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When I was young, I was certain the death penalty is obviously, trivially an incorrect thing to do. Regardless of what was done, there was no cause for society

When I was young, I was certain the death penalty is obviously, trivially an incorrect thing to do. Regardless of what was done, there was no cause for society to choose to take someone's life. Now that I'm older, I worry about the possibility that banning the death penalty is an implicit acceptance of the policy of locking people away for life. According to the article 4% of people who are sentenced to the death penalty on death row are innocent. He doesn't offer statistics for the number who actually receive the punishment however given that not all people on death row are executed, and the significant resources devoted to the appeal process, the percentage of innocents who are executed must be lower than the 4% who are sentenced. I must ask how many innocent people are sentenced to life in prison. I can't imagine anything worse than an innocent person sentenced to life in prison -- and eventually dying in prison. If we are to make decisions about punishment taking into account the possibility of an incorrect sentence, I believe we need to be more realistic with regard to the hierarchy of punishments that we are inflicting. A sentence of Life in Prison carried to term is a worse punishment than Execution.

zanny 10y ago
> A sentence of Life in Prison carried to term is a worse punishment than Execution. This isn't an objective fact. Even some prisoners would certainly prefer to live their life behind bars than lose it completely.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  It's also not objectively wrong. I don't think it's even particularly difficult to defend.
njharman 10y ago
I also was/am certain death penalty is obviously incorrect thing to do. But not cause society has not cause for sanctioned murder (it does). But rather there are no "take backs" with death penalty. We make too many mistakes. Our punishments should take that fact into account
- zeveb 10y ago
  There are no take-backs with imprisonment either: you can't restore lost decades any more than you can restore lost life. You can even, really, compensate for it: prison changes someone's psyche permanently. If we're worried about punishing innocents, we should address that problem, not proxies for it. If the justice system can't be trusted with execution, then it can't be trusted with imprisonment or even fines. The other question is if execution of an actually-guilty person is just. I hold that it is, and that not to execute certain criminals is a miscarriage of justice, just as not imprisoning certain criminals is a miscarriage of justice. Certainly, we should err on the side of the innocent, but at the end of the day we're going to have some people who must be isolated from others, and we're going to have some people who must be killed.
  - njharman 10y ago
    There is a quantitate difference between "sorry our bad, we'll let you out of prison" and "sorry our bad, you're still dead". Which one would you prefer? It's wrong to believe we can (or even should) have a justice system that doesn't make mistakes. Human fallibility exists. "some people who must be killed." That's a moral opinion.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      > There is a quantitate difference between "sorry our bad, we'll let you out of prison" and "sorry our bad, you're still dead". Which one would you prefer? I think I'd prefer to be executed at the end of the month than be released after a decade in prison. I'm almost certain of it, to be honest. That doesn't mean that some crimes shouldn't be punished with decades (or life) in prison: they should be. Even if we don't think of it as punishment, there are people who should not be released back into society. But if we have imprisonment, then we will imprison innocents. As you note, our justice system will always be fallible. But, fallible as it is, we need it: the alternative is worse. We live in an imperfect world, and everything we do will have at least a few downsides along with the upsides. > > some people who must be killed > That's a moral opinion. Of course it is. 'We shouldn't kill people' is also a moral opinion. From today's NYT article on the Greek property-tax issue[1]: > Greeks were stunned in 1987 when the police uncovered a gang that had killed at least eight rich elderly people after forging their wills. The plot’s leader was a lawyer and former mayor of an Athens suburb; accomplices included a notary public and a gravedigger. I think it's pretty indisputable that people who forge folks' wills and then murder them deserve to be executed. [1] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/opinion/in-greece-property-is-debt.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/opinion/in-greece-prope...
J-dawg 10y ago
The US practice of locking people up for life is pretty shocking to many people in Europe. In the UK, the number of people who will never be released is somewhere around 50, in the USA it's something like 50,000. Maybe I'm a limp wristed liberal, but 'Three strikes' has always seemed utterly barbaric to me. Even its name being based on a sports metaphor seems totally inappropriate for something so serious.
- breatheoften 10y ago
  Wow -- US population is roughly 5x the UK population, yet we have 1000x people serving life sentences ... I can't help but think of that quote that we should judge the state of a society by the state of their prisons ... I really wish we could do something to dramatically change the prison system in the US -- its insane how much horrible inertia guides its current trajectory ... Given how much more we know about humans than we did 200 years ago, why aren't there better ideas on the role of prison and the justice system disciplining their mutual evolution than were available in the past?
  - unclenoriega 10y ago
    I don't think the problem is a lack of ideas for a better prison system, it's that people don't care. Most people assume that they'll never be in prison and that the people who are deserve what they get—and that's if they think about it at all. If a politician does come along and try to change the system, he's got to convince a lot of his colleagues that don't have a lot of reason to do anything, and he's got to worry someone else will come along and tell voters he's worried about making life good for criminals instead of better for good people. There's just no incentive.
- mibbiting 10y ago
  Prisoners are big business in the US. It's slavery. They manufacture car license plates, washing machines, etc etc etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUyZkwSDar0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUyZkwSDar0
BlackjackCF 10y ago
I'm stuck in this weird place as well. I see the death penalty as almost more humane than life imprisonment (and--this rationale is a little cold--also much less of a tax burden.) The US really needs to get its shit together in terms of figuring out how to rehabilitate criminals and get them back into society.

zanny 10y ago

> A sentence of Life in Prison carried to term is a worse punishment than Execution. This isn't an objective fact. Even some prisoners would certainly prefer to live their life behind bars than lose it completely.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
It's also not objectively wrong. I don't think it's even particularly difficult to defend.

njharman 10y ago

I also was/am certain death penalty is obviously incorrect thing to do. But not cause society has not cause for sanctioned murder (it does). But rather there are no "take backs" with death penalty. We make too many mistakes. Our punishments should take that fact into account

zeveb 10y ago
There are no take-backs with imprisonment either: you can't restore lost decades any more than you can restore lost life. You can even, really, compensate for it: prison changes someone's psyche permanently. If we're worried about punishing innocents, we should address that problem, not proxies for it. If the justice system can't be trusted with execution, then it can't be trusted with imprisonment or even fines. The other question is if execution of an actually-guilty person is just. I hold that it is, and that not to execute certain criminals is a miscarriage of justice, just as not imprisoning certain criminals is a miscarriage of justice. Certainly, we should err on the side of the innocent, but at the end of the day we're going to have some people who must be isolated from others, and we're going to have some people who must be killed.
- njharman 10y ago
  There is a quantitate difference between "sorry our bad, we'll let you out of prison" and "sorry our bad, you're still dead". Which one would you prefer? It's wrong to believe we can (or even should) have a justice system that doesn't make mistakes. Human fallibility exists. "some people who must be killed." That's a moral opinion.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > There is a quantitate difference between "sorry our bad, we'll let you out of prison" and "sorry our bad, you're still dead". Which one would you prefer? I think I'd prefer to be executed at the end of the month than be released after a decade in prison. I'm almost certain of it, to be honest. That doesn't mean that some crimes shouldn't be punished with decades (or life) in prison: they should be. Even if we don't think of it as punishment, there are people who should not be released back into society. But if we have imprisonment, then we will imprison innocents. As you note, our justice system will always be fallible. But, fallible as it is, we need it: the alternative is worse. We live in an imperfect world, and everything we do will have at least a few downsides along with the upsides. > > some people who must be killed > That's a moral opinion. Of course it is. 'We shouldn't kill people' is also a moral opinion. From today's NYT article on the Greek property-tax issue[1]: > Greeks were stunned in 1987 when the police uncovered a gang that had killed at least eight rich elderly people after forging their wills. The plot’s leader was a lawyer and former mayor of an Athens suburb; accomplices included a notary public and a gravedigger. I think it's pretty indisputable that people who forge folks' wills and then murder them deserve to be executed. [1] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/opinion/in-greece-property-is-debt.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/opinion/in-greece-prope...

J-dawg 10y ago

The US practice of locking people up for life is pretty shocking to many people in Europe. In the UK, the number of people who will never be released is somewhere around 50, in the USA it's something like 50,000. Maybe I'm a limp wristed liberal, but 'Three strikes' has always seemed utterly barbaric to me. Even its name being based on a sports metaphor seems totally inappropriate for something so serious.

breatheoften 10y ago
Wow -- US population is roughly 5x the UK population, yet we have 1000x people serving life sentences ... I can't help but think of that quote that we should judge the state of a society by the state of their prisons ... I really wish we could do something to dramatically change the prison system in the US -- its insane how much horrible inertia guides its current trajectory ... Given how much more we know about humans than we did 200 years ago, why aren't there better ideas on the role of prison and the justice system disciplining their mutual evolution than were available in the past?
- unclenoriega 10y ago
  I don't think the problem is a lack of ideas for a better prison system, it's that people don't care. Most people assume that they'll never be in prison and that the people who are deserve what they get—and that's if they think about it at all. If a politician does come along and try to change the system, he's got to convince a lot of his colleagues that don't have a lot of reason to do anything, and he's got to worry someone else will come along and tell voters he's worried about making life good for criminals instead of better for good people. There's just no incentive.
mibbiting 10y ago
Prisoners are big business in the US. It's slavery. They manufacture car license plates, washing machines, etc etc etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUyZkwSDar0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUyZkwSDar0

BlackjackCF 10y ago

I'm stuck in this weird place as well. I see the death penalty as almost more humane than life imprisonment (and--this rationale is a little cold--also much less of a tax burden.) The US really needs to get its shit together in terms of figuring out how to rehabilitate criminals and get them back into society.