The Necessity of the Execution of Criminals?

What's your opinion, everyone?

If you were to run a government, would you implement any form of execution as capital punishment? If yes, why? If not, why not?

Personally, my morality for better or worse trumps my rationality on this one. I don't believe anyone has the right to dictate whether one lives or doesn't. I imagine this may seem illogical and irrational to some (hell even I can think why since I'm usually a very logical person who doesn't rely on emotion). But I really don't know, guys... I'm very conflicted in the inside.

One main issue I think most would agree on would be "Without the electric chair/fatal injection/firing squad, what would discourage people from breaking laws now?" Actually, weirdly enough, a statistic research before concluded criminals were no less discouraged from committing crime than when execution was present. I'm skeptical myself.

I do not expect a universal answer to be found. This is a very gray area in social morality. I'm more interested in a fruitful discussion and in seeing other ways people think and connect logic.

Honestly, I'm looking at this at my very personal point of view, and as I know I could not take a longer imprisonment, I actually see life in prison as a more severe punishment than death. I'd rather choose to be executed than that, even if I were innocent.

I think it speaks for itself that crime is decreasing in canada and America which for the most part don't have the death penalty (some states do but there is no causal link between the decrease. It seems to be universal.)

However, look at what is happening to places like Sweden. They are having an epidemic of crime. I saw someone say that the place bad basically become northern Syria. I can't validate it but from what I heard, this person was a white male who is afraid to leave his house because of the laws and societal attitude towards white men.

Given how many people were on death-row who were later proven innocent, I can't support the death penalty. It's not something you can undo and the state keeps fucking up.

Huh, that perspective never occurred to me. Thank you, Luinthoron. We can only imagine reasons why people would be scared of going to prison, but the real experience would pale in comparison to mere thought. Would you share though, why you would go as far to say you'd rather be executed than have a life sentence?




Yes, it's really a pity about Sweden. Both it and Norway were among the most safest countries in the world before; it's hard to expect gruesome crimes happening in countries like theirs. About the white male though, isn't Sweden a predominantly Caucasian country? I have to apologize, I am not very aware of what's going on there recently.




I have to agree with you, Flaser. Our judgment, from moral to logical, as human beings is far from perfect, and it's odd to believe this shaky foundation is what we ground our basis on deciding whether someone lives or doesn't. I mean, it's one thing to make laws, flawed as both they and we are (but we largely don't have any other choice), but to go as far to say we have the authority to dictate someone's execution....?

I find it audacious.

It is. And that's the problem. If you look at their parliament, it's been hijacked by the extremest left feminist party who are passing rediculous laws and regulations that give benefits to everyone that isn't a white male.

Now that's a very... uncivilized thing to hear, Other Jacob. I swear, the one thing worse than a corrupt government is a group of close-minded people, be they male or female, whose immaturity, barbarism, and single-mindedness are handed the hammer of authority.

If old generations accuse ours of being a generation of entitled, loudmouthed upstarts, I personally and unfortunately would find it hard to blame them.

That describes pretty much every government on the planet.

My Lord, I just did, didn't I?

No, i wouldn't, because the first priority of a prison system should be rehabilitation. For the gruesome crimes where the punishment is life in prison, i think life in prison is a more suitable punishment than the death penalty. The death penalty seems like an easy way out, let them be locked up for the rest of their lives and ponder over what they did as a punishment. I think there might be certain cases where the criminals decided to go full over board with their crimes, because receiving the death penalty was better than spending rest of their lives behind bars (or they just wanted to die in a gun fight with the police).

Also it looks pretty obvious that the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent, we can't prove the cases where it did work, we only have statistics, but violent crimes still happen all over the world, in countries with or without the death penalty.

Lastly, i don't like the idea of government having the legal power to kill people after they have been caught alive.

Agreed. I personally think it's irresponsible to deal with people's grave crimes by simply executing them. It's a very Orwellian method of addressing criminals to me, to simply erase those who oppose the law. They're simply just dealing with the effects but not looking for the cause. That's why it's beautiful you said rehabilitation should be prioritized, because indeed what is the point of sending a criminal to death row when he doesn't understand the gravities of the wrongs he committed.

I don't trust the state to be honest. It's not infallible, in the past there has been shitty tactics to get convictions like jail house testimonies, torture, lies, abuse, etc. etc.

Trials are expensive and time consuming, can drag up to months or years.

Executions don't really reduce homicide rates. Even though it's a huge issue in itself, because of it being privatized in a gross way, the prison/jailing systems increasing incarceration rates do more to deter violent crime.

The context in which you're killing someone makes the crime, and I think it's strictly different from killing someone in self-defense.

You don't see the whole "make the process faster" and "make it stricter" as possible conflicting sentiments?
Why shouldn't the government screwing up not be a deterrent? It's hasty, and at times even corrupt because of retarded local politics.

And you point about the govt. wasting tax payer money. Why should the govt. be using money to kill someone in my name? People have different moral guidelines.

And what sort of crime deserves a death sentence?

Isn't it incredibly hypocritical to commit the worst possible crime against someone because they too commited a crime? How does that end? Do we execute the executioners? Because if murder is punished with capital punishment then yes we should, they too commited murder. There should be no safety in numbers. Just like war is somehow accepted murder by many of the more aggressive countries in the world, but it shouldn't be. And more progressive, safer, culturally advanced nations know this.

It's also no deterrent. The sort of situations you get into that cause you to commit murder are usually so far away from any clear, logical thinking that you would ever stop to consider the consequences. It's not like weighing up the odds on whether to shop-lift. Mental murdering psychopaths clearly ain't gonna give a shit about getting caught. Anyone else, like some petty robber with a gun who shoots someone because they got into conflict, clearly didn't go out with the intention to kill and they just threw away their own lives too by making a really big mistake.

It also means you're in a society that uses violence, and that only creates more violence. If we want to solve criminal activity at the root of it then we need to find out what make people do the things they do. People aren't born murderers and so the issue is solvable. We just need be a society that tries to understand fucked up people and help them before the murder even takes place.

That or we do a minority report and kill them first. Because killing people after the event is absolutely useless and has no moral basis.

Keeping them alive cost less money money.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf

Are you mental though? Do you think a sociopath is willing to go out of his way to murder many people for shelter? No. You're not taking MY tax money to kill someone when I damn well know they probably didn't give the accused a fair trial.

If you're concerned about deterring these crimes, the death penalty isn't the answer. Incarnation has done more than it's fair share of keeping criminals of the streets, reforming them before the system fails them should be a top concern, since repeat offenders are the ones who are more likely to commit greater crimes.

Want to have a better crime free society? Well Death penalty isn't doing us jack shit.



Better funded and educated police force, more outreach for the abused and those abusing drugs will do society a lot better than capital punishment.

Also are you going to acknowledge my first point or not?
Because you're suggesting we make the system worse so we can specifically kill more people.

Except they do and they("speedy" trials) definitely will increase wrongful convictions. Opportunist will obviously try to make the trial as fast as possible in their favor. Things will be overlooked, and wrongly acquired testimonies and information(basically corruption) will be overlooked. Also yes, it's out of the taxpayers money. Everything from the court cost, security cost, and the actual execution.

And again, if the topic is about the necessity, then the information I provided is relevant and it's clearly easy to see Death penalty is useless since there's better ways to prevent problems from arising. My point is that it's USELESS, and not a deterrent. If anything it promotes copycats. Many places in the south of the US have greater violence rates, and higher execution rates.