That's subjective, not objective. After all, sticking somebody on a dessert island away from other people... and ,they won't just keel over, unable to breathe.
Being able to breathe suggests having a right to breathe. Liberty is just as abstract a concept as punishment. Life, however, is less abstract. You have it: or, you don't. And, no backsies once stopped.
edited 4th Dec '12 5:36:57 AM by Euodiachloris
If being able to breathe suggests a right to breathe, then being able to murder and rape suggests a right to murder and rape.
I agree that under most circumstances, people have a right to life, liberty, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. But my point was that criminals, by violating the restrictions placed on them by society, forfeit the protections given to them by society. If you don't play by the rules, you don't get the benefits of doing so. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't protections given to them anyway (the right to a trail by jury, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc), but "life", as the existence of the death penalty proves, does not necessarily have to be one of them.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
That presumes that society is never incorrect when it comes to judging a person to have wilfully stepped over the often shifting lines drawn up by it.
Which... is not the case.
Strictly speaking: that which allows you to live allows you to live. <shrugs> Nature doesn't get into morals and ethics, and if you're breathing and able to breed and feed, that's all it "cares" about, really.
edited 4th Dec '12 6:03:51 AM by Euodiachloris
When did I presume that? I'm talking theory, here, not practicalities. Of course, any argument you can make against applying the death penalty in case of wrongful convictions can apply to other punishments as well. If you execute someone and they turn out to be innocent, then you can't give them their life back, true — but if you imprison someone for 25 years and they turn out to be innocent, you can't give them their 25 years back, either. Death is more severe, obviously, but the distinction isn't as sharp as it seems.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.![]()
When I say that people "don't play by society's rules", I mean they break the law. "Changing the rules" doesn't make any sense unless you're suggesting we legalize things like rape, murder, or other potentially capital offenses.
I don't think rape by itself should be a capital offense. But then, I don't think murder should be either. In both cases, I think it needs to be particularly heinous before the death penalty should even be on the table. That's why I mentioned the Fritzl case in my initial post.
edited 4th Dec '12 9:42:37 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I don't think people should reject death penalty so much just because it involves death. A LOT of things can go right when the right criminals get justified deaths, instead of just giving them a lifetime luxury behind bars. There are always some lines, which crossed, that define whether or not a human has turned into a Complete Monster and deserve to be executed.
Just look at the world we're in. We're living in an age of moral decay and increasing population concentration. If death itself cannot deter certain people from coming up with pre-meditated murder, what else can? If anything, life behind bars is TOO sweet a way to pass away, while innocent people have to suffer the white collar environment (or blue) in order to get wages, only barely able to sustain themselves from the burden of bills and taxes.
There are some crimes which I think are justified to be punished through death. And those crimes won't have the last of criminals yet. Why should the tax money of the innocent be made to FEED those who don't deserve to have a place?
What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...Perhaps we should.
Also, speeding varies, in many states it's just an infraction payable by a fine and then wiped from record, and in others it's a misdemeanor.
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"Moral Decay?" I'll give you increasing population but "Moral decay" is inherently subjective, because morality is subjective. And in order for your argument to work crime rates would have to be steadily INCREASING rather than decreasing as they've been since the sixties.
People commit crimes, terrible crimes all the time and throughout history, there's no evidence that killing the offenders deters criminals any better than other methods of puninshment. Life in prison is no walk in the park either, but most criminals act under the assumption that they can avoid getting caught in the first place. Countries that ban the death penalty tend to have LOWER crime rates than the US and though there are many factors that could account for this is shows that killing people for their crimes doesn't scare off criminals to such a large degree.
Likewise Complete Monster is an ulitmnately subjective judgement to make on a people, one I don't think should be decided by any jury or any judge. Jail breaks are ridiculously rare in real life so there is little practical reason to kill people over keeping them imprisoned for life.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.I agree that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent — there's been plenty of studies on the subject, and they're pretty unequivocal. Criminals, in general, don't think they're going to get caught, so the threat of punishment has little effect on their behavior. That said, I agree with the other half of what Cassie said. There are some crimes for which the only appropriate response is the death of the perpetrator. It's not about deterring others, or preventing the criminal from endangering society again (harsh punishments aren't effective deterrents, and imprisonment makes society just as safe as execution). It's simply that there are some crimes so heinous, some acts so evil, that if you do them, you will die for it. It's the ultimate declaration of "this is unacceptable" that we're capable of making.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.You can call a crime itself unacceptable without putting someone to death. Life sentence is supposed to be a "think about what you did" - and indeed, some have done just that as they accepted their sentence.
There's a necessary cost for our policies. Why should we use tax money to feed life sentence criminals? That's the trade-off for having them locked away. The alternative is to not lock them away. That's the limitation we impose ourselves when we care about basic human rights and dignity.
edited 4th Dec '12 10:54:44 PM by Trivialis
That's not the only alternative. If we executed those prisoners, we wouldn't have to feed them.
I support the death penalty, but the system needs a lot of work. The appeal system is too lengthy and costly to work right now. That's where most of the problems are for me: practicality and benefit. Ethics and the like don't play into it at all for me. Not because I'm unethical, but because I see absolutely nothing wrong with executing those who can't be rehabilitated. It's not comparable to murder at all.
And, main point, even if you habitate criminals, lifetime ones would and can never step out into the society and contribute. Why bother then?
And about the subjectiveness of the nature of morals, yes, that I can agree with. But there are a lot of factors at play, and not everywhere is USA. We don't all live in America. Every part of the world is civilized differently, and like everything, some things must be given to when the conditions are met.
edited 5th Dec '12 2:35:31 AM by Cassie
What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...
Thanks for that bit of vaguery..
Except how do you have any idea that can't be rehabilitated? As I might have said before, the death penalty might be necessary in extenuating circumstances but even then it's not something that clears my conscience.
edited 5th Dec '12 5:44:06 AM by blueflame724
I treat all living things equally. That is to say, I eat all living things![]()
"We don't all live in America" No we don't, so those of us who don't would appreciate it if you stopped acting like we did. Now you are aware that the death penalty costs more then just locking someone up for life, right? And that's with the current (grossly sub standard) evidence requirements. If people want to limit the death penalty to just those cases where we are 100% certain that they did it then costs are likely to go up even more.
"Why should the tax money of the innocent be made to FEED those who don't deserve to have a place? "
Because society doesn’t work if we all start picking apart those bits of government spending we don't like. Because the whole point of society is that we make a few sacrifices by paying for things that do not benefit us (which I would argue doesn’t apply to this argument as not having the death penalty is a key part of the highly efficient Scandinavian model of crime prevention) so as to be part of a society that protects up and provides us with benefits of its own.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOf course it is. But it's a relative thing. There are any number of crimes that I think rate life imprisonment. There are also crimes that are worse than that, which I believe necessitates a more severe punishment. Giving someone guilty of a crime like genocide the same punishment as someone guilty of a crime like (a single count of) murder doesn't sit right with me. The only more severe punishment than life imprisonment is death (barring something like torture, which I don't think is a legitimate punishment for any crime).
If someone has done something to prove that they are incapable of functioning peacefully in society (eg, murder), then give them life imprisonment. If someone has done something even worse than that (eg, genocide), then give them the death penalty. To give two crimes of such vastly different magnitudes the same punishment is to suggest that they're somehow equally bad, which I very much disagree with.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Don't most (first time) murderers only get life in the since that they get 20 years? Not life in the sense of they will never leave prison? Personally I say we got with the cheaper option that results in less crime, rather than sacrifice money and people because we want to satisfy our own desire to be self righteous.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran"Cheaper" and "results in less crime" are opposing options. It's cheaper to just lock people in concrete boxes until their sentence is up, but doesn't do much to reduce crime (besides physically removing the criminal from the streets for the term of their sentence, anyway). Offering things like education programs for prisoners is more expensive, but also makes convicts less likely to become repeat offenders once they're released.
All of which is only tangentially, at best, related to the death penalty. Cost and crime rates are neither really elements in the death penalty debate. At the moment, the death penalty is actually more expensive than life imprisonment due to the way the system is set up, but the system could be streamlined to change that. Crime rates aren't much of a factor either, because a) harsher punishments don't do much if anything to deter criminals, and b) the only real alternative to the death penalty is life imprisonment, so the person in question is never going to be out on the streets again in either case.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

People who have committed the sorts of crimes I talk about above have forfeited their right to life, the same way that people who have committed lesser crimes have forfeited their right to liberty.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.