Capital Punishment

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Penguin

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Right or wrong? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth? If somebody coldly killed a loved one of your's would you want vengeance by having their life taken? Sometimes I am for the death sentence in the case of mass murderers and child killers etc and other times I am not so sure, so that makes me undecided I guess. You?
 
I believe in capital punishment as a means of a deterrent and a matter of justice, if only it were a reality. The problem I have with it is that it isn't effective because of the massive appeal process that negates the idea of swift justice. There are those on death row who have been there for years, sometimes in their double digits. How are we expected to deter crime when murders know that they will enjoy a long hotel stay at the taxpayeers expense? Meanwhile, the families of the victims remain tortured with the idea that the killer is still living while their loved ones are dead.
 
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth is the maximum that could be imposed. ie you take my microwave I take yours. I can't shoot you for taking my microwave. This is oft misquoted as how we should respond, but in reality was a limit to punishment.

In countries where they behead them in the street....they still have to do it...ie it doesn't prevent crimes, in the old west hangings were events...and it didn't deter crime.

In my opinion it a barbaric, vengeful practice. It doesn't provide justice, or anything for the victim or thier family. A lot of people say closure. Most I know that have family members or friends that were murdered are not in favor of capitol punishment...but that could be attributable to the type of people I associate with most.
 
Capital punishment is a barbaric practice. Tit for tat murder is still murder whether by individual or state. As an aside Iran and Texas share something in common here. They both state murder the mentally sub-normal. How civilised!!!
Some murder victims relatives in their heartbreak and anger may well scream for blood but a civilised society has to balance justice and cruelty. At the moment our Jails are full to capacity, understaffed, full of drugs and the inmates have t.v.'s in their cells and are given 3 meals a day. They dont 'pay' for their crimes, its more couch potato duty than punishment. This is wrong.....very wrong.
I believe that every prison should be a funding-free self sufficient unit where the inmates have to work for their meals. If they dont grow it they wont eat it. Why should a place that has such manpower be a drain on the public purse? In America jails are a private industry and here in the UK the government is doing the same by stealth. Locking up ever more people so it can divert tax-payers money to private companies is another political tax scam... nothing more.
We need to make prisoners pay their own way. If they dont they starve. But then that's their choice not societies.
 
I've been reading alot lately about the history of the death sentence in the USA, hangings, the electric chair and lethal injection. Even though most would admit that the condemned deserve what they get it just seems such a brutal process. The whole process of execution by lethal injection I found quite moving and especially reading the San Quentin website about death row inmates, some who have been waiting to be killed for over 10 years now and also the pictures of the execution chamber (which they originally used for gassing) which was converted for lethal injection. In one particular article I read it took the execution team 20 minutes or more to find vains on the arms of a man for execution and in the end he had to help them himself as he was a drug addict and knew where they were. Yuck!
 
There's an old thread that covers this topic as well, if anyone is interested in reviewing/reviving the old debate:

http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/capital-punishment-2553.html

I'm in the "barbaric practice" camp. I think TE makes a good point:

TE said:
I believe that every prison should be a funding-free self sufficient unit where the inmates have to work for their meals. If they dont grow it they wont eat it. Why should a place that has such manpower be a drain on the public purse? In America jails are a private industry and here in the UK the government is doing the same by stealth. Locking up ever more people so it can divert tax-payers money to private companies is another political tax scam... nothing more.
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Prison should be about rehabilitation, not punishment. If prisoners had to learn organic gardening, for instance, in order to survive, they would learn much more valuable lessons than they do sitting in cells and rotting, or watching TV, playing cards--whatever, if you do those things all day you are still rotting, in my opinion.

--P
 
Penguin said:
Right or wrong? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth? If somebody coldly killed a loved one of your's would you want vengeance by having their life taken? Sometimes I am for the death sentence in the case of mass murderers and child killers etc and other times I am not so sure, so that makes me undecided I guess. You?
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Wrong.... who the pluck is anyone to say this man should forefit his life... it's a pile of bs.... You want to kill a man for killing a man..... Then as the pattern goes shouldn't all those who allowed it then be killed for killing a man? Then their killers should be killed for killing a man.... I don't know how someone can live with themselves knowing they have killed an unarmed defenseless person.... To kill a person changes your percerptions and so on and so forth.... But to kill that person strapped to a chair or whatever....

You know in firing squads.... One person fires a blank(unknowingly).... So when it comes back to you to haunt you, which it will... Forever... You have this small hope you fired the blank... A small comfort. But say electric chair or needle or chamber.... You have the hands of a killer.. You are no better than him... Something else that makes me sick, the friends and family of the victim(s) sit and watch this man/woman being killed..... Are they practicing the human emotion of hate and vengance? I think they are not all there if they can sit there and do that.
 
Ooops, looks like I have created a thread that has already been discussed. I should have thought of doing a search first shouldn't I!
Good points 17th, didn't know about the firing squad and blanks thing though mate, nice one, learnt something new there!
I would like to try and think I could forgive a convicted killer and prey for them also, but it would be hard I guess.
 
The problem with self sufficient prisons is they soon become cheap labor factories in which people are jailed so as to increase the amount of cheap labor. And then these are in competition with others that have to pay full price...it all gets convoluted...and could be an interesting topic for another thread...
 
Penguin said:
Ooops, looks like I have created a thread that has already been discussed. I should have thought of doing a search first shouldn't I!
Good points 17th, didn't know about the firing squad and blanks thing though mate, nice one, learnt something new there!
I would like to try and think I could forgive a convicted killer and prey for them also, but it would be hard I guess.
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Yup! I love learning those small things... They all add up.

I don't tend to do the praying thing... But, forgiving is a must for me.... Not easy.. But, anything that isn't that easy to get is worth it.
 
17th Angel said:
You know in firing squads.... One person fires a blank(unknowingly).... So when it comes back to you to haunt you, which it will... Forever... You have this small hope you fired the blank... A small comfort. But say electric chair or needle or chamber.... You have the hands of a killer.. You are no better than him... Something else that makes me sick, the friends and family of the victim(s) sit and watch this man/woman being killed..... Are they practicing the human emotion of hate and vengance? I think they are not all there if they can sit there and do that.
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I think they do the same thing with the electric chair, or so I've heard. Lots of switches, several people to throw all of them, and only one has the capacity to fry.

"On my mark...​

three...​

two...​

one..."

fire/fry
​

Lethal injections on the other hand, I'm not sure exactly what the procedure is to cover the conscience. Is it just one person poking the criminal with poisons, or a whole crowd of vein-hunters? One thing that I do know--kind of in a vague sort of way--is that they give an anesthesia or tranquilizer, something to knock the condemned unconscious or render them otherwise senseless before the lethal injection. To make it more humane. I read an article not too long ago about one of these cases where the executioner had a hard time finding the veins and it turned out that he/she may have injected the tranquilizer/knock-out agent into muscle rather than the bloodstream, then went ahead with the lethal injection, resulting in the tranq not taking effect in time to "protect," so to speak, from the posion. Or so the speculation goes. There was also some speculation as to whether this was an accident by the executioner or intentional.
 
What? Where did you hear there are more than one switch? I would believe you'll find that information incorrect.... Saftey issues and such... And being trained to man the Eletric chair devices... I maybe wrong but,.... yea..
 
wil said:
The problem with self sufficient prisons is they soon become cheap labor factories in which people are jailed so as to increase the amount of cheap labor. And then these are in competition with others that have to pay full price...it all gets convoluted...and could be an interesting topic for another thread...
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That's possible, wil, but no worse than the current prison-industrial complex. Already the jailing-for-profit game is quite lucrative. I wonder how much the Dow Jones Industrial Average already depends on that to keep afloat and prospering. :confused: :eek:

Perhaps if the prisons were closed systems, as much as possible, it would be better. Like with the food, that wouldn't be sent outside the prison. It would be consumed right there. The benefits of an organic vegetarian diet for the prisoners would be an added bonus. Or forget that, have them raise chickens and pigs and cows, too, and slaughter them if they want to eat meat. Uh-oh, now my vision is blooming! This could be a model economic system--imagine every village, town, and city in the US of A run on this system of self-sufficiency. And then throw in regional trade and bartering, local economies and you'd have... happy people? Respectable economies? Much less exploitation? Strong communites? Arts and crafts that varied by region, reflecting a diversity of cultures?

Hey, sounds alright to me. Let's test it out on the criminals first, see how they do. Once they are rehabilitated, we'll create jobs for them--honorable ones--sending them out to different communites to teach food systems, trades, crafts, how to get along with your neighbor in a high-conflict situation, and general self-sufficiency and sanity. Now that's a prison system that I could support.
 
17th Angel said:
What? Where did you hear there are more than one switch? I would believe you'll find that information incorrect.... Saftey issues and such... And being trained to man the Eletric chair devices... I maybe wrong but,.... yea..
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I think I heard that 2nd- or 3rd-hand somewhere, so it could be wrong. I did a quick search to see if I could clear it up. I didn't look very hard, but what I found suggests that you're probably right, 17th, and that there is only one person pulling the switch.

In my search I found this very disturbing tidbit about wages paid to executioners in Florida:

The executioner:
Is a private citizen who is paid $150 per execution. State law allows for his or her identity to remain anonymous.

source: Death Row Fact Sheet - Florida Department of Corrections
 
... if u steal little old ladies handbags, they should chop ur hands off... if u like sticking ur willy in little boys then let's cut it off.. if u want to kill ppl, not because of neccesity, but becuase ur a sicko, then hey, sorry, but u have forfeited ur right to life... .

works for me...
 
Francis king said:
... if u steal little old ladies handbags, they should chop ur hands off... if u like sticking ur willy in little boys then let's cut it off.. if u want to kill ppl, not because of neccesity, but becuase ur a sicko, then hey, sorry, but u have forfeited ur right to life... .

works for me...
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Hey Francis, they've got a job for you in Florida. :D :p

Ah, I jest. ;)
 
Wil, as Pathless points out I never suggested our prisons be run for profit, as they are now, but for self-sufficiency and most of all to provide punishment and rehabilitation. Right now our prisons are little more than a battery poultry farm that keeps those doing 'bird' in tight little cages. The profit does not come from selling their meat tho, but from keeping them there as long as possible. Consequently we have politicians constantly urging longer sentences for every crime and creating false fears in society to support them.

Some crimes deserve life imprisonment without release. Cold blooded murder, child rape, repeated rape offences and deliberate corporate manslaughter I would say all deserve such sentences. But most criminals are the product of their environment. We do not rehabilitate them giving them a TV and cramming them into cells for 23hrs a day. If we dont try to help them, and because they do not have the skills to help themselves, then they do as we see keep returning. And while not inside they are busy producing the next generation of clones. The battery prison is a confession that society has given up on these people. Prison is not a deterant to crime and many convicts become institutionalised finding that they can cope much better with that than trying to find a job, pay bills, rent etc at the bottom of the sh*t heap of society. If we dont see prison as a place of rehabilitation for those people, if we dont have that hope to better their lives then we may as well just give up on any concept of social improvement.

TE
 
I used to live in a town that had a maximum security prison, a medium and a women's. The women's and the medium had their own fields, they grew their own veggies and livestock. Much of the original max was built buy prisoners...as they needed more buildings they broke the block and built the prison themselves...

We used to frequent the craft store, where you could buy wallets, belts, tables and chairs handcrafted by prisoners also we utilized a mechanic at $3 per day and he would do just about everything needed on a car including rebuild our Land Rover engine when it swallowed a valve. (He was a lifer in for murder)

A lot of businesses are utilizing prison labor...
 
Even if I approved of it in principle for those who have committed the most henious crimes, there have been enough cases of people wrongfully accused to put a question mark over the merits of the death penalty.

I would question the ethics and morals of a state (country) that puts more and more people in prison, builds more and more prisons and uses the death penalty. If there are that many so called criminals what is wrong with the society.
 
Francis king said:
... if u steal little old ladies handbags, they should chop ur hands off... if u like sticking ur willy in little boys then let's cut it off.. if u want to kill ppl, not because of neccesity, but becuase ur a sicko, then hey, sorry, but u have forfeited ur right to life... .

works for me...
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I would put money on the fact you have stolen before..... Remove your own hands.... I bet you have also lied.... Remove your tongue... What of sex with a person you are not married to? Should that also be punished? You may not have taken human life.... (maybe not) but you will have taken some form of life.... So you deserve to die....... :)

Works for me...
 
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