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Exactly. Capital punishment is a deterrent in the sense that once you execute the murderer, (s)he will never kill again. How's that for prevention?

AimHere 10y ago
Not great. Once you've done that, you're giving criminals an excellent motive for committing more murders in order to not get caught. There's an actual saying referencing it: 'Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb'. And executing people who commit crimes for political or religious motives leads to notions of martyrdom and often encourages people of a like-mind to join their struggles. Life imprisonment does much the same prevention job as the death penalty with much less baggage in terms of the ethics of killing people, or of the consequences of convicting innocent people, too.
coldtea 10y ago
Quite bad. For one, it gives people the message that murder, in some cases, is justified -- heck, even the state does it. Second, after someone has done enough violent things to warrant capital punishment, every subsequent thing they do is free of any other punishment. Killed a cop during some robbery? Might as well try to shoot the whole lot down and escape, since I'm already certain to be put to death if caught. Third, it also kills innocent people the same way actual murderers do. People that DNA or other evidence later exonerated.
- BobCat 10y ago
  > it gives people the message that murder, in some cases, is justified -- heck, even the state does it Murder is not killing. Murder is unlawfully killing.
vidarh 10y ago
The vast majority of murderers never kill again if released either. Murder is one of the crimes with the lowest chance of reoffending [1], as most murders are crimes of passion occurring under extreme circumstances that rarely reoccur. The cold, calculating murderer that is happy to plan another murder is an extreme outlier. As such capital punishment has exceedingly little effect on murder rates - most murderers don't believe they'll ever kill until they do, and are not in a state of mind to consider outcomes when they do. And once they have, the vast majority will never go on to kill again. [1] EDIT: As in, extremely few will commit another murder.

AimHere 10y ago

Not great. Once you've done that, you're giving criminals an excellent motive for committing more murders in order to not get caught. There's an actual saying referencing it: 'Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb'. And executing people who commit crimes for political or religious motives leads to notions of martyrdom and often encourages people of a like-mind to join their struggles. Life imprisonment does much the same prevention job as the death penalty with much less baggage in terms of the ethics of killing people, or of the consequences of convicting innocent people, too.

coldtea 10y ago

Quite bad. For one, it gives people the message that murder, in some cases, is justified -- heck, even the state does it. Second, after someone has done enough violent things to warrant capital punishment, every subsequent thing they do is free of any other punishment. Killed a cop during some robbery? Might as well try to shoot the whole lot down and escape, since I'm already certain to be put to death if caught. Third, it also kills innocent people the same way actual murderers do. People that DNA or other evidence later exonerated.

BobCat 10y ago
> it gives people the message that murder, in some cases, is justified -- heck, even the state does it Murder is not killing. Murder is unlawfully killing.

vidarh 10y ago

The vast majority of murderers never kill again if released either. Murder is one of the crimes with the lowest chance of reoffending [1], as most murders are crimes of passion occurring under extreme circumstances that rarely reoccur. The cold, calculating murderer that is happy to plan another murder is an extreme outlier. As such capital punishment has exceedingly little effect on murder rates - most murderers don't believe they'll ever kill until they do, and are not in a state of mind to consider outcomes when they do. And once they have, the vast majority will never go on to kill again. [1] EDIT: As in, extremely few will commit another murder.