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What is so horrible or kafkaesque about that? Prosecuting death penalty cases is hard and politically contentious. It also not a necessity, as you can secure li

What is so horrible or kafkaesque about that? Prosecuting death penalty cases is hard and politically contentious. It also not a necessity, as you can secure life imprisonment sentences with much less effort. It makes sense that only those places committed to the practice will continue it.

elliekelly 5y ago
More people being put to death because the autonomous bureaucracy has gotten better at putting people to death is pretty kafkaesque. It reminds me of the short story with “the machine” that cuts progressively deeper over time.
- lupire 5y ago
  Why isn't it Kafkaesque the other counties are ineffective at capital cases? The only difference is who you believe morally right.
  - oblio 5y ago
    In almost the entire developed world, there is no death penalty anymore.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    > The only difference is who you believe morally right. This is also a theme frequently explored by Kafka. Especially in the machine short story I mentioned. People who believe they’re “right” in sentencing a person to death will come up with all sorts of ways to justify their amoral actions and Kafka created several characters who do.
  - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
    Sort of? Depends on who is the subject. 'Kafkaesque' doesn't just mean bureaucracy is bad but that it alienates the individual. Most defendants would probably expediency more alienation if the likelihood of a death penalty depended on which county tried them. Actually, The Trial itself references circumstances very similar to this. On the other hand, if there was some super depraved criminal that had a chance of walking free due to bureaucracy, then a individual on the prosecution side could be subject to disillusionment and alienation. So sure either side can be Kafkaesque but since it's more a one vs many i.e the individual facing society, the defendant's situation is more likely to be the loosing end.
    - throwaway8581 5y ago
      1) You make it seem like the county is arbitrary. But you are almost always tried in the place where the crime took place. 2) If you commit a crime in country A, you will be subject to different punishments than if you commit a crime in country B. This isn't really surprising. If you commit a crime in San Francisco, you probably won't be charged even if caught. If you commit a crime in a conservative city, you probably will. Again, not surprising and not absurd. These are different polities and they have different policies. 3) This has almost nothing to do with a self-propelling absurd bureaucracy and almost everything to do with people in some places voting for district attorneys/state officials who want to pursue the death penalty, as well as some DAs offices not wanting to spend the money and suffer the grief of prosecuting a death penalty case, which can require expensive lawyering for multiple decades in many cases. This thread is so tiresome. People are salivating over this uninsightful study and making sophomoric faux-insightful comments like it's a college literary criticism class.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    No matter which way you fall on the death penalty-morality equation, you have to not be happy that the likelihood that a particular person is executed depends more on a self-reinforcing bureaucracy than on the particulars of the crime itself.
    - throwaway8581 5y ago
      No, it depends on the local politics of the death penalty. Some states have abolished it, some have not. District Attorneys often run on pro or anti death penalty platforms. You are doing the opposite of anthropomorphizing. You are attributing to the faceless bureaucracy what is really just the result of different political preferences.
- throwaway8581 5y ago
  The story that you're telling leaves out the number one reason why the death penalty is pursued more in some places than others: political will. Simply put, those places that have the resources and political desire to pursue the death penalty do, those that don't, don't. Pro death penalty places this year are more likely to have been pro death penalty places last year. That's all the study concludes.
  - voxic11 5y ago
    Does political will really vary that much from one prosecutors office to the next? I would imagine it would have a more even gradient.
- mturmon 5y ago
  Brilliantly put. And moreover, regarding some comments nearby, there was an original commandant in the penal colony who instituted the penalty, and developed the machine. Maybe he knew why? Over time, the machine has broken down, and all concerned have forgotten what the point of the machine exactly is, but the practice continues, the creaking machine grinding on.
cma 5y ago
The point is a random outcome in one case may perpetuate in a way that creates the commitment, and a random loss early on may prevent that commitment.

elliekelly 5y ago

More people being put to death because the autonomous bureaucracy has gotten better at putting people to death is pretty kafkaesque. It reminds me of the short story with “the machine” that cuts progressively deeper over time.

lupire 5y ago
Why isn't it Kafkaesque the other counties are ineffective at capital cases? The only difference is who you believe morally right.
- oblio 5y ago
  In almost the entire developed world, there is no death penalty anymore.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > The only difference is who you believe morally right. This is also a theme frequently explored by Kafka. Especially in the machine short story I mentioned. People who believe they’re “right” in sentencing a person to death will come up with all sorts of ways to justify their amoral actions and Kafka created several characters who do.
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Sort of? Depends on who is the subject. 'Kafkaesque' doesn't just mean bureaucracy is bad but that it alienates the individual. Most defendants would probably expediency more alienation if the likelihood of a death penalty depended on which county tried them. Actually, The Trial itself references circumstances very similar to this. On the other hand, if there was some super depraved criminal that had a chance of walking free due to bureaucracy, then a individual on the prosecution side could be subject to disillusionment and alienation. So sure either side can be Kafkaesque but since it's more a one vs many i.e the individual facing society, the defendant's situation is more likely to be the loosing end.
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    1) You make it seem like the county is arbitrary. But you are almost always tried in the place where the crime took place. 2) If you commit a crime in country A, you will be subject to different punishments than if you commit a crime in country B. This isn't really surprising. If you commit a crime in San Francisco, you probably won't be charged even if caught. If you commit a crime in a conservative city, you probably will. Again, not surprising and not absurd. These are different polities and they have different policies. 3) This has almost nothing to do with a self-propelling absurd bureaucracy and almost everything to do with people in some places voting for district attorneys/state officials who want to pursue the death penalty, as well as some DAs offices not wanting to spend the money and suffer the grief of prosecuting a death penalty case, which can require expensive lawyering for multiple decades in many cases. This thread is so tiresome. People are salivating over this uninsightful study and making sophomoric faux-insightful comments like it's a college literary criticism class.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  No matter which way you fall on the death penalty-morality equation, you have to not be happy that the likelihood that a particular person is executed depends more on a self-reinforcing bureaucracy than on the particulars of the crime itself.
  - throwaway8581 5y ago
    No, it depends on the local politics of the death penalty. Some states have abolished it, some have not. District Attorneys often run on pro or anti death penalty platforms. You are doing the opposite of anthropomorphizing. You are attributing to the faceless bureaucracy what is really just the result of different political preferences.
throwaway8581 5y ago
The story that you're telling leaves out the number one reason why the death penalty is pursued more in some places than others: political will. Simply put, those places that have the resources and political desire to pursue the death penalty do, those that don't, don't. Pro death penalty places this year are more likely to have been pro death penalty places last year. That's all the study concludes.
- voxic11 5y ago
  Does political will really vary that much from one prosecutors office to the next? I would imagine it would have a more even gradient.
mturmon 5y ago
Brilliantly put. And moreover, regarding some comments nearby, there was an original commandant in the penal colony who instituted the penalty, and developed the machine. Maybe he knew why? Over time, the machine has broken down, and all concerned have forgotten what the point of the machine exactly is, but the practice continues, the creaking machine grinding on.

cma 5y ago

The point is a random outcome in one case may perpetuate in a way that creates the commitment, and a random loss early on may prevent that commitment.