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Permalink Reply by Sonny Mobley on March 12, 2010 at 2:37pm

Our prisons are overloaded in America. And the death penalty is not used to any such degree that would actually have an affect on overall prison population. Also, many people see the too-often-done screwups that end in the death of innocent people and say we should scrap the whole idea.

Me, I am in the middle. In theory the death penalty is ok, but will it ever be applied correctly? I don't know, but I have serious doubts.

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Permalink Reply by Sonny Mobley on March 12, 2010 at 3:09pm

Also, I know that if I did something terrible enough to warrant life long incarceration or the death penalty I would rather take the death penalty than be released to the general prison population. SCREW THAT. Off me, please.

What I just said may be the best argument against the death sentence. lol Death>rape,beatings,torture of prison

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Permalink Reply by Prefer Not to Say on March 12, 2010 at 4:01pm

I agree with you, I too prefer to die then spend my life in prison.

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Permalink Reply by David Prentice on March 17, 2010 at 2:55am

Wow yeah! So, like, instead of actually KILLING another human being, just rely on the conditions you put them under to make them WANT to die. BRILLIANT!!! Now we can have a clear conscience when we extinguish another human beings life because they've become too big a problem.

But wait ... there's something nagging in the back of my mind ...

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Permalink Reply by David Prentice on March 18, 2010 at 9:42pm

Ok, I get that but, from my point of view, it's still simply being condemned to death. After all, their only alternative is being given an existence that is apparently worse than death.

It still looks to me like the system is built around the idea that criminals are problems to be done away with. I thought we'd come a long way from that kind of mentality with the advances in psychology and human understanding.

Clearly there's a correlation between certain early life experience, living condidtions, and prejudices etc and the incidence of criminal or violent behaviour. So surely the only just thing to do is to get a better understanding of how to eliminate, or at least significantly diminish the conditions. Instead we condemn those who happen to fall into those categories, treating them as our 'good christian' forebears have taught us to - 'Criminals have freedom of choice, therefore must be EVIL'.

I think killing is wrong, unless it is literally the ONLY way to save innocent life.

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Permalink Reply by Matthew Shafer-Skelton on September 5, 2011 at 5:11pm

Ignorance. You will never get rid of the criminal problem with psychology, sociology, activism, and social engineering. Only those whose understanding of these sciences and ideas and therefore can choose what parts of them to accept believe this.

FYI, we don't have free will, but we must act as if we do because certain punishments relegate and diminish the possibility of much wider criminal activity.

 

Millions of people every day choose not to commit crimes for fear of being caught and punished.

We can reduce the probability of crime within the restrictions of diminishing returns given resources invested.

Therapy has a limited efficacy. It works, but only for some things and people and not all the time.

We absolutely should try to limit occurrences of crime but we should also punish people who commit crimes. And we should not make crimes out of things that should not be. Different sentencing for crach vs powder, locking up people for using marijuana, etc. should all be done away with.

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on March 12, 2010 at 2:43pm

Personally, I am against the death penalty for three reasons:

• The theory is that capital punishment is a deterrent against capital crime. For what I see (and yes, granted, I haven't lined up any statistics to back me up), it's failing miserably at deterring anyone from committing such crimes.
• The endless number of appeals involved in any death penalty case winds up being more expensive than the simple incarceration of the perpetrator, who remains jailed whether his case involves the death penalty or not.
• Even with DNA evidence, there remains the possibility (and occasional occurrence) of the execution of the wrong individual

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Permalink Reply by Prefer Not to Say on March 12, 2010 at 3:53pm

Point one: I don't think these punishments are designed to stop crimes, because that's almost impossible. I think they reduce them a lot, my personal experience with this matter is; I find it a lot less safe in western countries then in my country, especially at night.

Point two: This is a good point. I don't know much about how much a prisoner costs every year, what if someone spent 40 years in prison, I'm sure prisoners cost a lot of money, they need food and water, prisons cost lots of money because of electricity, maintenance, equipments and facilities.

And, the more prisons you have the more you will spend; I think this money is better spent on kids who live in poor neighborhoods, who have a very high chance to be future criminals because of their situations.

Point three: I think it should be applied only when there’s a very strong evidence or when the criminal confess.

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Permalink Reply by J.P.M. on March 15, 2010 at 5:24am

I agree with you Loren, but I would go further. My experience of the legal system is that there is plenty of injustice in it. Justice is more likely for those with power, money and influence. I believe there are people who deserve to die. I just don't trust the system not to put the wrong people to death. The Innocence Project has now rescued >100 people from death row with DNA evidence. And scummy prosecutors in dozens of states are trying to prevent review of such cases. I also happen to know first hand what a cesspool of legal swine we have locally...

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Permalink Reply by Prog Rock Girl on March 16, 2010 at 9:39pm

I was reading about a man in Florida who had been wrongly imprisoned for rape for several decades and new DNA evidence exonerated him. He ended up getting millions of dollars b/c the state law was to give a certain amount of money for every year falsely imprisoned. He had a big smile on his face and said he was happy...so it was sort of a sad and happy story.

One reason people are wrongly imprisoned is b/c of being misidentified at lineups. We think "what could be more accurate than being shown faces and picking one of them out?" but they are one of the least reliable forms of evidence in a criminal trial.

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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on April 28, 2010 at 1:42pm

Particularly when the ID is cross racial. You know all those ______ look alike. But, in reality, studies have shown that the ID is less accurate outside your own identifiable group.

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Permalink Reply by Lorryslorrys on March 12, 2010 at 4:32pm

Your right, Ethics and Mistrial aside, the death penalty does not deliver results. I'm afraid the champions of the Death penalty are in a pretty bad state when it comes to violent crime and you can look up quite a few reasons why.

The interesting part of the whole death sentence debate is not who is right, but that it's happening at all. A lust for very punitive punishments is a symptom of something wrong in society, an unease. I'm afraid the only way to sort this underlying problem is to sort your inequality out and then come join the low-violent-crime club of us other developed nations.

There is data linking by putative laws and al sorts of crime to inequality (socialital injustices) and the US is measurably performing less well at controlling crime than its non-retentionist neighbours, I'm not completely talking out of my arse.

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