Death Penalty

Ricky wrote:

I didn't see your sources for that claim. In any case it's a moot point because Britain doesn't utilize the dp. The US does have the dp so if one is going to claim that innocent US citizens were executed then we need credible sources to support that claim.

We don't know that. Like any hypothetical we cannot say what would have occured had another path been chosen i.e. what the crime rate would have been with lenient penalties. Have you any sources or even good arguments to support the idea that rehabilitation of criminals actually works?

 

I'll go dig.

But we did, up until the 1970s or 60s or thereabouts.

No, but then I never said that it did. I merely said that it was one option.

 

Ricky wrote:

Hence my comment about it being moot.

Criminology is not my gig and I don't have sources handy atm however AFAIK no rehab program ever tried has reduced recidivism significantly.

 

Been doing lots of web searches, and found lots & lots on the death penalty – mostly about America…
I have included interesting links (which prove nothing either way, but are probably of interest). There are reams of stats both proving the other side wrong!

Anyhow, I found this

“According to a statement by David Maclean, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 13 December 1993, only nine persons convicted of murder in Britain since 1969 and subsequently released had committed murder again by 1993. On the other hand the number of innocent people convicted in the seventies of the Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings alone was ten (Ewing and Gearty 1990:18-19 and 252). As regards miscarriages of justice, there are also the earlier cases of James Hanratty, executed in 1962 for a murder Peter Alphon later confessed to committing and framing Hanratty for, and Timothy Evans, hanged in 1950 for the murder of his wife and daughter three years before it was found out that his neighbour, John Christie, was a serial killer.”

On here: http://web1.pipemedia.net/~sar/bentley/cp-uk.html

I should point out that James Hanratty was recently re-tried and found ‘still guilty’ thanks to the new (since the 1960s) science of DNA sampling – see here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2093650.stm

For Timothey Evans, see http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/evans_christie.htm



Interesting links (not all anti!):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/787416.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/c ... 168496.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2204738.stm
http://web1.pipemedia.net/~sar/bentley/cp-uk.html

 

Nothing ever really has, short of killing every criminal or deporting them elsewhere for somebody else to worry about.

 

This is the kind of stuff I was talking about earlier that impresses those who don't spend much time thinking but let others do it for them.
They probably would never see the follow up regarding Hanratty's guilt nor understand that having a seriel killer for a neighbor is neither proof of his guilt nor proof of Evan's innocence.

 

I did come across some bizarre stuff when searching.

One thing was a case (in Britain) in which a man & a 16 year-old boy were caught robbing a shop (jewellery shop?) and the boy killed a copper in the struggle. The man was hanged for it, as the boy was underage.

How true this is, I cannot say.

 

So , grieg your willing to support the death penalty even if theres the chance some innocent people will be killed ?

 

csp wrote:

Code:

So , grieg your willing to support the death penalty even if theres the chance some innocent people will be killed ?

Of course. I thought I had made that clear. There is nothing in life that doesn't involve some degree of risk it's just that few people think about the risk/benefit analysis...they intuitively come to the same conclusion, they just don't think about it that way.
The risk that an innocent may be executed should be kept to the minimum that is possible given the constraints under which we must necessarily function.

Whoever came up with the harebrained idea that we can do nothing unless the risk = zero anyway? It's utopian and silly to think that such a world could exist where risks are eliminated.

 

Im simply disturbed by what you said , the human life seems to mean nothing to you ,its like losing a piece in a chess game.

 

csp wrote:

That's your interpretation, not mine. Being emotional rather than rational when making important judgements leads one to make poor decisions.

Have your fun and just think of me as the adult supervision I will stay in the background and make sure nobody gets hurt

 

In any society it is best to prevent as many mistakes and risks as possible if we value the lives of human beings around us. Obviously no human endeavour can be completely without risk, but in this case eliminating the risk is very simple. We can avoid innocent people being executed if we do not execute them in the first place, but rather lock them up for life.

The benefit of this is that the criminals suffer what is arguably a more terrible punishment than death, because they will simply be locked up until they die of natural causes; the only "risk" is that you (the taxpayer) have to pay for their prison time - which does, by the way, provide employment. I don't have any reservations against this, provided that prisons aren't like hotels and that imprisonment does indeed mean water, bread and boredom.

 

Roel wrote:

You seem to misunderstand the concept of risk/benefit analysis. It's obvious one can make the risk = zero merely by not doing x ( whatever is being analyzed).
The risk/benefit analysis is to compare the risks and benefits of doing x as a way of determining whether one should do x.

In this case the benefit is deterring future murders and the risk is that an innocent will be executed by mistake. If society determines that the perceived benefit outweighs the small risk then they can reasonably decide that it is worth doing.
You could also do a risk benefit analysis based on not doing x however the risk in this case then would be the converse i.e. that murderers will commit additional murders or that potential murderers will not be deterred. The benefit would be that there would be zero chance that an innocent would be executed by mistake.
In this case when one does the risk/benefit analysis of doing x one is also implicitly doing the converse analysis of not doing x.
It doesn't change the result.

That's exactly why we do the risk/benefit analysis. The question is will more human lives be needlessly lost (by murder) if we do not execute murderers?

 

And that remains unproven.

 

Ricky wrote:

Of course it does, as with any hypothetical. If it were proven there would be no need for risk/benefit analysis, the course to take would be perfectly clear.

 

Neither is proven to be the effect of not punishing criminals by death. Also, lifelong imprisonment will just as effectively prevent a murderer from committing the same crime twice.

 

Whats the point in killing an inmate ? , you kill him then what ?. These days even with DNA being used for forensic purposes, innocent people can still be killed , and 1 innocent person being killed is too high of a price , I think the Us should catch up with the rest of the industrialized world and banish the death penalty forever.

 

Roel wrote:

Lol..where is all this talk of proven coming from? When dealing with hypotheticals there is no proven.
It is certainly a risk of not executing murderers. If a murderer is alive there is some risk(whatever number one decides to ascribe) that he will murder again.

That is certainly an alternative to the dp. Unfortunately the same kinds of people who cannot bring themselves to take human life, no matter how justified, also release these prisoners on a regular basis. Parole boards, pardons, etc.

 

and back to risk assessment...

there are some interesting stats out there...

I found stats showing that the re-offense rate on murders (in Britain) is very low indeed.

I also found stats showing that murders increased after the DP was abolished.

 

Yes, but is this risk greater than with any other person? There is a risk that anyone may at some point commit a murder. Don't you think we should kill them all prematurely just to be sure?