Executions

[Dan]

For all those in favour of capital punishment here's today's scene...

"It's 4AM, and you're the victim of a home invasion. They've bound you, your spouse and your children. They're taking all of your belongings, and they assault your spouse. They make you watch. They also make you watch when they assault your daughter. Then they systematically shoot each one of you. Everyone dies except you, you actually survive.

You recover in the hospital, the doctors question if you'll walk again. The police do their best and eventually find the suspects. They're all teenagers. Because of your unshakable faith in progressive causes, you plead that they not be tried as adults. You also petition the court to offer them *restorative justice* or whatever new liberal hotness there is to excuse violent crime. You reason that they had a hard knock life, that "hurt people hurt."

You're successful in getting their prison sentences reduced. You think to yourself that, in the end, the deaths of your family members and your long term disability will matter more because you showed your attackers the ultimate compassion.

Then you learn the ringleader stabbed and killed another inmate."

We can endlessly engage in these little fictitious narratives.

There's been a lot of discussion here about how to reform violent criminals, or how the death penalty is or is not a deterrent. My interest in the death penalty is not at all as a deterrent. I don't care if it does or does not work for that purpose. There's significant evidence that it has no influence on violent crime. I myself have argued that previously.

I want retaliation. I want to know that the person who irreversibly harmed my family, who can never repay me, is put to death.

 

[Puspawarna]

I want retaliation. I want to know that the person who irreversibly harmed my family, who can never repay me, is put to death.

I suppose that if you believe in some sort of after life where they will continue to be punished, and you feel vindictive (which would be utterly understandable in a lot of cases of violent crime), your point of view makes sense.

I don't believe in an afterlife, however, and certainly not in the "burn in hell for eternity" variety. So from my standpoint, life in prison is quite possibly a much more horrible punishment than the death penalty.

I would also argue for keeping perpetrators alive due to the possibility of finding out more about what makes them tick (so we can prevent future evildoers from developing) and, though I concede it is unlikely, rehabilitation.

 

[Dan]

I suppose that if you believe in some sort of after life where they will continue to be punished, and you feel vindictive (which would be utterly understandable in a lot of cases of violent crime), your point of view makes sense.

I don't believe in an afterlife, however, and certainly not in the "burn in hell for eternity" variety. So from my standpoint, life in prison is quite possibly a much more horrible punishment than the death penalty.

I would also argue for keeping perpetrators alive due to the possibility of finding out more about what makes them tick (so we can prevent future evildoers from developing) and, though I concede it is unlikely, rehabilitation.

My problem with life in prison is that it is seen as a means to prevent them from recidivism. However, they remain a threat to other inmates and prison workers. We've simply transferred them into a smaller pond, but they're still likely to offend. It's out of sight, out of mind for the general public.

There's no perfect answer to this problem. There's certainly a compelling argument that giving any state the right to kill its own people can have disastrous consequences. There's similarly an argument that not even one innocent life is worth a thousand just executions.

But I don't think anyone should discount the human desire for retaliation. I don't want to empathize with my attackers, I don't want them rehabilitated, I don't want to *understand* them.

I just want them dead.

 

[harryopal1]

My problem with life in prison is that it is seen as a means to prevent them from recidivism. However, they remain a threat to other inmates and prison workers. We've simply transferred them into a smaller pond, but they're still likely to offend. It's out of sight, out of mind for the general public.

There's no perfect answer to this problem. There's certainly a compelling argument that giving any state the right to kill its own people can have disastrous consequences. There's similarly an argument that not even one innocent life is worth a thousand just executions.

But I don't think anyone should discount the human desire for retaliation. I don't want to empathize with my attackers, I don't want them rehabilitated, I don't want to *understand* them.

I just want them dead.

Dan, there is no denying that "an eye for an eye" has always been a very powerful element in human response to crime. We are agreed there is no perfect answer but that doesn't mean we should not strive towards more humanity in our penal systems. The reality is of course that many countries with struggling economies haven't the means of providing programs that may bring about rehabilitation. And even in relatively wealthy countries there is a reluctance to commit more funds to institutions which often pay lip service to rehabilitation but lack adequate funding to have better results.

"An eye for an eye" philosophy seems to be at the heart of Palestinian Israeli never ending hostilities. Setting aside, for the moment, capital punishment most criminal inmates will re-emerge into societies. Many criminals feel aggrieved and wronged by their punishments. It seems preferable to work towards making them functional human beings rather than inflicting more pain and suffering and have them re-emerge to seek revenge.
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The last state execution in Australia took place 46 years ago and since then another 120 countries have decided against capital punishment.

 

[jstar]

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The killer of the (rather famous but controversial) Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is back on the streets after doing time.

I think most Dutch feel he was far too short in prison, and many would also agree to reinstate the death penalty and have him executed. Especially since now he still does not show any remorse and keeps on challenging (via court) the existing restrictions.

Having said that, he now wants to emigrate since he can't find a job and the whole society rejects him. That must be a heavy punishment in itself.

Not too long before the pedophile and murderer Marc Dutroux (Belgium) will also get out. That might be triggering a revolution....in Western Europe there is a strong felling about the legal system and judges being too soft.
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[Dan]

Many criminals feel aggrieved and wronged by their punishments. It seems preferable to work towards making them functional human beings rather than inflicting more pain and suffering and have them re-emerge to seek revenge.

You know what they say about capital punishment; it has a zero percent recidivism rate.

My country, the United States, is very dangerous. That's a byproduct of our level of diversity, our past racial hierarchy and discrimination. Correcting economic, educational and opportunity imbalances is an important part of reducing crime, but it's not everything. I will controversially offer another reason why criminality is so high in the United States.

We're very free.

When your society is very free, when it has a lot of competing and sometimes acrimonious identities. It breeds a lot of conflict. We don't have a cohesive identity, as seen in societies like South Korea or Japan, and there's long-term deleterious consequences for that. There's no consensus on norms, on values, on expectations.

I think you can do much to reform the prison system, to end "for profit" prisons, to quit abusing prisoners as a labor pool, to stop imprisoning people for minor drug offenses. But I don't think any of this will fix the systemic problems with cohesion and acknowledgement of a social contract. It's not quite a critique of "moral decay," but it's certainly a call for a society to have some kind of social glue. We could be a society of unrepentant swingers for all I care, there would just need to be something that declares a common identity.

When I confront fellow Americans about our problem with violence, I tend to reference Aceh. The Acehnese have it significantly worse in every metric we Americans attribute to higher crime. There's a lack of education, a lack of opportunity, crushing poverty the likes of which even poor Americans don't experience, fully automatic weapons and the training to use it, disparity of wealth, separatist violence and so on...

And yet they experience fewer violent crimes than their Americans peers. I attribute that to a cohesive identity. If a plan to reform prisons or criminals does not include inculcating a common identity then I believe it will be doomed to fail. I don't know if that's something a society can "teach" or just create out of thin air.

 

[harryopal1]

Dan,

My country, the United States, is very dangerous. That's a byproduct of our level of diversity, our past racial hierarchy and discrimination. Correcting economic, educational and opportunity imbalances is an important part of reducing crime, but it's not everything. I will controversially offer another reason why criminality is so high in the United States.

We're very free.

When I confront fellow Americans about our problem with violence, I tend to reference Aceh. The Acehnese have it significantly worse in every metric we Americans attribute to higher crime. There's a lack of education, a lack of opportunity, crushing poverty the likes of which even poor Americans don't experience, fully automatic weapons and the training to use it, disparity of wealth, separatist violence and so on...

And yet they experience fewer violent crimes than their Americans peers. I attribute that to a cohesive identity. If a plan to reform prisons or criminals does not include inculcating a common identity then I believe it will be doomed to fail. I don't know if that's something a society can "teach" or just create out of thin air.

Dan, very interesting observations. I have spent a bit of time in the US and with a black American wife (Deceased, I am afraid) and stayed in the so called Ghetto at Youngstown. As with Australian Aboriginal people and many struggling communities, there are high crime rates and the likelihood that one in every three black Americans born today will spend time in prison. The Algerian writer, Franz Fanon observed that the most oppressed and powerless societies become very self destructive. I daresay that in the poorest white American communities one may find similar negative traits. That is all very grim, the other side of that coin is I found the black American community very welcoming with a high percentage of serious church goers and believers and, ironically, very patriotic.

Overall I felt that the US was a society at war with itself and the tensions fueled by the "American Dream" and the mythology that everyone can have it and everyone can become super rich an super successful. The impetus of the American economic dynamic seems to forever be squeezing the bottom sector of society to push the productive energy of the poorer classes towards increasing profits. The notion of the "trickle down" benefits of production are another kind of myth that confuses US society.

I have often thought that it is the dynamic of American music that provides a kind of glue that holds thing together however tenuously. Not sure where this leaves us with capital punishment and penal reform. Certainly the Acehnese have managed a lower crime rate but would probably prefer to live in that crazy, mixed up "free" America than live with the overall oppressiveness of Shariah law and all that goes with it.