My class was having a disscussion on it the other day, and most of my Republican classmates said that the death penalty was great, while the rest stated against that. They argued that there were worse punishments for death, I agree with that, and that it was overall more costly. What do you guys think?
---Oh yes, my great comeback. I hadn't posted in hatrack for a long time.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
Welcome back!
I'm all for capital punishment. Sometimes it's better just to get some people out of the gene pool. Not that I think the death penalty should be used all the time like Texas...they go a little bit overboard.
Some people say that the laws we have reflect the values of a society... and I think in that aspect it's good we have some crimes that you will die for. The people who commit these horrible acts usually are permanently malfunctioning humans anyway...why keep them alive in prison forever?
[ March 03, 2005, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
If its all about the gene pool, then we can arrange for that....
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
Options for the death penalty? I think paper or plastic covers all bases nicely.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Locking them in prison for life pretty much removes them from the gene pool as well.
Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
besides, they get "to play" with their fellow inmates.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Ahem. I'm Republican, and conservative, but I'm an not in favor of the death penalty. What exactly would you like to discuss?
FG
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
Heheh.. And I'm a gay, agnostic, liberal who does approve of the death penalty. Takes all kinds.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
quote:Ahem. I'm Republican, and conservative, but I'm an not in favor of the death penalty. What exactly would you like to discuss?
Ditto.
I'll tell you what I'd like to see as a replacement for the death penalty.
Hard labor.
Have prisoners working, 8-10 hours a day doing things like digging ditches, or busting up concrete.
Have them grow their own food. Good exercise, hard work, and saves the state money. No power tools, no tractors - let them use hoes and shovels.
Give them the old fashioned mowers and let them keep the grass cut - no need to use gas mowers and pollute the air, plus saves money on hiring groundskeepers.
Do away with cable TV and weight rooms in prisons. It's not supposed to be comfortable.
Give them plenty of access to a library, they can read for their entertainment. As for the weight rooms, with all the exercise they're going to be getting they don't need them. Plus they're going to be eating lots of green vegetable they grew themselves, it will keep them healthy.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
I'm an heterosexual,independent, agnostic who believes that the death penalty should apply to certain cases (especially abhorrent crimes against children).
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
The practical cost comes down to this:
It is cheaper to house a prisoner for the rest of his life than it is to run him through all the appeals, motions and whatnot it would take to execute him.
Mind you, I'm all terminal punishment - if only because I don't trust the model of encouraged, self-corrective behavior for some deviants.
-Trevor
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
If we're boiling it down to a monetary cost issue, then of course it's cheaper to kill them then to "rehabilitate" them.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
I'm pro-death penalty in cases of murder.
However I would settle for Oubliettes as a substitute for the death penalty. I've described them at length before.
It's cheaper to house them forever than it is to execute them.
Cheaper still if you make them go through the motions of rehab and turn them loose to offend again.
-Trevor
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
I dared be pro-death penalty at Slacktivist (granted, it is a very liberal-leaning site)....from the reaction, you'd think I was the Antichrist. Aren't liberals supposed to be more tolerant?
Trevor, I'm sure that some of the cost is the interminable number of appeals they have...the execution itself is probably fairly cheap. (And before anyone wigs out, I do understand the purpose of said appeals.)
[ March 03, 2005, 06:16 PM: Message edited by: Mabus ]
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
As an agnostic / atheist I believe there's nothing more after this life. So, whatever one has done, that person should not be killed, IMO. Alternatives? As Belle very well put it, hard work seems to be an excellent alternative. But I think that would amount to nothing without the possibility to bring that person back to humanity. And by this I don't mean letting them back into the society; what I'd want to see is someone who would teach them - or at least try to - what's right and what's wrong in this world. Or, better said, what we accept as right and wrong. Anyway, I think the current teaching system should do more to keep them FROM doing the wrong things in the first place, but that's another discussion altogether.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
I was lumping the entire process from "sentence of death" to "being strapped in/down and having the switch thrown".
-Trevor
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote: Aren't liberals supposed to be more tolerant?
:sigh: Another urban legend going down the drain... Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Tolerant of anything that doesn't directly conflict with their point of view, maybe.
-Trevor
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
Corwin, I'm agnostic, and don't know if there is anything after this life. Having said that, I believe that there are crimes that are so heinous that they deserve nothing less than death. I believe that if you commit one of these crimes, you've forefeited your right to live, regardless of what waits for us after death.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote: you've forefeited your right to live
Well, I'm thinking that killing someone won't teach him anything.* And I'm not ready to give up on people, no matter what they did. As for the right to live, I don't think I've got more or less right than anybody else...
* You could of course say that killing someone will teach others not to do the same thing, but does it really?!
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
It depends on the crime and their motivations for committing it.
Serial offenders are driven by compulsions they cannot control. I am willing to accept that as fact.
However, until or unless society can produce a means to secure these offenders in a fashion that either guarantees their behavior, rehabilitation or complete removal from the population at large, I will continue to opt for the "zero recidivism" approach.
How's the cliche go? Bite me once, shame on you. Bite me twice, shame on me.
-Trevor
Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
I'll just chime in as saying I am ambivalent on the subject. I can see both sides of the argument, and neither is winning out for me.
I am a death-penatly-agnostic.
Posted by plaid (Member # 2393) on :
I'm pretty liberal, and I believe in the death penalty... but I don't believe that humans should give it out. There are horrible crimes that deserve the death penalty... but humans make too many mistakes when it comes to figuring out who's responsible for those crimes. Way too many innocent people have been executed for crimes they didn't commit.
Posted by J T Stryker (Member # 6300) on :
I'm for the death penalty... but then again, it wouldn't bring a tear to my eye to hear about corporal punishment becoming popular again.... I mean pain is one of the few things that every organism understands regardless of their mental health.
Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
Stryker, have you, by any chance, read "Starship Troopers" lately? Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
Hehe, that's what I was thinking about too, bev! But then again, I kind of understand that idea, and I'm not totally opposed to it either... Posted by HesterGray (Member # 7384) on :
quote: I believe in the death penalty... but I don't believe that humans should give it out.
Plaid, just out of curiosity, who should give it out?
I like Belle's ideas of hard labor, rather than the death penalty.
Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
Corwin: Same here. While I don't take Heinlein's preaching on the subject hook, line, and sinker (I don't expect a crime-free utopia to come of it), I found it very intriguing at the time. It makes me wonder just how effective it would be.
Does anyone remember that one ST:TNG episode with the "Eden-like" scantily clad people who lived in a utopia? They never did "wrong" because every time you did something wrong there was a *chance* that you might be executed for it. And no one wants to take that chance, right? I laugh, I laugh.
[ March 03, 2005, 08:03 PM: Message edited by: beverly ]
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
If I remember correctly the Star Trek episode, that was the only punishment available! That was a pretty sour utopia... Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
Heh, yeah.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Mandatory donation of both kidneys would work. If the conviction was a mistake, the kidneys can be returned; or at least the wrongly convicted could be given replacement kidneys. Can't return a life mistakenly taken.
The nearly continuous dialysis necessitated by such a procedure makes escape impossible. Really ain't got nothin' better to do in standard death-penalty confinement than to be hooked up to a dialysis machine all day.
Saves two lives, therebye in a meaningful way gives a small recompense for the lives taken. Allows recipients freedom from the imprisonment of being tied to a dialysis machine, and the freedom to have more productive and fulfilling lives.
[ March 03, 2005, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
aspectre, that might probably scare me more than death... What if someone's proved not guilty after all?!?! I just don't see how replacing an irrevocable & cruel act with another irrevocable & cruel one is any better...
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Sorry, I added "If the conviction was a mistake, the kidneys can be returned; or at least the wrongly convicted could be given replacement kidneys. Can't return a life mistakenly taken." above while you were typing in your question.
[ March 03, 2005, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Idle curiousity - why don't you approve of transplants?
-Trevor
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
Huh, just saw your edit. I think I still have a problem with that, but it's a little late here and I'm not capable of wording it right. So I'm posting just to say I saw the edit... Good night! Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
You guys are just too fast for me. I added an explanatory link to "I don't approve of transplants" above while TMedina was posting that question.
And yet another reason is that transplants and ever-improving anti-rejection medication removes most of the political pressure to fund research into creation of replacement organs from scratch -- ie rather than relying on a donor -- which would help far more people and be a lot less expensive in the long run.
[ March 03, 2005, 08:54 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Aspectre, are you certain that vat-grown organs would be so cheap? With the exception of the occasional ear, we really have no idea what kind of machinery would be needed to sustain them during the growth period.
Oh, and fyi, you might be appalled to hear that the only place I have previously heard your argument was an ultra-conservative scary book produced by members of the religious right. Just letting you know.
Posted by Mormo (Member # 5799) on :
aspectre, Larry Niven carried your idea of forced transplants as punishment to the logical extreme, in his Known Space series. It led to many undesirable outcomes.He didn't use that idea of 2 kidneys, though. That's diabolical, although it has a certain appeal to my bloodthirsty, eye-for-eye, Aye! nature.
Niven just supposed, instead of letting all those juicy bits get fried on the electric chair, why not get some use out of an executed criminal, by harvesting their organs? Mind you, this was written in the 70s, pre-AIDS.
The practice, in the series, led to organleggers using blackmarket organs (harvested from innocents), as well as "justice creep", where the taxpayers, given the opportunity for longer lives, kept voting the death penalty for lesser and lesser offenses. Morbo
[ March 03, 2005, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: Mormo ]
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Yep, Mormo, parting out bodies: the populace voting in the death penalty for eg jaywalking; juries anxious to convict; and judges more willing to impose the death penalty, as well as giving evidentiary rulings making it more likely that the jury would ask for the death penalty. Niven didn't make a totally implausible leap: eg China is currently being accused of overuse of the death penalty as excuse to obtain organs for transplants.
But this thread's premise is that the death penalty is entirely removed as a possibility. And it's still a LOT more expensive to run dialysis on people with complete kidney failure -- which not having kidneys would mean -- than to just jail prisoners. In other words, there would be no financial incentive for such a replacement for the death penalty. And with the cost of anti-rejection drugs, there would be additional financial cost. What would change is the who being imprisoned and otherwise limited -- eg even the diet is extremely restricted for such dialysis patients; prisoners' diets are already controlled -- by the need for nearly-continuous dialysis.
And no, Mabus, it wouldn't surprise me at all. The only life that the "religious"right feels worthy of protection is the SacredSperm and the Egg-Fertilized-by-the-SacredSperm. They believe it to be holy to kill everything else to earn the thirty pieces of silver they covet and hold sacred above all else*. What would amaze me would be if they didn't fully endorse carrying out Niven's extrapolation.
Possibly it would be more expensive to artificially grow or build replacement organs than to transplant them from human beings. What is known for sure is that the wealthy -- ie those who have the most political clout -- have no need to demand funding of research&developement of non-donor replacement organs when they automaticly go to the top of the transplant waiting lists. And even in those FirstWorld nations in which they can't automaticly get to the top of the list, there are other countries in which they can easily buy such access. Heck, there are transplant surgeries done in the US in which the organs were bought -- which is illegal in all FirstWorld countries -- in nonFirstWorld nations then imported, or even illegally-in-the-originating-nation removed from "donor"s. ie Transplants encourage presentday organlegging.
* Except their own omniscience and godhood.
[ March 24, 2005, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
Actually, you misunderstand me, aspectre. The book was against the transplantation of organs on the grounds that eventually they would be taken from patients who were still living and initially conscious but had been labeled as unsalvageable. There was an additional hokey bit about "The Bible says life is in the blood, not the brainwave," but basically the argument was the same as yours.
Posted by plaid (Member # 2393) on :
quote:I believe in the death penalty... but I don't believe that humans should give it out
HesterGray was asking what I meant by that... that's my way of saying that if there's a just and all-knowing God, that He'd be qualified to give out death sentences. But I think that humans -- not being just and all-knowing -- aren't competent enough or fair enough to give out death sentences without killing innocent people.
(Ideally, things would be like in the movies, where the villain trips and falls over a cliff and yells "Nooo!" as he falls to his death. But it usually doesn't work out like that in real life...)
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