So the death penalty....

[Fenris]

It doesn't deter crime, it costs more that incarcerating someone for life and if you get it wrong you have their blood on your hands.

The death penalty is not justice, it is revenge.

 

[mattyfez]

Funnily enough, I think it was in a Louis Theroux documentary that they had this chap in prison who was doing life for murdering his wife. He'd been there for about 40 years, though, and was the prison barber! Louis got a shave, and the guy was great. I doubt that his life in prison was always that easy, but he's probably been rehabilitated, and is no longer much of a threat to society, enough that the prison trusts him to cut the guards etc hair.

If he's rehabilited though, you have to ask why the state is keeping him there.. The American prison system is very dubious.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I think that only terrorists should get the death penalty, and only if it's certain that they committed the crime. Then when it's time for the injection, don't use drugs from dubious suppliers which has caused a stir in the media recently. Their sentence was death, not a 2-hour cardiac arrest prior to death.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

If he's rehabilited though, you have to ask why the state is keeping him there.. The American prison system is very dubious.

Interesting point; I'm not sure that they consider him completely rehabilitated though. He's also thoroughly institutionalised.

 

[Orionaut]

I have found this site to be an interesting and reasonably unbiased read on the matter.

(There is quite a lot of it however)

As regards "Deterrence", I will offer a section of Cut n Paste from a section on USA for/against arguments....!

Case study 1 - Texas.

Texas carries out far more executions than any other state and there is now clear evidence of a deterrent effect. My friend Rob Gallagher (author of the Before the Needles website) has done an analysis of the situation using official FBI homicide figures. Between 1980 and 2000, there were 41,783 murders in Texas.

In 1980 alone, 2,392 people died by homicide giving a rate of 16.88 for every 100,000 of the population. (The US average murder rate in 1980 was 10.22, falling to 5.51 per 100,000 by the year 2000.)

Over the same period, Texas had a population increase of 32%, up 6,681, 991 from 14,169,829 to 20,851,820. There were only 1,238 murders in 2000 giving it a rate of 5.94, just slightly higher than the national rate of 5.51/100,000.

In the base year (1980) there was one murder for every 5,924 Texans. By the year 2000, this had fallen to one murder for every 16,843 people or 35.2% of the 1980 value.

If the 1980 murder rate had been allowed to maintain, there would by interpolation, have been a total of 61,751 murders.

On this basis, 19,968 extra people would have potentially been homicide victims, representing 78 lives saved for each one of the 256 executions. The overall U.S. murder rate declined by 54% during the period.

Therefore, to achieve a reasonable estimate of actual lives saved, we must multiply 19,968 by 0.54, giving a more realistic figure of 10,783 lives saved or 42 lives per execution. Even if this estimate was off by a factor of 10, (which is highly unlikely), there would still be over 1,000 innocent lives saved or four lives per execution.

One can see a drop in the number of murders in 1983, the year after Charlie Brooks became the first person to be executed by lethal injection in America (2,466 in 1982, 2,239 in 1983).

A recent study of executions and homicides in Texas by criminologist Raymond Teske at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and Duke University sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concluded that a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas follows each execution. “Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions,” according to the study published by the American Society of Criminology.

It is interesting to note the steady drop in Texas’s homicide rate over the 20 years 1990 to 2009. In 1990 there were 2,389 homicides recorded and the state population stood at just under 17 million inhabitants.

By 2009 the population had risen to just under 25 million but the number of homicides had decreased to 1,328, the lowest figure since 1970 when the population was just over 11 million. If one corrects the 1990 figure to the 2009 population there would have been 3,513 homicides, so the actual reduction is even more impressive.

Please remember too, that these are real people who were murdered, not merely statistics, so any appreciable reduction in the homicide rate saves not only lives but also a great deal of misery.

Because the population of Texas perceive execution as a very real outcome if they are convicted of first degree murder, the message seems to be getting through.

As regards the issue of possible miscarriages of Justice, people seem to forget that very large numbers of innocent people die as a result of being Murderers victims!

(The UK Murder rate is many times what it was in pre-abolition days)

One might not unreasonably ask just how many innocent people one is willing to have die in order to avoid risking executing an innocent man.

(In any case, There are other safeguards one might put in place to reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice. EG, No Capital sentence for defendants with no previous "Form" say (ISTR reading that in the UK HALF of all murders are committed by people with 5 or more previous! An argument for a three strikes rule perhaps, even if one is not prepared to go all the way with executions??))

 

[Saytan]

I have found this site to be an interesting and reasonably unbiased read on the matter.

(There is quite a lot of it however)

As regards "Deterrence", I will offer a section of Cut n Paste from a section on USA for/against arguments....!



As regards the issue of possible miscarriages of Justice, people seem to forget that very large numbers of innocent people die as a result of being Murderers victims!

(The UK Murder rate is many times what it was in pre-abolition days)

One might not unreasonably ask just how many innocent people one is willing to have die in order to avoid risking executing an innocent man.

(In any case, There are other safeguards one might put in place to reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice. EG, No Capital sentence for defendants with no previous "Form" say (ISTR reading that in the UK HALF of all murders are committed by people with 5 or more previous! An argument for a three strikes rule perhaps, even if one is not prepared to go all the way with executions??))

It's important to set those statistics against a background of declining homicide, and indeed violent crime in general....

 

[Glaucus]

I have found this site to be an interesting and reasonably unbiased read on the matter.

(There is quite a lot of it however)

As regards "Deterrence", I will offer a section of Cut n Paste from a section on USA for/against arguments....!



As regards the issue of possible miscarriages of Justice, people seem to forget that very large numbers of innocent people die as a result of being Murderers victims!

(The UK Murder rate is many times what it was in pre-abolition days)

One might not unreasonably ask just how many innocent people one is willing to have die in order to avoid risking executing an innocent man.

(In any case, There are other safeguards one might put in place to reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice. EG, No Capital sentence for defendants with no previous "Form" say (ISTR reading that in the UK HALF of all murders are committed by people with 5 or more previous! An argument for a three strikes rule perhaps, even if one is not prepared to go all the way with executions??))

Just lol. Unbiased. Really? What utter garbage.

Why not look at stats that abolished death penalty and have far lower murder rate.

Just unbelievable you think that's fairly unbiased, it's nothing of the sort. It is 100% biased, and doesn't even talk or suggest other factors.

 

[Tunney]

The reason why the death penalty is so expensive in America is that each case has to go through appeal after appeal after appeal. Typically, each appeal is heard by a larger group of judges. And guess what? They still get it wrong.

 

[Tefal]

i would prefer full life without parole sentences for murder than capitol punishment.

I don't mind them having a reasonable quality of life in prison, privacy, work, education etc after the "punishment" section of their sentence is complete, as i think the main reason in their case is simply the separation and protection of the public.

 

[Tefal]

If he's rehabilited though, you have to ask why the state is keeping him there.. The American prison system is very dubious.

because of that small but important word ...IF.

 

[Droolinggimp]

I'm totally against it as I have been watching a documentary on a prisoner (Lincoln Burrows)in a State prison waiting to be executed. He was found guilty of apparently killing the Vice presidents brother ( I think this was before Obamas time).

It was later found out he was innocent and was set up by the 'company' ( I think the company was a subsidiary of the US government, leasing mercenaries and the like ).

So to those who want Capital punishment back, It is not a good idea. Innocent people can die from it.

He is now a free man iirc.

 

[dowie]

If he's rehabilited though, you have to ask why the state is keeping him there.. The American prison system is very dubious.

yeah the US system is dubious but on the other hand prison isn't just about rehabilitation, there is also a punishment aspect, deterrence aspect and frankly whether someone has been rehabilitated can be a bit of a fuzzy area even if they've made some significant improvements in some areas... keeping dangerous people out of society for a period of time is useful in itself

 

[McBain]

All for it.

 

[Phantom Shadow]

While I agree with the death penalty in principal, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to guarantee that there aren't any mistakes and on that basis I don't want to see it come back.

 

[tbyeah]

I'm totally against it as I have been watching a documentary on a prisoner (Lincoln Burrows)in a State prison waiting to be executed. He was found guilty of apparently killing the Vice presidents brother ( I think this was before Obamas time).

It was later found out he was innocent and was set up by the 'company' ( I think the company was a subsidiary of the US government, leasing mercenaries and the like ).

So to those who want Capital punishment back, It is not a good idea. Innocent people can die from it.

He is now a free man iirc.

Pleeeease tell me you are joking?

I'm sorry to inform you that that's a fictional show, Prison Break...

It has no basis in fact.

 

[Mynight]

Pleeeease tell me you are joking?

I'm sorry to inform you that that's a fictional show, Prison Break...

It has no basis in fact.

lol one can only hope.

 

[tbyeah]

Decent series though

 

[MookJong]

I have never understood the notion that a progressive society can tell its citizens killing is wrong and to prove the point the state will murder you if you do it...

 

[pitchfork]

90%+ recidivism in this country, I seriously doubt the prospect of a death sentence is going to change that.

We need a complete overhaul of the justice system AND we need to stop privatizing prisons.

 

[Casdawer]

Murder murderers? Doesn't make sense to me.