Capital Punishment, what are your views on it?

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Sand
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03 Jan 2010, 11:14 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Sand wrote:

Basically these people have thrown away their basic decent humanity and deserve little sympathy. Their death contributes little to humanity. This could could contribute much, much more. The only major glitch in the logic is the frightfully corrupt and distorted legal procedures now in operation which surely has convicted innocent people because the district attorneys are not motivated by truth but by victories in conviction. Legal corruption and incompetence destroys the rationality of the whole concept.

I guess I'd have to figure out where they'd get such measures of neurological health and competence back that their slave labor would contribute staggering amounts to the world. Its not to say it couldn't happen, its just that in bending and breaking a person you are creating a lot of problems that when you try to clean it up its like trying to fix damaged fiberglass.

I didn't say anything about bending or breaking. I merely suggested these convicted people who cannot restrain themselves from committing atrocities should be usable in research projects to discover how and why they function as they do and what can be devised to modify their behavior towards becoming more normal individuals.

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03 Jan 2010, 8:06 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

SporadSpontan wrote:

The argument I'm making is not that keeping them alive does no more harm than the tax dollars. It's much much more than that. What it does for us as a society - to keep people like this around - is it makes us a humane society. So for no other reason than that it is worth it. And IMO that is a very very great reason.

While I'm touched by your optimism on the value of human life and being a humane society, my opinion on keeping these people alive is that it makes us weak; ie. we can send our military service members into places when it comes to our country's defense, somehow life of an enemy combatant is worth less in that position (whether they're on one hand fighting for a cause or on the other hand - conscribed), and something far more reprehensible we feel the need to keep alive because we need to show how merciful we are; it seems like it would be a sign of a markedly confused society.

haha! And you don't think it's not already a markedly confused society?! !
Re: the weakness - it is a weakness to resort to killing someone IMO.
Re: war - generally I am opposed to war obviously - but I will say that if defending your country becomes a necessary requirement, when your back is forced against the wall so to speak, then this cannot in any way be compared to killing a person as a means of justice and vengeance. In the latter situation your 'back is not being forced against a wall' - there are other options available. So there is really no comparison.
Re: showing mercy - What I'm suggesting is not for show. It's about BEING merciful. I'm not saying that many of these criminals will necessarily be able to change their ways. But it is the duty of rational people to use rational and fair methods of punishment. Killing is not rational or fair and it's a punishable crime!! So why the HECK is it also a punishMENT?! (Sorry - more than a bit passionate about this!)

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Magnus
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03 Jan 2010, 8:46 pm

Sand wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Sand wrote:

I agree with Sand. Criminals could get a chance to contribute something back to society, learn about their afflictions, hopefully become reformed.

Clockwork Orange comes to mind...[i][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8vq9RwYJKM&feature=related[/youtube]

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2010, 9:17 pm

SporadSpontan wrote:

Re: showing mercy - What I'm suggesting is not for show. It's about BEING merciful. I'm not saying that many of these criminals will necessarily be able to change their ways. But it is the duty of rational people to use rational and fair methods of punishment. Killing is not rational or fair and it's a punishable crime!! So why the HECK is it also a punishMENT?! (Sorry - more than a bit passionate about this!)

To your credit your asking questions that experts likely write novels on theorizing why things are what they are, why human psychology needs to see justice in that form. We are reaching a very strange age now where all sense of good and evil is being attacked and I get the sense also that when such mercy is shown to those who showed their victim(s) no mercy - it still flows back in a sense as another assault to the victim and even to those who were completely unrelated but just as easily could have been the victim. You have to remember that as much as we try to call ourselves 'human', we still haven't even figured out what that means - likely we'll be spending the next few millennium trying to gain insight into what it is we are and what it is we need to do with our future, this is just one of many debates that I think will be around concerning the value of live and public welfare. What I think we'll realize is that while we aren't fully as base as we think we are, we can't morally sanitize ourselves to oblivion either - it won't work with our wiring and or our neural capacities as we are ultimately curtailed and defined by the limits of the genetic frames were built on.

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03 Jan 2010, 9:35 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

SporadSpontan wrote:

At this point I don't care about the feelings of the victim/victim's family. That's their problem to deal with their pain/anger/whatever. But it's the problem of everyone else, particularly those in charge of punishing - to keep a cool head and not get swept up in the emotion of the victim. Otherwise we may as well be allowing the victims to choose their form of vengeance. Rationally speaking (which is how we're supposed to be speaking!) is that by murdering someone because they murdered someone else - we are making ourselves just as bad as they are. It's exactly the same thing. Can you see how irrational that form of punishment is? I don't need to wait for the next few millenium to work this out because I KNOW right now! No matter how sick and cruel the person is found to be - murder is simply not justified.

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2010, 10:00 pm

And that is your conclusion, but you will find just as many people out there who will look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions on the matter for reasons that are as justifiable in debate but reasons that are not part of or connected within your own emotional/logical framework the same way. In my own case I'd still have to stand by my concern for society without this being done more is greater than with it being done, and in that schema the perps and victims are only a small piece of the larger puzzle.

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03 Jan 2010, 10:11 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

That's right - the victims' concerns are a small piece of the puzzle.
The large puzzle goes like this: Is killing found to be immoral? Yes.
So is it justified to use an immoral action to punish an immoral citizen? For some people the answer is yes.
But what they aren't seeing is that they themselves BECOME the immoral citizens when they engage in (or support) the immoral action.

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03 Jan 2010, 10:27 pm

Magnus wrote:

Sand wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Sand wrote:

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2010, 10:29 pm

SporadSpontan wrote:

That's right - the victims' concerns are a small piece of the puzzle.
The large puzzle goes like this: Is killing found to be immoral? Yes.

I think you misread that - IMO the life of the victim and the killer - both, are a small piece in the broader fabric of society, psychological interactions, and its a world where everything has secondary and tertiary consequences. Killing the perpetrator has consequences, not killing the perpetrator also has consequences.

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03 Jan 2010, 10:45 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

SporadSpontan wrote:

That's right - the victims' concerns are a small piece of the puzzle.
The large puzzle goes like this: Is killing found to be immoral? Yes.

Oh, sorry about that! And yes, I agree with what you just wrote. (Probably for the first time in this whole thread!!) It's not so much about the victim or the perpetrator (I thought 'perp' was some sort of spelling error!) - but more about morals/ethics.
By not killing the perpetrator it has the consequence of maintaining moral consistency in a society. So it's then a question of how important is it for a society to have consistent, reliable moral standards? If killing is wrong, should it be tolerated in any form including as a means of punishment?

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Last edited by SporadSpontan on 03 Jan 2010, 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Orwell
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03 Jan 2010, 10:46 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

my opinion on keeping these people alive is that it makes us weak; ie. we can send our military service members into places when it comes to our country's defense, somehow life of an enemy combatant is worth less in that position (whether they're on one hand fighting for a cause or on the other hand - conscribed), and something far more reprehensible we feel the need to keep alive because we need to show how merciful we are; it seems like it would be a sign of a markedly confused society.

Don't be silly, tech—there is virtually no need in modern times to make use of our military. In any case, defending the country against enemy combatants is very different from the state killing a man in cold blood. When someone is already in custody, they are no threat to anyone. Killing them is an abuse of the state's power over them.

Look at it with this hypothetical: an armed robber enters your home. You have a gun, you shoot to defend yourself and he dies from the bullet wound. I see no problem with this; you were defending yourself in immediately threatening circumstances. But if you are robbed at gunpoint and you later track down the culprit and kill him in his sleep, you are clearly in the wrong.

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2010, 11:02 pm

Orwell wrote:

Admittedly military action is similar to what you mentioned above with the robber entering your home or, in the situation I was kicking around earlier, the specific police having a confrontation with a serial killer to where their lives are put in danger and defense is necessary. In both cases you still have a similar end result if its a person who's really rendered crimes against humanity - whether its a serial killer of normal stature or whether its a world famous international butcherer. I think what I can't get my head around, still, is what greater good is served by changing the status quo.

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03 Jan 2010, 11:04 pm

Orwell wrote:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Nice hypothetical Orwell. It's just that last phrase about 'clearly (being) in the wrong' that sadly and frustratingly doesn't seem to be that clear to many people!

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03 Jan 2010, 11:10 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

Orwell wrote:

The greater good served would be that the status quo is currently unjustified and by changing it we could make it more justified. I'm not necessarily saying that improvements are always brought about by change. But we should always question our parents' way of doing things.

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2010, 11:13 pm

SporadSpontan wrote:

By not killing the perpetrator it has the consequence of maintaining moral consistency in a society. So it's then a question of how important is it for a society to have consistent, reliable moral standards?

I meant consequence in the way its commonly used - negative. If you're really saying you can't think of *any* then its very likely that you haven't thought this through as well as you think you have.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 03 Jan 2010, 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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03 Jan 2010, 11:15 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

In both cases you still have a similar end result if its a person who's really rendered crimes against humanity

Same end result, but a very different context, and that's why killing is justified in one situation but not in another. Defending against an immediate threat is very different from taking someone who is no longer a threat and killing him in cold blood. And that's what capital punishment is—someone has already been captured, imprisoned, and rendered harmless to society. To kill them serves no purpose. Killing someone who is an immediate threat (eg, someone coming at you with a gun) is perhaps the only means of defending yourself and others.

Quote:

what greater good is served by changing the status quo.

The current system is a relic from more primitive times. It's time we outgrew such barbaric practices and modes of thought.

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