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I'm in favor of improving the system, in terms of efficiency and effectiveness both. (Meaning I want it to be cheaper and better). Comparing one entire nation's justice system to another's is almost entirely useless vis-a-vis the death penalty, given how many other factors their are. But what I meant by saying that "cheaper" and "less crime" are opposing options is not that you can't improve both by restructuring the system, by that — in general — programs that reduce crime cost money, and saving money by cutting funding increases crime.
But all of this still has nothing to do with the death penalty. Let's try to stay on topic.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Honestly this is just one of those debates that almost solely depend on your starting point. What is your definition of justice?
Is it about keeping the weak safe from harm? Then the death penalty should only be used for criminals that can't be contained reliably, which are incredibly rare in real life. Most of the efforts of criminal justice should ideally be used from preventing crimes and stopping them from escalating (as is pointed out, the death penalty is ineffective at the former and I'd imagine would worsen with the latter. If getting caught would result in your death you're going to kill ANY witnesses to avoid prosecution, but I have no stats for that) In any case this model requires that the defendant ALSO be protected from harm, which trials and the appeals process are meant to provide. You can't protect innocent defendants in death penalty cases without also protecting guilty ones and the whole ordeal costs money.
Is it about punishment of the criminal? Then the death penalty should be used in cases where there are especially vile criminals. But the thing is that this is always a subjective judgement. Men and Black people are sentenced to death at a MUCH higher frequency regardless of the crime. I'd argue the Casie Anthony case proves that there is no objective standard for the death penalty. Objectively she killed ONE person at worst, as horrible as that crime is it should have been life in prison. But the prosecutor wanted to punish that woman SO much that he went for death, and the jury just wasn't sure enough to sentence her to that and she got out scot free because the case wasn't strong enough. Maybe she would have been sentenced if she was a man, but that just shows how subjective this punishment is.
Is it about rehabilitating the criminal? Sadly the American justice system is terrible at this and nearly every offender that gets out of jail is the same or worse as he/she was when he got in. But the benefits of reforming criminals are pretty obvious in a lack of re-offenders and the addition of new functional citizens to society. The issue is that that requires spending money on their well-being which is repulsive to those who believe in the punishment model.
I personally believe the first model is the primary purpose, the third is the seconddary purpose, and that the third is just too inherently subjective to really have place in a legal system.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.To clarify I see the second as an end to the third, because you do need to punish people in SOME way to get them to reform.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.I don't actually disagree with anything you've said, Rhyme. The only difference is that I think there are some crimes that are bad enough that "punishment" takes precedence over "rehabilitation" (arguably, life without parole is the same — if you're never going to let them out of prison, what are you rehabilitating them for?). Capital offenses, in my mind, are the ones where you say "you did something so bad that you don't get a second chance". That's why I'm talking about restricting it to things like crimes against humanity. Execution should be extremely rare, in my view, but it should still be available for the courts to use, should the need arise.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.That's not the only alternative. If we executed those prisoners, we wouldn't have to feed them.
That's the whole point. Because we don't want to carelessly execute prisoners, we have to feed them.
And, main point, even if you habitate criminals, lifetime ones would and can never step out into the society and contribute. Why bother then?
Because like I said, we still want to maintain basic human respect. There are much more "efficient" and dystopian solutions with criminal justice, if all we cared about was being useful to society.
I mean, we do some favors to death row inmates - accommodated jail cells, last meals, etc. That's to provide them some ease. If all we cared about was to off them, we wouldn't even need those.
edited 5th Dec '12 12:37:10 PM by Trivialis
A number of prison systems are terrible at number 3.
In fact, if they were good at number 3, number 2 would be more viable because we'd be more likely to know who could or couldn't be rehabilitated.
And I also strongly agree that there are some crimes so heinous that the need for punishment outweighs need for rehabilitation.
There's the point of 1. Protection. At some point it becomes too dangerous for a criminal to be released back into society so we keep them in jail to prevent them from harming others. This would also work if our justice system was any good at 3, as we can tell which ones are safe enough to be released back into society and which ones aren't.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.I don't see how locking someone up and never releasing them is better than simply executing them.
You're still taking their life, but prolonging it. Hell, I think that would actually be a worse punishment.
As it is the only advantage is that it's cheaper. But the costs of the death penalty can be improved.
The vast, vast majority of people would prefer life in prison to execution. Thus, we consider life in prison to be a less serious punishment than death. Regardless of spurious arguments otherwise, virtually no one considers life imprisonment to be worse than the death sentence.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Actually, a variety of things can happen while serving life sentence. For one thing, some life sentences come with parole, so with good behavior you can leave eventually. Life inmates also have opportunities to do certain things (as noted here
).
There is another advantage to life imprisonment as opposed to the death penalty - if it turns out you made a mistake, you can let them out again. Still a horrible miscarriage of justice if they've been there for 10 years already, but a little better than telling their relatives "Guess we made a mistake, he wasn't a murderer after all. Oops, sorry we killed your son/daughter/parent/whatever".
Be not afraid...

I'm pretty sure the Scandinavian justice system is both cheaper then the US system and also has a much lower reoffended rate. I admit I may be wrong about the cheapness but abolishing the death penalty would still save some money.
But streamlining the system will simply result in more miscarriages of justice. The reason the system is so expensive is because of all the checks to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person, and the current level of checks is inadequate as it is. Are you honestly in favour of decreasing the costs (via streamlining) even though it will result in an even higher rate of innocent people being executed?
edited 5th Dec '12 9:13:55 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran