The death penalty does NOT deter crime

[boolean]

Just thought this deserved its own thread.

Anyone who thinks the death penalty will prevent crime is sadly mistaken and completely ignorant of the facts. I hear people use this "argument" all the time. PEOPLE WHO KILL ARE NOT THINKING ABOUT CONSEQUENCES. Ever. They're not thinking about "what if I'm caught?" The reasons they kill are many, and I'm not attempting to go into that aspect of the issue.

That's for one.

Two: The death penalty HAS KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE. It is a FACT and it is DISGUSTING. You know the saying, better to let 10 guilty go than to put one innocent behind bars. The death penalty is a form of government oppression. Oddly enough, most people who bitch about gun control as being oppression are usually supportive of the death penalty.

Three: To those who say it's about punishment. Why in the FUCK do you people not think living the rest of your life in a tiny cell in solitary confinement with nothing to do is punishment? To me, death is too easy for some of these criminals. They deserve to SUFFER, not to die. Dying is a way OUT for them.

Fourth: In regards to three, people who want to "punish by death" are sick individuals who needs serious psychological help. This bloodlust is no different than the warmonger chickenhawks who were for Iraq. When has revenge ever been a virtuous quality? Oddly enough, it's usually the so called "Christians" that are for the death penalty. So much for forgiveness and "turn the other cheek". I urge all of you to take a look inside yourselves and ask why it is that you think it's OK to kill another person. What does that make you?

Fifth: I wonder how many of you who are for the death penalty are also for the torture bill. After all, if it's OK for the government to kill people they think are guilty, why not torture people they think are terrorists?

Finally: INNOCENT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED. Just thought that needed repeating.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. Agreed.

And I can assure you, 23-1 lockdown is mental torture like you wouldn't believe. 2 1/2 months of it felt like 2 years to me.

[JeffR]

2. Back in fourth grade, our teacher tried to expose us to classical debate

This was in Savannah, but it was a progressive school and a very different era. We were assigned the topic of the death penalty and I had to deliver the case for the anti- side. I went off-script somewhere near the end of my statement and got a little muddled with the strength of my convictions. Finally, I blurted out that the death penalty was "very terrible" and I sat down.

Decades later those two words are the first thing I think of when the topic of the death penalty comes up. Very terrible.

Very wrong. Very immoral. And something we have in common with only a few of the most barbaric societies on the planet. It's a national tragedy and it shames us in the eyes of most civilized people wordwide.

[nofurylike]

3. very well said, boolean. thank you. eom

[undergroundpanther]

4. no it isn't a deterrent

It DOES however very effectively stop a criminal, one at a time, forever.

Sometimes you have to say enough is enough. When a person cannot be trusted and must be babysat lest he rape or kill, Tell me why should I be subjected to him,in danger,Why should I make believe he is like me,on some utopian ideal that does not seem to exist in real life? Why excuse his actions or tolerate his existence, when if he gets free or escaped, he could he'd kill me or anyone else?? People without a conscience don't get rehabbed or cured.They don't care to change. You know the first step to changing yourself is admitting something is wrong with the way you do stuff or perceive. Psychopaths think they are perfect entitled and above us and the law.

Death is ONE THING that effectively overrides the psychopaths choice to kill and rape . Jail is temporary at best..and I am fine with killing off all psychopaths, because psychopaths see nothing wrong with themselves killing us.Until they get a conscience somehow I don't care if they are killed.They are not to be trusted.

Now there is another aspect to my position ,I also know the STATE is unfair about whom gets the death penalty, alot of black guys are put on death row for crimes that get white guys lesser sentences. The state is corrupt. I don't trust the state to be fair or just at all.I am against the death penalty not because it kills asshole psychopaths, but because I know the state is corrupt and justice is warped by bigots and other bullshit. Jail Is now a private and very profitable industry and a cheap labor pool for corporate criminals too.So I know that plays a part in justice being heavy handed and unfair too.

If the state was not so fucked up,I may feel differently.

As for the lives of psychopaths.. the day they rape or kill they killed themselves as far as I am concerned.

[wuushew]

17. Do you believe that the classification of psychopath is binary?

or does it lie on a sliding scale of criminal psychology?

Logically you could also apply the idea to non-psychotics because we always carry the risk that incarceration will fail to rehabilitate and lead to murder and rape on the outside.

I guess in my engineered idealized society the utility a criminal derives from existing must be weighed against the probability of escape from a prison times the utility lost from victims losing their lives. I believe society is best served with humane but life-long sentences for appropriately violent crimes.

[undergroundpanther]

24. Yes and no

If a person has that type of personality and they are not helped as a young child, they are a lost cause.Psychopaths know right from wrong and don't care..after a certain age it becomes who they are,and at that point they do not rehab.They don't change. They might as well be dead.

Now I know there are people who may appear psychopathic with thick defenses who under tremendous pressures and bad circumstances that do bad shit. But they care about someone, something.. they DO know right from wrong and do not want to do wrong really because deep down they care. These people can be helped.

I am pretty binary about it, but not totally.I base my judgments on observing people over time in various situations. If you are observant psychopaths will begin to stand out like sore thumbs from people without that kind of destructive personality.Psychopaths have a signature in how they are once you learn it it's glaring.But you won't see it if you blind yourself with utopian or over cynical notions about human "nature" and play make believe about it and give pity too much weight.
Just because I couldn't just kill someone for thrills does not mean someone else cannot derive pleasure from such stuff and that is TOTALLY alien to me and to a big chunk of the rest of humanity too.It does not mean anything other than what it is some personalities are toxic to life peace and everything that makes humanity able to function relatively peacefully among each other as a social creatures.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. This one at a time thing is incredibly inefficient

Unless you want a Judge Dredd world. Do you?

[ConsAreLiars]

5. It is not a deterrent. It is a pathology.

States with the highest rates of moral sickness (aka the "red states") have the highest rates of both murders and executions.

[undergroundpanther]

12. Maryland, baltimore is damn high in murder rates.

kindness to psychopaths isn't a deterrent any more than jail or torture.
Death DOES stop a psychopath one at a time, Death is effective when no other option works.

[ConsAreLiars]

14. More murder as a solution?

Locking up is pretty effective at keeping your psychopaths off the street. Murdering innocents, as you advocate with your endorsement of the death penalty (see http://www.innocenceproject.org/ ) seems like a bad idea. You may disagree.

[undergroundpanther]

22. I wish there was a better way to selectively murder

The bullies the psychopaths, the toxic personalties that endanger our lives.Murder the killers. Eventually we will run out of killers and that personality type will be extinct in the human species.And murder might not be such a common tragedy.

Some of the peaceful more Egalitarian tribes would kill rapists and sociopaths as a culture they didn't tolerate rapists,they couldn't.
And that is maybe WHY they had egalitarian peaceful tribes.

Read this about what happened when the ruthless bullies died off in a baboon troop..thier culture changed,and has stayed peaceful ever since the alpha bully assholes were dead.
http://www.animalbehavior.org/ABSNews/1081879873/index_html

I have seen this type of thing also play out in groups of rats and ducks,When the bullies die ,the others who were bullied are relieved and those with social empathy left alive can create a peaceful non dominance based culture that the bullies would not tolerate.

If we want peace and equality and a culture that cares we need to take care of those types of personalities, who cannot be cured yet if can get away with it still cause strife,who will not permit us to create it,permanently.

All it takes is one bully asshole to terrorize an entire schoolyard.
Better one dead asshole than 20 traumatized innocent kids reliving the abuse this asshole gave them, because trauma scars you even 20 years later.

[alittlelark]

6. Your 3rd reason is the best one IMHO

If some sicko had killed someone I loved I would want him to spend the rest of his days in a tiny cell w/ a video (of my families choosing) playing in a loop...volume always on. I would want to see to it that the rest of his days were spent in atonement/misery.

Death is the easy way out.

[951-Riverside]

7. Jails and Prisons do not prevent or deter crime either n/t

[undergroundpanther]

9. Yep because non self defense violence is ALWAYS a choice

A freely chosen deliberate choice to do a violent act out of domination or power is the choice of a person who has no conscience, no empathy and does not want to police himself. A person like that is incompatible with peace, cooperation,freedom, democracy and whatever else makes humans able to exist around each other in relative safety... So to stop this degenerate,who could care less what we think ,others have to restrain him and sometimes despite jail a criminal still chooses to become a danger to others because he likes it..So death is the only way to remove the threat such a person who makes a choice repeatedly to kill or rape poses.
Never pity the person who chooses to rape and kill and does it because they think they can get away with it. Some people are different on the soul level.
They don't have one.

All violence that is not of Non self or other in danger,defense motivated, variety is a Deliberate, planned choice .

[Mythsaje]

8. I've got MAJOR issues with the death penalty

primarily for the reasons you outline.

Innocent people have been killed in our name.

Imprisonment is a worse punishment than an escape clause.

Killers don't think about getting caught. They think about how they might get away with it. Some of them might actually get away with it for years (see Gary Ridgeway for an example)...but the possibility getting caught does NOT stop them. For the psychos, it's part of the thrill.

[madmusic]

10. Isn't that a given by now?

Before it was for eye for an eye justice, now it's for "closure." Same bullshit, different day.

[undergroundpanther]

11. umm

for me I don't trust psychopaths , I am not one to pollyanna like pretend the psychopaths regardless of jail time won't stop their thrill seeking crap and choose to hurt me because they think they will get away with it again.Why are recidivism rates so high? Jail isn't a deterrent.
However death is one psychopath a a time.
Fuck the "free will"of psychopaths and their lives..they use it to ruin others lives until someone STOPS them.
Death is more merciful than being in a cell for decades.
I spent 18 months in a seclusion cell, not for committing a crime, and to this day I can't stand white walls and silence for all that long.
Death is perferable to torture.PSTD is worse than death.Thyat's why suicide has appeal to me as an option sometimes.

But I know the state is unfair unjust and it still sends innocents to death row ..I oppose the DP because I don't trust the state, the state is criminal.Until the criminals and bigots are out of power I think the death penalty is dangerous.

[madmusic]

13. How high are the recidvism rates?

And for what crimes are you speaking?

No, I don't trust the state either, not to sentence fairly and not to offer any means of wanting to rehabilitate and reintegrate back into society. Is it any wonder recidivism rates aren't low? Though they may not be as high as you think.

Psychopath is a common term bandied about for just about everything we hate. It's like the left and the right calling each other Nazis or fascists. It carries an emotional punch and conjures pictures we've seen of some really bad guys on the news, but those images are the extreme, like Hitler was the extreme. Truth be told, few on the left or the right are actually like Hitler, just as few who commit crimes are actually psychopaths. Murderers in fact have the lowest recidivism rate. Most murders are crimes of passions committed in a moment of rage, and most murderers actually regret their crimes. Those who go on psychopathic rampages are very rare.

My major objection to the death penalty is that it may actually increase the murder rate, but then the mandatory 25-to-life and 3-strikes laws are doing that too.

[undergroundpanther]

19. Actually psychopathy isn't rare

Some psychopaths don't kill because that is not what they "get off" on. Some,they exist to just torment people verbally.Some feel fine simply beating the hell out of their spouses, causing a ruckus or conning people.They can be successful in business because they are shallow glib and charming. The main characteristic that makes them a problem is, they have no concern for howe their actions cause others trouble, a profound lack of empathy, they don't feel shame, think nothing is wrong with themselves, and they have no conscience.

More recent statistics put this particular vile constellation of personality types as 1 in 4.

[dapper]

15. I'm for the death penalty.

My slant on the death penalty is...
Why should my tax dollar be used to keep someone alive who uses killing as a sport. (ie. a Serial Killer) or for building new jails as we are trying to save everyones souls? (Rehabilitation)

Obviously there are flaws in the system if innocient people are being killed. Perhaps a push to get the law adjusted to have the death penalty used against only the worst cases.

Of course the last time this was posted, I was slammed, so slam on.

Dap

[wuushew]

18. Except that it is cheaper to imprision an inmate than kill him

under the conditions by which the SCOTUS currently allow it.

[jarab]

16. Thanks for repeating the points ...

There is a revenge factor - eye for an eye - inherent in the DP. Some think it provides the ultimate "closure" for victims' families.
There is something wrong with a "Christian" nation desirous of killing the bad elements. Personally, I "think" if I were in that position, I'd rather be snuffed out than have a life term.
I basically agree with the points made in the OP.
...O...

[ck4829]

20. Here's a question for people who believe that

If the Death Penalty is a deterrent, than why are people still committing murder?

[MazeRat7]

21. deleted....

Sorry... meant to post in the main thread....

[MazeRat7]

23. I'm going to have to side with Thurgood Marshall once again on this...

Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death penalty was constitutional in some circumstances. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.

He stated numerous times in his writings that "the death penalty was/is never a deterrent since those accused of the crime never believed they would be caught or did not care." (my paraphrase of his statements)


MZr7