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The lack of an "undo" button is not exclusive to the death penalty, many serious forms of punishment are irreversible. Why, in your view, is it much worse for

The lack of an "undo" button is not exclusive to the death penalty, many serious forms of punishment are irreversible. Why, in your view, is it much worse for the state to jail an innocent person for a long time (say, their entire adult life) instead of killing them?

Analemma_ 10y ago
Because improperly jailed people who are later freed are at least paid some compensation, and at least they can try to live a normal life afterward. It's not great, nor nearly enough, but it's something. None of this is possible with people who are improperly executed. Don't succumb to the Nirvana fallacy here - for sure, the American justice system has many more serious flaws than just the death penalty, and those won't be fixed right away. But this is a step in the right direction and worth taking even if many other problems still remain.
jernfrost 10y ago
That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. But I think it is a fair point, which is why I am also against harsh prison conditions. I think prison should mainly be about rehabilitation and shielding society from the danger of the person. If prison mainly means losing freedom, you aren't necessarily ruined mentally when you get out.
- Taek 10y ago
  That depends. If you spend long enough isolated from society you won't be able to function in it anymore. People coming out of jail after 10 years of imprisonment are used to the original iphone as the only smartphone. They don't know about Uber, Venmo, Bitcoin, Amazon and Google have both changed dramatically. Now you need an EZPass for most roads, healthcare laws are different, they missed the whole Snowden ordeal. Weed is borderline legal, gay marriage is legal, etc etc. Things have changed a lot in the past 10 years. If you weren't allowed to keep up with it, you probably don't know how to navigate society anymore.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    They aren't buried under rocks or in darkened caves. Their failure to adapt is our failure as a society to prepare them. By imprisoning them we become their guardians and stewards, we are responsible.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    None of the things you mention would stop someone from re-entering society, in quite a few countries there are rehabilitation programmes in the jails with gradual re-introduction to 'normal' life after longer jail sentences. Yes, this costs money but it helps to reduce recidivism and in general is a good thing to do.
  - lawpoop 10y ago
    Wow, this seems extremely naive. (Honestly I'm feeling like I got trolled.) You don't know of anybody who has never been imprisoned who is managing to live their life without interacting with any of the things you've mentioned? If not, I would recommend enlarging your circle of contact.
    - Taek 10y ago
      When you come back to society and try to make friends, everyone is going to be utilizing technology to shape their interactions. Uber makes new types of socializing reasonable. (bars and parties farther away). Phones change how people schedule events. Chips in credit cards change how you spend your money. This isn't trolling. If you don't know how to use modern tech, it's going to be harder to socialize, especially if you are in a city (as they tend to adopt tech faster). If even a person has successfully rejected some tech (maybe Facebook, maybe smartphones), it's doubtful that they've rejected all tech and if they have they've developed skills for living without it among people who otherwise expect them to have it. I might be overstating this on a timeline of one decade, but it gets much worse on a timeline of 20 years. 20 years means you were likely using Windows 95. Texting wasn't a thing. Phones didn't have "apps". Banks didn't have websites. The average person's job had a lot less tech in it. Can you survive? Sure, but your options are a lot more limited compared to someone who knows how to use the tech of the 21st century.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  >That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. How do you compensate someone for being imprisoned (and likely raped) from the age of 28 to 45? In many cases, the death penalty is more humane.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Failure of the prison system to protect its inmates should not become a factor in deciding whether or not it is more 'humane' to kill them outright. The you might as well kill all prisoners because it is more humane, after all where would you draw the line, 5 years, 10 years, 15 or 20, it's all time that has passed. Compensation should be of such a magnitude that it incentivizes society to make sure it happens as little as possible.
  - lawpoop 10y ago
    If that is really true, why do inmates try to get out, instead of killing themselves? Why not just kill themselves after release, since having lived through that is so much worse than death?
  - maerF0x0 10y ago
    As well, its fairly clear that the compensation offered is better than nothing. Sure, it may not be a 1:1 ratio of bad to good (rape to cash) but its clearly a step in the right direction to offer someone a "plus" in recompense for the negatives wrongly imposed.
  - labster 10y ago
    If rape is likely in prison, as you suggest, how is our current prison system not a form of torture?
jacquesm 10y ago
Even a single minute of my time wasted can not be un-done. So if you accept the arrow of time points forward and that no single action can ever be truly un-done there are some actions that are worse than others. And so it would be good to aim for the least harm done.
- jsjohns2 10y ago
  Sure, some actions are more harmful than others. Killing a person is worse than imprisoning them indefinitely. But the degree to which it is worse (and whether it is enough to ban the death penalty) seems quite subjective. Seems to me that you could use an identical line of reasoning to conclude that prison sentences longer than N years should be banned. Is it a matter of degree? Or is there something fundamentally different about the death penalty that warrants a ban?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Death is final, everything else is on a gradient, death is an absolute. So yes, it's fundamentally different. That's why we hold parties on New Years Eve to mark the passing of time but we also hold funeral wakes when someone dies.
lawpoop 10y ago
When someone is wrongly jailed, they often have a lawyer working on their case to exonerate them. After someone has been executed, nobody pursues the case anymore.
ivm 10y ago
You're seriously comparing an unpleasant prison life where you still can think, read, communicate with being killed?

Analemma_ 10y ago

Because improperly jailed people who are later freed are at least paid some compensation, and at least they can try to live a normal life afterward. It's not great, nor nearly enough, but it's something. None of this is possible with people who are improperly executed. Don't succumb to the Nirvana fallacy here - for sure, the American justice system has many more serious flaws than just the death penalty, and those won't be fixed right away. But this is a step in the right direction and worth taking even if many other problems still remain.

jernfrost 10y ago

That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. But I think it is a fair point, which is why I am also against harsh prison conditions. I think prison should mainly be about rehabilitation and shielding society from the danger of the person. If prison mainly means losing freedom, you aren't necessarily ruined mentally when you get out.

Taek 10y ago
That depends. If you spend long enough isolated from society you won't be able to function in it anymore. People coming out of jail after 10 years of imprisonment are used to the original iphone as the only smartphone. They don't know about Uber, Venmo, Bitcoin, Amazon and Google have both changed dramatically. Now you need an EZPass for most roads, healthcare laws are different, they missed the whole Snowden ordeal. Weed is borderline legal, gay marriage is legal, etc etc. Things have changed a lot in the past 10 years. If you weren't allowed to keep up with it, you probably don't know how to navigate society anymore.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  They aren't buried under rocks or in darkened caves. Their failure to adapt is our failure as a society to prepare them. By imprisoning them we become their guardians and stewards, we are responsible.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  None of the things you mention would stop someone from re-entering society, in quite a few countries there are rehabilitation programmes in the jails with gradual re-introduction to 'normal' life after longer jail sentences. Yes, this costs money but it helps to reduce recidivism and in general is a good thing to do.
- lawpoop 10y ago
  Wow, this seems extremely naive. (Honestly I'm feeling like I got trolled.) You don't know of anybody who has never been imprisoned who is managing to live their life without interacting with any of the things you've mentioned? If not, I would recommend enlarging your circle of contact.
  - Taek 10y ago
    When you come back to society and try to make friends, everyone is going to be utilizing technology to shape their interactions. Uber makes new types of socializing reasonable. (bars and parties farther away). Phones change how people schedule events. Chips in credit cards change how you spend your money. This isn't trolling. If you don't know how to use modern tech, it's going to be harder to socialize, especially if you are in a city (as they tend to adopt tech faster). If even a person has successfully rejected some tech (maybe Facebook, maybe smartphones), it's doubtful that they've rejected all tech and if they have they've developed skills for living without it among people who otherwise expect them to have it. I might be overstating this on a timeline of one decade, but it gets much worse on a timeline of 20 years. 20 years means you were likely using Windows 95. Texting wasn't a thing. Phones didn't have "apps". Banks didn't have websites. The average person's job had a lot less tech in it. Can you survive? Sure, but your options are a lot more limited compared to someone who knows how to use the tech of the 21st century.
xiaoma 10y ago
>That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. How do you compensate someone for being imprisoned (and likely raped) from the age of 28 to 45? In many cases, the death penalty is more humane.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Failure of the prison system to protect its inmates should not become a factor in deciding whether or not it is more 'humane' to kill them outright. The you might as well kill all prisoners because it is more humane, after all where would you draw the line, 5 years, 10 years, 15 or 20, it's all time that has passed. Compensation should be of such a magnitude that it incentivizes society to make sure it happens as little as possible.
- lawpoop 10y ago
  If that is really true, why do inmates try to get out, instead of killing themselves? Why not just kill themselves after release, since having lived through that is so much worse than death?
- maerF0x0 10y ago
  As well, its fairly clear that the compensation offered is better than nothing. Sure, it may not be a 1:1 ratio of bad to good (rape to cash) but its clearly a step in the right direction to offer someone a "plus" in recompense for the negatives wrongly imposed.
- labster 10y ago
  If rape is likely in prison, as you suggest, how is our current prison system not a form of torture?

jacquesm 10y ago

Even a single minute of my time wasted can not be un-done. So if you accept the arrow of time points forward and that no single action can ever be truly un-done there are some actions that are worse than others. And so it would be good to aim for the least harm done.

jsjohns2 10y ago
Sure, some actions are more harmful than others. Killing a person is worse than imprisoning them indefinitely. But the degree to which it is worse (and whether it is enough to ban the death penalty) seems quite subjective. Seems to me that you could use an identical line of reasoning to conclude that prison sentences longer than N years should be banned. Is it a matter of degree? Or is there something fundamentally different about the death penalty that warrants a ban?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Death is final, everything else is on a gradient, death is an absolute. So yes, it's fundamentally different. That's why we hold parties on New Years Eve to mark the passing of time but we also hold funeral wakes when someone dies.

lawpoop 10y ago

When someone is wrongly jailed, they often have a lawyer working on their case to exonerate them. After someone has been executed, nobody pursues the case anymore.

ivm 10y ago

You're seriously comparing an unpleasant prison life where you still can think, read, communicate with being killed?