12 11:19:21 PM by JosefBugman

Of course there's a reason behind it. It's simply not valid to you. Just like "the victim is dead so they don't matter anymore" is not valid in the slightest to me. In other words, it would be a waste of effort to argue further, so I'm not going to bother.

So you're basing an argument in favor of massive yet simultaneously vague reforms to the justice system for the sake of a moral imperative that you're well aware significant amounts of people disagree with you on. And when confronted with that you have nothing to say except 'Your morals are incompatible with mine, talking further is pointless.'

Bit of a pipe dream there, you know? And a lot of people are rather glad that it's only a pipe dream rather than a serious reality, and you're just going to have to live with that impotence unless you can figure out a better argument.

I have arguments. I've given arguments. You don't agree, and you gave your own arguments, which I don't agree with.

This, though? This I won't argue with. This is Blue-and-Orange Morality. I cannot fathom a rational reason for this. If I cannot comprehend the rationality of my opponent's argument, I can't argue against it. Therefore, I won't bother.

Why should the criminal justice system do anything for the victim? They don't appreciate it, they're dead. You can't kill someone for the sake of the victim anymore than you can kill someone for the sake of a tree.

The criminal justice system exists for exactly two reasons: to keep people off the streets who would do harm to others and their things, and to punish them when they do do things. People who have killed do not deserve the resources it takes to keep them alive in the system, and they don't deserve a second chance the majority of the time.

The purpose of the punishment is to act as a deterrent, and in some cases to make it harder for the criminal to repeat their offence (the most common punishment that aims for this is prison).

Punishment has no other purpose.

To you. Once again, this entire argument is pointless. We're working on Blue-and-Orange Morality. To me, "justice" is not served without punishment. There is no point to the system if it only exists as a glorified time-out. Not for rape and murder. That is unacceptable.

Of what value is serving "justice"? What actual positive effects does it have in the real world, apart from placating people who suffer from a craving to see "justice" served? Why not look for less costly ways to alleviate this feeling?

Well, I already offered methods of reducing the monetary cost. It's not a problem of lack of options, it's a problem of being unable to sell it to the population. They don't want to spend effort on prisoners, and, in many cases, with good reason. However, it also costs us money it doesn't have to...

I think I agree with Black Humour. There is literally nothing you can do for the victim of murder anymore. They're not going to be any less dead because you killed the person that killed them, nor will it make their death less painful or traumatic. So you shouldn't do anything based on 'it's for the victim'.

Let's look at it as an economics problem: If we apply the death penalty enough, we can keep costs down. What I mean, is that everywhere you look, you hear stories about the US's rising prison population. So, applying the principle that the most heinous must pay for their crimes, list the prison population by crimes in therms of heinousness, and (assuming that 5,000 new people are incarcerated), execute the 5,000 most heinous offenders. The price of a prisoner's life is how much it costs to keep him there.

Given the current way the death penalty works in the US at least, it will often cost more for the entire execution to take place than it would have just to pay for the life sentence.

"Care to explain what kind of logic you're finding behind this...? Especially since you're arguing against capital punishment..."

No, I absolutely do not care to explain, since your question is based on a premise that falsely presupposes a correlation between having any set of morals whatsoever in general, and holding a very specific belief about the worth of the human race.

I will, however, say that I am against capital punishment primarily because I don't believe people to be fair and objective arbiters of who deserves to die, live, suffer, and incur penalty. Besides which, I do not believe in a punitive system but in a rehabilitative one.