Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Why?

To give those who are unemployed an opportunity to do some meaningful work and earn their benefits.

[Ramo]

Why not? Afterall, X is never again going to commit a crime.

So someone randomly decides to kill, and your conclusion is that he's a person we can trust to walk around freely, and that there's absolutely no need to deter such actions? Seriously, think about it for a minute. Your strawman is utterly absurd.

revenge is basically a emotionally charged name for punishment.

Punishment, to me, has other connotations (I don't think of it as having a specific justification). I prefer using the term revenge because that's specifically what I have a moral objection to.

[Ramo]

You call punishment that you approve of "punishment," and you call punishment that you don't approve of "revenge." It's a cliche..

No. I call revenge, revenge, and some kind of superposition of the other rationales for locking someone up not revenge. I'd say all of this can fit under the umbrella of "punishment"..

[Ramo]

I'm speaking wrt the criminal justice system in general not dp in specific.

You take offence to the idea of "punishment". Just watch the public reaction if punishment is not served.

edit: fix quote

You realize that I didn't call for an abolition of prisons, right? I don't know exactly what you mean by "punishment," but what I specifically took offense to was revenge.

[Ramo]

And regarding revenge and "emotional arguments," the belief that society is better when there's less (generalized) force is part of my moral basis. It can't be justified. My opposition to using the instruments of the state to hurt people solely to sate someone's bloodlust pretty much directly follows from the axioms of my morality. The only thing that I can do is point out that it is revenge, and appeal to people who think that acting out of revenge is a bad thing.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Ramo

Why not? Afterall, X is never again going to commit a crime.

So someone randomly decides to kill, and your conclusion is that he's a person we can trust to walk around freely, and that there's absolutely no need to deter such actions? Seriously, think about it for a minute. Your strawman is utterly absurd.

You're right. I didn't mention societal deterrence here (making an example of X to others in order to discourage otehrs from comitting the crime, and that X wouldn't commit the crime because others who did what he wanted to do have been made examples of). I did it for a reason- to illustrate the hollowness of a criminal justice system shorn of punishment. Removing societal deterrence from the situation and emphasizing the state's interaction with the convict in this situation underscores the problem with leaving out any sense of punishment for bad actions.

Now let's add societal deterrence to the mix. Take my hypo- assume that other non-criminals, upon seeing that X didn't enjoy killing and wishing to avoid the hassle of spending the day at the magistrate's office, decided that they didn't want to go through that and that, therefore, they wouldn't kill anyone. Thus, X has also provided societal deterrence. True, those who thought that the hassle is worth it in order to kill wouldn't be deterred, but those "non-deterrables" would likely have a higher societal danger rating and thus would receive a longer jail times based on their own virtues. X's day-long experience would have successfully deterred other potential future Xs. Thus, X's day long experience is a successful deterrent.

Except for punishment, every element of the criminal justice system is directed from the convict outward. Imprisoning a convict to protect society is designed to keep the convict from hurting society again. Imprisoning to deter is designed to use the convict to illustrate that people ought not do a certain activity. Imprisoning to rehabilitate is to create a convict who, once released, will not further harm society. The punishment aspect is the one thing actually meant to be direct from society to the convict. He is being punished because he did something wrong. The bigger the wrong, the more aggrieved society is and the harsher the punishment is.

Your idea- a criminal justice system without this sense of right and wrong- is antiseptic. There's no sense of society acting towards the convict; society is only acting through him for other purposes. In your conception, what the convict did really doesn't matter in and of itself. True, a convict who does something that is highly damaging to society would receive a harsher prison sentence in order to deter more people than would a convict who has done a less damaging action, but there seems to be a general indifference to what the convict did in and of itself.

In your world, the criminal justice system doesn't find "kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a class of pre-schoolers" any more "wrong" than "shoplifting an X-Box game from Target." The first is more damaging to society than the second, and thus receives a stiffer punishment than the second, but it's not treated as being substantively "worse." They're all just actions that we want less of because of their propensity to damage society.

I don't think that that's an accurate depiction of society or of human nature. Humans tend to find some actions "worse" than others, and they punish them accordingly. Those that they find "worse" tend to be more damaging, but the fact that they're more damaging to society isn't the sole reason why they're being punished more harshly. There's also a sense of moral outrage- a reaction of punishing the convict because they did something that was wrong. You don't recognize this as being a legitimate rationale for punishment. I do.

revenge is basically a emotionally charged name for punishment.

Punishment, to me, has other connotations (I don't think of it as having a specific justification). I prefer using the term revenge because that's specifically what I have a moral objection to.

To me, revenge connotes either "punishment" meted out by private parties outside of the lawful criminal justice system channels and/or disproportionate punishment motivated by spite.

Clan A killing the leader of Clan B because Clan B killed Clan A's leader would be revenge. The state executing someone for stealing an X-Box game would be revenge. The state executing John Wayne Gacy would be punishment.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Wycoff


To give those who are unemployed an opportunity to do some meaningful work and earn their benefits.

So I take it you think this should be done irrespective of anything to do with prisoners?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Kontiki
So I take it you think this should be done irrespective of anything to do with prisoners?

Yes.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Wycoff


To give those who are unemployed an opportunity to do some meaningful work and earn their benefits.

There would still be work that unemployed people would rather not like to make.
For example searching minefields for mines. German POWs had to do it short after WW2, there is no reason why prisoners who would else get DP wouldn´t be able to do it as well (and there are still enough minefileds in the world that have to be disarmed, I assume in Afghanistan and Iraq as well

[GePap]

I am with nietszche on this point: the more punishment a society inflicts, the more insecure and afraid it is.

[Ramo]

Thus, X's day long experience is a successful deterrent.

I really don't know why you persist in believing that you're making a serious argument (instead of one that's so ridiculous that it hardly merits a response). I repeat: there are two factors to keep in mind. First of all, random murder is pretty good evidence that this individual is likely to hurt people in the future (since we can't predict the future, that's probably the best thing to go on; note that if we could predict the future, criminal justice would be considerably different). Secondly, a lengthy prison sentence is probably the most efficient deterrent. Please don't make absurd arguments about red tape being almost equivalent, because you know that it isn't true.

In your world, the criminal justice system doesn't find "kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a class of pre-schoolers" any more "wrong" than "shoplifting an X-Box game from Target." The first is more damaging to society than the second, and thus receives a stiffer punishment than the second, but it's not treated as being substantively "worse." They're all just actions that we want less of because of their propensity to damage society.

I think government's job is to make society as a whole better, and not be some kind of metaphysical entity that makes "bad people" suffer and die. I would also add that exalting bloodlust is probably a bad thing for society in general (i.e. making people more violent).

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by GePap
I am with nietszche on this point: the more punishment a society inflicts, the more insecure and afraid it is.

Where does Nietzsche say that ?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


Where does Nietzsche say that ?

in Geneology of Morals

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by GePap
I am with nietszche on this point: the more punishment a society inflicts, the more insecure and afraid it is.

Nietzsche

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
I am with nietszche on this point: the more punishment a society inflicts, the more insecure and afraid it is.

Does that mean that if we just empty the prisons we'll be more secure and less afraid?