I've been mulling this over a bit more, specific to some of the comments in this particular conversation. Specifically this notion that being locked in a box for the rest of your life is worse than death.. Supposedly though, this option is more sympathetic and moral than putting someone out of their misery. It's to be sought out because it's more miserable than dying. That's an ethical disconnect for me. If killing someone is so awful that it absolutely cannot be done no matter what circumstances, because it's wrong and it makes people awful human beings, what does it say about the people who are championing the punishment that they deem worse than death? It sounds like the only reason some of you are for keeping people alive is so that you can engage in torture or torture by proxy - because everyone knows that prisons are inhumane, unpleasant places where bad things happen to people? Really?

See, I don't want prisons to be those places. Prisons should be places of punishment, but ideally they shouldn't be so soul-destroying as to be monster factories where you put someone screwed up inside them and you get someone even more screwed up spit out in a few years. Prisons should be places for rehabilitation AND punishment. You should put someone inside that you need to protect society from, and while you're slapping them on the wrist you're trying to make sure they're not dangerous when you let them out (and not simply because you've destroyed their humanity and they're a broken shell of a human being.) But by the same token, I accept that currently there are some people that I either don't think we can fix or some people that I accept that at some point you've got the right to go "Well, I don't care if they're Mary Poppins when we're through with them - they still committed unforgivable acts that it's simple too dangerous to risk societal exposure of any sort to." At that point, I don't need to make those people's lives worse than I have to. I just need them to go away. Forever. The most effective way to do that is to execute them, and given some of the commentary points it's clear that executing people in some respects is also less likely to engage some people's secret delight in the changing tides of fortune. When you have a dangerous bug in the room stinging and biting people, you kill it. Most people would accept, I think, that caging the bug and plucking its legs off, watching as other insects devour its living body, and having a malicious high five over how "gentle" you've been by not simply squashing it is not, in fact, humane. If someone argues that the death penalty must be the lesser of punishments to eternal imprisonment though, that's exactly the sort of argument I hear.

No, prisons should not be places of punishment. What does that accomplish anyway? Does it make someone who was wronged feel better? So what. Feeding that emotion does not undo any of the damage done. Does it motivate the wrong-doers to reform or help them to reform? It's much too simple an approach and doesn't begin to reach the issues that lead to the criminal behavior.

Our entire approach to crime and punishment needs rethinking. There's not enough research, science, and education in the system. When you lock away someone or kill them for doing wrong, you've thrown away more raw material that could be reworked. How wasteful.

I don't think prisons should be hell holes, nor that they NEED to be. I think prisoners should have comfortable lives with severely limited autonomy and with a lot of rehabilitative therapy and mental health services, and if they can't be helped, killing them won't help anyone either.


Conversely, I don't think literally dehumanising psychopaths is humane. We understand a lot about psychopathy, and we have a long way to go. We know psychopaths are sick, and currently incurable. Probably quite a lot of the people you advocate killing are clinical psychopaths. Not all of them, it doesn't take psychopathy to kill and have no remorse, but it certainly helps. Psychopaths (and non-psychopathic killers) are still human beings with complex thoughts, feelings, and motivations - with complex wishes and desires and with many human rights still intact, including, I would argue, the right to life (I find it difficult to think of a philosophically sound basis for depriving a murderer of that right). No human being is anything like a dangerous bug.

“What about the [human] dignity of the guilty?” - Helen Prejean

Name a prisoner who wants to die, when kept in humane conditions, and we should let them. But don't use the dysfunctional state of the prison system to excuse killing people against their will.

I think people have entirely false ideas of what prison is. Of course, it depends on what country you're in and the kind of prison it is and the kind of prisoners that it is designed for. (Leavenworth, for instance, as a medium-security US Federal penitentiary, would be an entirely different experience than your local county jail.) Federal prisons are different from state prisons which are in turn different from more local facilities. But generally, nowadays, they aren't hellholes and generally they ARE places where attempts at rehabilitation are made, often in the form of group counseling. I do prison ministry/volunteer counseling, as I said. Most of the people I work with are sex offenders, all men. A good majority of them are young 20somethings who had underage (Like, 17.5-year-old, not 12-year-old) girlfriends that they were sleeping with and the girl's parents got ticked off and pressed charges. (I, frankly, don't consider them "sex offenders," really, because it isn't as if they're predators...but that's how the law brands them.) Some of them, however, are genuine pedophiles or men with exposure problems and the like, plus the occasional rapist here and there. These guys receive all kinds of therapy, which some of them attend merely because it will reduce their jail time, but some of them go genuinely wanting to be helped. They have to do written assignments, reading assignments, and they attend one-on-one and group counseling sessions and such. So, rehab is already a part of the prison lifestyle; I don't know why people think that it isn't. All inmates in the prisons where I "work" have to go to mandatory anger management counseling. It's usually weekly, and it lasts as long as they're there. All -- unless they've been naughty and are being disciplined, of course -- also have the opportunity to attend literacy and job skill classes. (I teach reading at prisons, too, and I still communicate with some of the folks who I've taught to read and who were released, got a job, and are now productive members of society. It's quite rewarding.) Sex offenders get a lot more therapy than most, it seems. I think it's because sex offenses are such a "high profile" thing in the public's awareness. Granted, I'm not associated with any high/maximum-security prisons, but I'd be pretty surprised if the routine is much different at them; likely, there's just more security and probably less free time.

However, rehabilitation IS a matter of degree, out of necessity. Jails are simply "holding places," places where people are housed while their court proceedings are ongoing. No rehab occurs there because no sentence has yet been passed requiring/recommending it. And people can be there for months, even up to a year or two, depending on the case. So, your local county jail, if you're in the US, is such a place. Prisons are places of more long-term incarceration. Rehab DOES happen there...but there are limits, most of them financial. Professional, degreed counselors cost a lot of money, AND it is difficult to find ones who'd WANT to work in the not-exactly-pleasant and certainly less lucrative prison environment rather than in some cushy private practice, counseling neurotic housewives or whatever. (Kind of like how it's hard to find lawyers who want to work as a public defender rather than in some similarly cushy private practice.) The system simply cannot hire enough of them to counsel every single prisoner, especially not individually, which is why group counseling is more the norm. So, priorities are made. Those convicted on drug charges and sex offenses seem to me to be highest on the priority list, the former to help them with addiction issues, which will lessen the chances of re-offense, and the latter because, like said, they're "high profile" in the public's awareness. Murderers don't seem to be high on the priority list, I think because they often committed the murder as a crime of passion so that they aren't generally nuts but just very prone to anger and with extremely poor impulse control. (And, like I said, all prisoners at the facilities where I "work" already get anger management counseling as well as addiction therapy, if that's applicable. People who murder in a rage are often under the influence of drugs or alcohol or both when they do so, after all.) Other murderers, however, are true sociopaths, and all the counseling and psychotherapy in the world won't help them. Perhaps one day there might be drugs or medical procedures that will help them, but that day has not yet come.

So, your average pedophile CAN be helped by therapy, if (and generally only if) they have a genuine willingness to be helped and to change. Your average completely-disconnected-from-humanity sociopath...cannot be helped by therapy or medication or...anything, really. At least not at this point in time. And for those people, I think Mistermook said it best:



I agree with that 100%.

So yeah, I think people have a totally misconstrued notion of what prison is like, probably formed by watching TV. Yeah, it's no picnic. At higher-security facilities, where the very violent and/or deranged prisoners are housed, you have a fairly high statistical probability of being harmed or perhaps even killed by an inmate, whether you're an inmate yourself or someone who works at the prison. But, judging by the fact that people who receive death sentences don't just go gently into that good night but rather fight tooth and nail to get their sentences commuted, it's apparently a lot better than death. In order to make it worse than death then, yes, you'd have to turn prisons into torture chambers, like Mistermook said. Which would be something that I don't think would ever be sanctioned here in the US. Military prisons are a bit rougher than civilian ones, true, but even THEY are not that bad.

So yeah, I'd LOVE it if the focus at prisons was more on rehabbing everyone than it being, basically, a place where people sit and wait to be released. That would be great, and it is, in fact, the contribution that I try to make at the prisons at which I work. (To the extent that I can, of course, given that I am not a degreed counselor.) And that mindset IS becoming more common. However, I'm also a realist. Rehabbing everyone in the US prison system to the level that is really required would be a massive expense, at least in the US. There are over two million people in US prisons and jails. (That's NOT COUNTING pre-sentenced people in jail at any given time.) MOSTLY, that huge number is due to the increased criminalization of drugs since the "War on Drugs" started and the longer sentences (longer than necessary, IMO) that are now imposed on people convicted on drug charges. But whatever the case, that's a lot of people, about the same as or more than the population of a good number of the world's countries. And, realistically speaking, not all needs can be met because there's just not enough money and/or personnel to do so. The system IS better than it used to be, by far, but it's also far from perfect. I agree that it could do with further reform, but as a realist who does have some connection with prisons and what goes on in them, I realize that that's much easier said than done.

Thanks for the insight on prisons and jails, iCad.

Of course, rehabilitation of all prisoners would be monumental. But what if we applied science and therapy to finding and stopping crime before it gets to the point of murder? If we put more effort on this, well...just imagine. Occasionally I hear of some great insight like the broken window theory , and I know it can be done.

You hear about these kids who get involved in horrible murders that seem like an effort to belong to some sort of a group. The people who knew them growing up are in shock and it runs through my mind that there should have been a clue beforehand, but we don't know how to recognize it yet.

I'm not overly articulate on these points. I haven't worked out the ins and outs of what I'm perceiving, but know it still needs to be expressed somehow.

Absolutely, the best defense is a good offense, as they say. Pinpointing behaviors and treating people BEFORE they do something horrible and thus get themselves into the criminal justice system would be vastly preferred. And, as our knowledge and technology increases, I'm willing to bet that that's the direction in which things will go. It's easier to head something off at the pass than it is to deal with something when it's already rolling down the mountainside, as it were.

But my own feeling is that that won't solve everything. The truth of the matter is that sometimes people just snap without warning, even people who have good, solid, stable lives. Something just goes "Ping!" and off they go. And even if we were to, say, someday pinpoint a "sociopath" gene and also have the ability to fix it, you'd run into ethical problems. Do we make it so that everyone must be screened for such a gene? And how do we enforce/control that? Privacy and such would no doubt become huge concerns, among other things. And, outside of living in some kind of dictatorship, people can't really be forced to comply with such things. So, call me a cynic, but I think even in a future, shinier (hopefully!) age of higher tech and such, there will ALWAYS be people who'll slip through the cracks and do terrible things, and those people will have to be dealt with. What to do with them might, as I mentioned before, become something of an ethical snarl: To fix them or not? To punish them anyway or not? That sort of thing.

On the topic of genetics, I've heard this argued before, but I would maintain that forces from the environment act on the person to bring about undesirable behavior. In the case of the young people I was trying to reference above, these young men lacked something in their lives. They sought and found a group of young men that gave them a sense of identity as males. And the group had a mind of its own, much stronger than any individual within it. You see this in gangs.

Of course we can't stop all crime and, for that matter, we can't solve all crimes either. We can fix all problems or heal all wounds. We can't bring the murdered back. None of this puts me in favor of the death penalty for all the reasons I've already stated.

On the topic of people who negatively impact the outside world from prison, it needs to stop. The best thing for everyone would be to take the spotlight away from such people and not feed their desire for negative attention.

Psychopathy has neurological markers, genetic or not. It's strongly associated with damage to areas of the brain that help us judge risk versus reward decisions. There would be definite challenges in treating it, but no more than any other kind of brain damage. To be fair, it's probably never going to be treatable in adults.

There will always be murderers, and quite brutal murderers, in prison. I'm still not seeing how this gets us to a point where we're justified in killing them. Killing is the end of their lives, the end of their existence. It doesn't get more final. It is not a punishment to be dished out without near absolute necessity - for example a guard could justifiably kill a prisoner in self-defense, but not otherwise.

Edit: There's previous a question, and a statement that could be posed as a question, that I'd like to see iCad or Mistermook address here:

1. What are the ethics that underpin the moral duty we have not to murder? (If you agree that we have such a moral duty).

2. How do those ethics mesh with the moral duties we have not to kill? (If you agree that we have such duties, and clearly in this specific case you do not, so... ...why?)

2. What is a philosophically sound basis for depriving a murderer of their right to life?

I know it's a little late but...Just adding my 2 cents...
I do not believe that all criminals should get the death penalty! If I understood correctly, that means that if you steal a soda from a convenience store, you'll be killed?! That will leave the world virtually unpopulated! I am a strong believer in the saying 'An eye for an eye' BUT I also understand Ghandi's 'An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind'. So, I think that yes, MURDERERS should be given the death penalty (and no matter how many 'disagrees' I get, I stand by that) but not all CRIMINALS should.

Prisons ARE capable of turning most criminals (that aren't mentally ill) into productive members of society, as long as the prisons stimulate criminals to improve their conditions, for example by offering them an education. Many countries, America for example, give high prison sentences even in case of non-violent crimes, which only turns them into hardened criminals and greatly complicates their return into normal society. Because of this I advocate only low prison sentences or community service for most non-violent crimes (which, according to most studies, in these cases is more effective in preventing further criminal activity than harsh punishments).

Another objection to your idea (and capital punishment in general), is that these procedures are extremely expensive, usually costing the state more than a lifetime spent in prison.

Also, I think that advocates for harsher punishments in general ignore the true problem, namely the socio-economic inequality that drives most offenders to crime in the first place. Adressing the problem concerning the environment that shapes criminals can prevent a very large portion of
crime in general.

And my final argument is that executing people for every possible crime is simply insane and would decimate the population of any country very quickly, with all the obvious consequences.

I hope this isn't considered thread necromancy :P

Most of the debate going on here is about whether or not the death penalty is right or wrong.... that wasn't the OP's question (opinion?). I'm going to address my feelings on that arguement, too, but first I wanted to address the OP.

Having the death penalty for abuse... I can't agree with it. I understand that abuse is a terrible, terrible thing. Being a victim of abuse leaves long-term mental scars that will never fully heal (I'm not saying victims will be broken forever, just that the memories will never be forgotten and will always impact the life of the victim). My mother was severely abused by a boyfriend many years ago (and my sister as well, I just got to watch :/) but I don't wish death on the man who did it. I feel sorry for him that he is so mentally ill that he has to take out his anger on someone who can't defend themself (such as a 5 year old girl, or a petite 27 year old woman who was just not able to fight to defend herself)... but I wouldn't want someone else to become a murderer on his behalf, he is simply not worth that.

That being said, I definitely feel like the penalties for someone who is a repeat offender (abuses his wife/children/pets, been in trouble multiple times with no regrets and no sign of stopping) should be much more strict. The man in question who abused my mother and sister didn't serve any jail time. He wasn't charged because it was his "first offence" (note that it wasn't, my mother was just the first woman brave enough to take him to court for what he did to her), and he didn't do any jail time or even community service. I don't even think he was required to take anger management classes, or attend AA for his drinking problem (which isn't even an excuse, he abused my sister when he was sober, when my mom wasn't around to see him).
The scars that he left on my family were and still are devastating. My mother has had issues trusting men for years and years since what he did to her. Luckily she found a man who is willing to keep with her. My sister has issues (still, and she's 23 now) determining what is appropriate behavior for someone who says they love you. Many of her boyfriends have been abusive to her and she has tolerated it because she thinks it's ok if they tell her they love her and are sorry. I am unable to stomach when people fight, especially if it becomes physical. I actually get sick to my stomach from anxiety when people around me start yelling and fighting, and I have nightmares. These things will be with us for the rest of our lives (though we can move past them, with hard work).
I still wouldn't wish the death penalty on him. I hope that one day he sees, truthfully, the kind of person he is and he makes changes in his life. I won't get my hopes up, but for his own sake I wish that he would.

That being said now, on to the topic of the death penalty being right or wrong... I can't make up my mind. I used to think, when I was young, that everyone who commits a crime should be killed (and I mean everyone, even if they stole a candybar). I was young then, and naive. I agree with what other posters have said, that there are varying degrees of severity in a crime, and each case should be assessed individually, not grouped together.
I've come around, in the years, to the opinion that taking a life is wrong, no matter what the reason is. That includes the death penalty. Nobody should be killing anybody. But it happens, whether I'd like it to or not.
I've never lost a family member to a violent crime (though I nearly lost my mother to the abusive ex boyfriend... maybe my thinking would be different if that had happened?) so I can't say from experience how I would feel... Inside though, I'm conflicted. I know (to me) taking a life is wrong, regardless of the circumstances, but I can't help imagining what I would feel like if someone dear to me was murdered (and I mean that someone went out of their way to kill this person, not an accidental death)... in particular I'm wondering how I would feel if my nephew were a victim. He means so, so much to me, and I would be beyond angry if someone hurt and killed him. I would probably want to see the guilty party executed, because I would feel that he or she lost the priveledge of life by committing murder.
On the other hand, if I were the one murdered (LOL I know the dead don't care but this is just my what if)... I wouldn't want my killer to be killed in return. I agree that it wouldn't help my family to feel better. It wouldn't bring me back. I would like to see justice, in some form, but not execution. My family would still be broken. I would rather that they addressed their grief in a healthier way.

And then, I worry about murderers sent to prison, and later released. There is no surefire way of knowing if the killer is truly repentant. He could just say what he knows people want to hear, so that he can get out and kill again... but then keeping a man in jail for life is expensive, like others have pointed out.

So yes, I've contributed nothing to this debate. I just can't make up my mind, but I still wanted to give my opinion on the OP's post. There are some very good arguements here for both sides, which is just confusing my feelings even more :P

Sim-brother has a very good point too. Maybe funds would be better spent on understanding and addressing crime before it happens, in general, rather than just tucking people away in prison after the deed is said and done.

(I'm sorry if this is rambling, I'm not good at organizing my thoughts in ways that make sense to other people )

@ prettiamie2005 - Your post was thoughtful and said much. No reason to apologize for it.

I think the thing that finally changed my mind about the death penalty was the movie "Dead Man Walking", which is based on the true story of a nun who spends time with those on death row. The movie focused on one relationship. I had never been comfortable with the concept of capital punishment, but somewhat agreed when others said that certain people needed to be removed from the planet. This movie shifted my perspective. I realized that killing someone did not undo the harm that the original killer had done and, in fact, created more harm. I'm not sure that the movie preaches that, but that's what I got out of it.

On the topic of costs, every figure I've seen on it shows that it costs less to incarcerate someone for life than it does to condemn them to death because of the legal costs involved. Here are some examples: http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42 http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

So let's review: 100% for death penalties, that end ALL crimes, prison does NOTHING, criminals don't change ( implication: criminals NEVER change ). You're using too many absolutes as way to oversimplify criminals who are people ( who are complex by nature ) and oversimplify our complex justice system.

Ideals can be comparisons to reality, not to assume that the ideal IS reality. A valid argument is both theoretically true and true in real life. Your arguments are neither.

Whatever my feelings about the concept of the death penalty (and they're very mixed) I can't support a system that's so deeply flawed. There's been some remarks here about the death penalty not being handed out lightly and only for relatively terrible crimes, but that's not always true. Many death sentences are given for single murders with no exceptionally horrific elements. There are cases of people executed for murders they did not themselves commit under the laws holding an accomplice in any crime equally responsible for any death that occurs. Some convictions are made on flimsy evidence and coerced confessions, and of course some are later proven false. The statistics prove there's a pervasive racial bias, and being poor and unable to afford a good lawyer is a big risk factor.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/tho...tly-kill-victim
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/...y-and-innocence
http://www.capitalpunishmentinconte...ssues/innocence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s#United_States

As for the OP - define 'abuse'. My mother used to lecture me when I was a child. Should she have been executed? I think not.

I don't agree with punishing all forms of abuse with the death penalty, that's too broad. But call me a romantic because I think we need the death penalty in every country for the murderers and sexual predators. Those people that commit the worst of crimes need to be culled from our society. I don't care whether or not they can change or be rehabilitated. I couldn't care less about making them suffer or learning from them. I would rather stand on the side of the victim, who's life was stolen, and the people who got left behind, knowing the peice of filth who did this will either spend the rest of thier lives in prison or one day walk free. We kill dangerous animals, we commit murder in the name of war, but when it comes to strapping some predator to a table and getting rid of them, we get squeamish and start wondering out loud about our own morality, and asking ourselves, somewhat piously, if that makes us no better than the criminal. Its not about 'being better,' or pretending that we're an intelligent and peacefull race. We're not, and never have been. Its about some justice for the person who was killed and thier family. Its about saying as a race that its not okay to do this, its unacceptable, and if you do this, this is what will happen to you, because we don't allow being's like you to exist. These people are dogs. They're sitting on a computer right now hunting for kids, or watching someone walk down the street and wieghing up their chances, or driving around in a car just looking for someone. I don't want these people in my world.

Why not accepting murderers to be tortured and killed is standing against the victim? I just don't get it. By not killing a murderer you are not standing by their side, you're just wanting a different kind of "punishment" for them.
By the way, I don't see how asking for death penalty is romantic.

I can see what you mean, and innocent people will always be killed if there is death penalty.
On the other hand, if you lock a person in a prison for say, 30 years. If after that time he/she is proven to be innocent after all,
you van never give them those years back.

What does annoy me is that in some cases someone has murdered people,
and someone who knew all about it and could have helped the victims easily gets set free after not even 10 years.

Me neither.

That's true, you can't, but at least you can give them the rest of the years of their life! Can't do that if you've sentenced them to death and had them executed. If I was ever falsely accused of a crime and found guilty, I'd like to still be alive when they figure out I'm actually innocent..... (though of course the time spent in prison and everything that go with it would make it very hard for me to readjust afterwards and get used to life again).

And this is why,
And this is why,
You always have an alibi.

It truly would be the least that could be done, if all they do is let you loose from prison after falsely imprisoning you.

"Our bad! Sorry about those twenty years! We cool?"

Sorry for being immature. I was tired and grumpy when i wrote that. I guess is was being over expressive when i said is very good. What i meant to say was i support it. Because once the guy serves his time in prison for commiting, lets say, a massacre, i would feel a little issecure. I guess going to jail forever would be ok but if i were sentenced to jail for life, id rather be executed because i couldnt live with the guilt of whatever i did. Though it would sad if he was falsley accused and executed (thats why captiol punishment is no longer practiced in canada). So ummm. I guess capitol punishment is ok IF it were used with a very good reason.

Of all things, you want him RAPED? Torture is a democracy-thing as well as the lack of death-penalty here in Scandinavia. We should be ever so proud that we as a continent (Europe) don´t practice any form of torture. But rape...I dont think you fully understand what you suggest here, period.

I think that the Death Penalty should be on the table for murder of the first degree. Multiple counts of murder of the first degree where there is no chance of rehabilitating the murderer should result in a simple, quick, and (relatively) painless execution.

On the subject of Breivik, there would most likely be vigilante justice carried out if he is ever released. I would certainly NOT prosecute or aid in the investigation of such a vigilante.


--Ocram

But what about the ppl who were wrongly accused? How many innocents would die in the place of a real murderer?
Riots would start, accused corruption of the judical system would spread, and more distrust of the gov't would come
fear isnt the same thing as respect
and when the fearless have ways of working around such things? The innocents will suffer!
it just isn't a good idea to send all death to all prisoners when most could either be reformed or not the ppl youre looking to kill
im not saying murderers shouldnt be unpunished, though
but a death for all crimes (death cause you stole someones watch? sounds kinda hannibal - like to me) would be too risky
and dampen the ppls view on the ppl who're supposed to be there to protect us