What do you think of the death penalty?

[CD]

Personally,  for the vast majority of situations - actually, all situations, I am against the death penalty.  With the possibility of false convictions or being used to kill off opposition (or gay people in some places), it's horrendous.  With the fact that dead people can't help us figure out how to prevent pedophilia, it's pointless. 

But then again there are some major suck in the world and sometimes it would seem nice to just see the back of it. On the plus side we'd have less people, and the world is overpopulated. Or would we?  Populations tend to rise dramatically after wars, like people are having 10 kids to counteract all the death.  So mebbe the families of death penalty recipients have more kids than average?  I don't know but it's an interesting thought.

What about you?  What do you think?

[Maxwell Waters]

I'm against it. Period.

And I would like to remind people, especially Catholics, that you cannot claim the moniker of pro-life and not oppose the death penalty. Now, I'm pro-choice vis a vis abortion, so maybe I'm not pro-life either, at least in your book. But if you're against abortion and not the death penalty, you're holding a sucky opinion.

[Eystein,]

I'm not Catholic, nor pro-life (although I'm very fond of life), but I think the reason why people can hold such a position has to do with the question of innocence. Whereas that is undoubtedly bigoted, since you're not supposed to judge and all sins are equal in face of God and whatnot, it's no doubt that babies, if anything, can be considered innocent. However since everyone else is a sinner, I guess we all ought to kill each other and just be done with it...

[Latch33570]

Dang dude that's a little extreme.

[Eystein,]

But I wonder if not I would have found it the best solution, philosophically speaking, if I indeed were religious. But since I'm not, it makes no sense to rebel against God in this manner. Besides, I don't think I would have much luck persuading anyone else to join in on it, and I stress that it would have been absolutely crucial that everyone joined. There could be no one left behind. Otherwise I would have achieved nothing, and missed out on a whole lot of living for absolutely no reason at all.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

So I live in amurica. So I will be writing from this countries facts and best.

Here in amurica we do not believe in redemption and do not rehabilitate our the people in our prisons. 

We eventually release them and they come back or learn how to be better criminals and then never come back. But we do not have counselors sit down and work with them and rehabilitate them and help them become productive members of society again. Some countries do that. 

We actually have SUCH a problem with that that it would now be impossible to help all of them because we have a ton of them and not a ton of funding. 

Populations rise dramatically after wars is kinda misreading statistics. They rise both because people stop dieing but also because suddenly tons of young men are home with their lovers and celebrating and accidently having more kids.

Keeping all that in mind i think there are times when the death penalty should be applicable.

1. Whenever life in prison is on the table, The inmate should be able to choose the death penalty. 

2. Situations where someone is clearly never going to stop, Once you've molested and murdered like 10 kids your chance at being a human should be gone.

[Eystein,]

Keeping all that in mind i think there are times when the death penalty should be applicable.

1. Whenever life in prison is on the table, The inmate should be able to choose the death penalty. 

2. Situations where someone is clearly never going to stop, Once you've molested and murdered like 10 kids your chance at being a human should be gone.

I sort of agree. At least it is cases were I would be indifferent about it. I'm okay with Norway not practicing death penalty, but when this guy comes along and kills 77 people, in just one day, you kind of wish that we did, you know... Luckily we had at least extra-circumstantial mechanisms in place to make sure the that bastard stays incarcerated for life though... It's not a sure thing, but sure enough...

I do think that the US executes too many, and for too little sometimes. Whenever I see "documentaries" about the US prisons, it appears as if the US prisons haven't evolved much for the past hundred years. They all have these huge cell blocks with open cells, with thousands of inmates in each block... With so many criminals, it makes sense that that would necessarily have to continues for decades still, even if you started up rehabilitation programs for a select few today, but still... Is that true for low security prisons as well, which are never featured in such documentaries? Do you just throw them all in there, into such detrimental environments? Don't you have different kind of prisons, for different kinds of inmates, and different kinds of programs?

I just think that if I survived such prison, with no applicable skills other than being a scumbag, it would make me resent society even more, and having survived it would be the only badge of honor I'd have left ;)

[Tom Steinbrecher]

In prison people mostly learn how to be better criminals. Low security prisons are reserved for white collar criminals who do things such as embezzlement and extortion. Even they can learn more tips to not get caught and become better at stealing money from their jobs again once they get out. 

Even very low drug crimes end up in a higher security than that. So the guy who was a drug lord ends up with the 17 year old kid who was caught with slightly too much pot, who ends up with the guy who shanked someone over a cheese sandwich. 

we haven't upgraded our prison system at all really. It's the same logic we use for 4 year olds "You were naughty. Go sit in time out" only instead of colouring on the wall with magic markers you sold heroin to 13 year olds or killed a ton of people. 

[Roko Dragun]

i'm for death penalty, why would the killer live if someone who he had killed is death, or pedophil why would you let him to live, he didn't deserve it.

[Latch33570]

TOM you said that here in the United States we don't believe in redemption or rehabilitation. You make it seem that we don't have rehabilitation here. That is not the case. Most prisoners finish high school in prison if they hadn't and then we generally offer them training in a trade to boot. Them criminals suck up a lot of my tax money dang it.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

A vast majority of the time we release prisoners to come back to prison. We do not help them get better.

We teach them skills

but we don't not help them fix the problems that got them into prison.

You did too many drugs, beat someone up, mugged someone, held up the 7/11 because something was wrong inside. We do not work to fix that here.

Other countries treat their prisoners like respectable human beings and rehabilitate them. We do not actually teach them and help them become productive human beings in a functioning society. 

[Mark Andrew Maben]

The issue of the Death Penalty is that we as a species have always had, and most likely will have those who commit the crime of homicide, or other crimes to which we as a society have valued as evil or decrepit enough to merit the removing of them from society, and the world entirely.  Whether or not you support that sentiment, the fact remains that there will remain those who will perpetrate this crime. In all truth, the act of killing some does not causes a great deterrent to those who would do them.  However, this does not invalidate the practice of doing so.  As we find those who would kill others, we must keep them away from society lest they continue their fell craft.  However, in our world as more and more murderers and other persons of heinous nature continue to arise, it becomes paramount to address that just keeping them in one place and financing their continued existence does little if not positive to society, and is as much as anything, just not taking the step that many fear to tread.  I realize many might take offense at this. But from a practical standpoint, caging a wild beast and feeding him does not solve the problem in the majorities of cases. We must have a means to remove those who are a cancer on the back of civilization, and not just try to medicate it away. Drastic crimes demand drastic solutions, and murder is no exception. The difference between what they do and what society does to them, is that by a fair trial we find them to have committed crimes against their fellow men without just cause or reason, and such they are fairly dealt with. Thus the death penalty is not in any way like murder. It isn’t. Even more so as we become more liberal with our methods, the death we engage is often without pain, and quick. This is a simple, clean, and honest solution to a grim, dark, and torturous problem. We are the better men, and decide to do what is right, and also what is hard. To have the courage to execute the proper order of society is often unvalued in our current mindset, but without it, we don’t deal with the problem. As much as it is important to screen a body for up and rising cancer to prevent its conception, and provide medicine to reduce its chance of occurring, we also do not fear removing the problem if, and when it occurs. It sounds cold, maybe inhuman, but the job of law, and of order, is to do what we have decided men should, and can’t do themselves: to allow them to execute laws we have chosen no one man should have the right to decide. And so, I find no issue with government and the legal system doing this. It is upright and it is dealing with the problem. To address the problem of false execution, it is as true of murder as of any crime that sometimes the system makes a mistake, but we as enlightened members of society must realize that we cannot hinge our decision of how something is done on whether it works 100% of the time. That is impractical, and we need to be able to let society function as best it can, and if once in a while an innocent is hurt, then even that is not cause to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  The unfortunate but necessary sacrifice of those innocent souls is tragic, but we must be able to act with a mind set on what is true, and what is applicable. We cannot let masterful ideals disassemble the pillars of society to the point where we fall apart because humans are prone to error.

[Latch33570]

Mark wow dude that was wordy. There are times that there is no doubt at all of guilt. I am ok with locking the ones that there isn't absolute proof but the ones with no doubt, No zap em. I like the chair.

Tom you said other countries treat their prisoners and we don't. Please be specific. What exactly do they do? We give them counseling and drug rehab. What else can we do that we do not do now? Just saying rehabilitation doesn't mean anything. We try really we do.