Death Penalty Opponents, This Is Who You Champion

OE wants to know why. I think I've explained it as best as ai can. If life imprisonment is the ultimate penalty, there is no incentive whatever for a person not to go right on endangering other inmates, prison guards, medical staff, or anyone else in their path. They have nothing to lose.

And Linkat, personally I think people who commit capital crimes should give up all rights other than protection against cruel and unusual punishment. They certainly should not be able to dictate their sentence any more than people of far lesser crimes are allowed to dictate their sentences.

Anybody here remember that movie from the 70's I think "Escape from New York"? In that case, the convicted could choose but they got no best choice.

That's why I posted something about supermax prisons earlier in this thread. I would think that, given the fact that those facilities exist, life imprisonment is not the ultimate penalty. Uhm... I'll post it again:

OE writes


I saw your post re the supermax prisons before, but even those doesn't change my premise.

Super max prisons house only a small number of the lifers. Most inmates serving life sentences are incorporated into the general prison population, can earn trustee status, may share a cell with other inmates, and participate in group activities. The governor can commute the sentences of those in solitary confinement, the law can change requring all the prison population to have periodic parole hearings or authorize furloughs,etc.. There has never been a U.S. prison that the inmates did not traffic in some kind of contraband including the ability to manufacture or otherwise acquire weapons. The law requires all inmates to have access to clothing, bedding, food, water, medical care, etc. so there is no way to completely isolate an inmate from all human contact.

I just don't think it prudent to completely close down the option of the death penalty.

Well, certainly not all lifers have to serve in supermaxes, but I thought you would demand extra-hard punishment beyond life sentence only 'for those who commit those most terrible of crimes beyond what would normally send a person to life imprisonment'.

OE writes


In today's politically correct, convoluted climate, there is no such thing as 'extra-hard punishment' for American prison inmates. It isn't allowed and any attempt to initiate it brings speedy lawsuits from the ACLU and loud protests from others.

The tax dollars spent on the maintenance of the supermax prisons and the miscreants could be better spent on something far more useful.

This is the point where I have to wonder: why do the US have such a big prison population at all? The highest numbers in the world, both in absolute numbers and percentagewise...

Go check out the cost of executing someone. Then check out the cost of incarcerating them for life. Then come back and make this statement again....

As I've said before: there may be arguments for capital punishment, but economics ain't one of 'em.

I was rather amused by a description of the putative "super-max" prisons (sounds like a feminine hygiene product), in a black humor sort of way. Jeremy Bentham is considered to be one of the founders of "utilitarianism." His influence was important in political matters in England, such as the 1832 Reform Act, as well as the principles included in later reform acts. Like all great thinks, Bentham was more than a little of a crackpot. One of his personally cherished notions was about the construction of prisons. Bentham contributed a great many very valuable ideas to the fields of jurisprudence, criminology and penology. His prison wasn't one of them. He had an idea for a "panopticon" prison, in which the warders could see each prisoner in his cell, but the prisoners could see no one else other than their warders, and then only when the warders wished it. It is almost always stated that only two such prisons were ever built, and that they were both built in the United States. Such accounts correctly point out that the prisons were soon modified, and the principle of leaving prisoners in isolation for years on end to contemplate the wages of sin was also abandoned.

Those accounts, however, are ignoring a significant experiment which was carried out in England's lovely continental prison, Australia. Or, more specifically, in Van Diemen's Land, an island known today as Tasmania (the name was changed because of the deservedly vile reputation which Van Diemens Land garnered during the period in Australian history when it was still a penal colony). On an island in the harbor at Hobart, a panopticon was constructed to exactly the specifications of Mr. Bentham. In that prison, adolescent boys were incarcerated. The theory was that adolescent convicts would be corrupted by contact with adult convicts, but would benefit from Mr. Bentham's proposed method of incarceration--silence and isolation in which to contemplate the error of one's former ways. Those who lack imagination are advised to do a little research into just how cruel and unusual that particular form of criminal punishment proved to be--do a web search for The Fatal Shore for starters, then go from there.

Were i so situated as to be forced to choose between such a prospect of life imprisonment and summary execution, i believe i'd choose the latter.

DrewDad
That too needs change, convict and in short order execute. Remember, since capital punishment is only to be meted out when guilt is beyond a shadow of doubt. The long wait between sentence and execution should be eliminated and with it the cost.

You cannot separate the 100% proven guilty from the others, because, according to the law, each and every one convicted is 100% guilty.

I would rather 1 inncoent person be put to death then 100 guilty not be put to death. Give everyone who is death row a new DNA testing and if it turns up in their favor let them free, but if it turns up not in their favor let them fry.

Naturally. Hang 'me high, eh?

Edgar
There are times there is no question of guilt. That is the only time that capital punishment would be imposed. i.e. Is there any question as to the guilt of the two that went on killing spree around Washington, DC last year?

Baldimo
Control yourself.

Can't help it, I have a high sense of justice and it angers me when justice isn't served. When guilty people get off because the cop didn't have a search warrent for their car is the most maddening thing I can imagine.

Baldimo, how is justice served when you kill somebody?

How is it not?

You can't make the victim alive again by killing the murderer. You promote a culture which readily turns to violence as a means of solving social problems. You are looking for easy solutions to complex issues.

OE Writes


A disproportionate number of people who are in prison in the United States are there for 1) illegal drug use. Quite a few are there for non-violent white collar crime.

For the druggies, I would support a vast minimum security work farm or some such at which they work their butts off, sleep in tents at night, and attend 12-step meetings three times a day. 30 to 60 days should be sufficient for most.

Put non removable tracking devices on the white collar crime people, confine them to home or work, and make them pay full restitution to those they stole from plus a hefty fine to pay for the cost of trying and monitoring them.

That should free up a lot of prison beds for the truly dangerous or destructive types.

But for the most terrible crimes, for all the reasons already stated, I still think the justice system needs the option of an ultimate penalty.