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The death penalty is plain hypocrisy, because it strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment. It is n

The death penalty is plain hypocrisy, because it strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment. It is not also about preventing dangerous individuals from causing harm on other people because again, that is already plainly achieved by incarceration. The death penalty is 100% state-mandated revenge against the perpetrators of heinous crimes. It is been known for centuries (at least since the 1700s) as being completely ineffective as a deterrent, and it has been shunned by most of the western world, the USA remaining the last holdout of such a barbaric practice. Would have it be possible for the USA to keep executing prisoners if it wasn't the most powerful country on Earth? IMHO, probably not.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
"strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment." Well... duh. The death penalty being a punishment is a feature, not a bug. Nobody says the death penalty is about re-education. It's because the person has done something society has judged to be worthy of death as punishment for that crime. If somebody molested my prepubescent daughter, I would say that person should _die_, as _punishment_, and that would be fair and just. You are operating from the premise that justice is only about re-education. There are plenty of people who reject this view and say that justice is about both re-education and punishment for the crime. And that yes, justice involves punishment, not re-education. "Would have it be possible for the USA to keep executing prisoners if it wasn't the most powerful country on Earth? IMHO, probably not." What planet are you living on? There are lots of countries far less powerful than the US who execute far more prisoners than the US. The US executed 22 people, Egypt 32, Iran 251, Saudi Arabia 184, China over 1000, and Iraq over 100 in 2019.
- f38zf5vdt 5y ago
  The problem of lifetime state issued punishments that are designed to make people feel really bad is their economic insanity. Applying the death penalty in the US involves spending millions in legal and incarceration fees. It also seems to have no deterrence effect on mass murderers, which the US has a high concentration of. The cost of lifetime imprisonment or execution is outright massive, in the millions over the lifetime of imprisonment. When you look at it in terms of economic output, these sentences are a calamity. For $2m USD spent on achieving a death penalty outcome, you could buy over 600k healthy school lunches for $3 each or pay the salary for one extra school teacher per year over a lifetime.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    In my mind, that would be a problem with the justice system, rather than the death penalty as a concept. Also, as for why it seems to have no deterrence, how many people in the whole United States were killed? Only 22 in 2019, and you probably have never heard the names of even one of those people. If the fact of who was dying, for what crime, was highlighted more often in the media, the statistics may be significantly different. Like, imagine if CNN and FOX had a simple image of who was dying each day with a two-or-three-sentence description of the crime, each time someone was put to death. To most people, that would be about every 2 weeks. Public awareness would explode. And criminals would have a far greater awareness that they could die for crimes.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Or bring back public-square and courthouse executions.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  > The US executed 22 people, Egypt 32, Iran 251, Saudi Arabia 184, China over 1000, and Iraq over 100 in 2019 None of those countries are neither Western nor democracies. All western democracies have been pushed by the influence of the others to abolish death penalty (for instance, it's a mandatory requirement in order to join the EU), the US being the only outlier. What if the situation was different, i.e. the US was an abolitionist country and only a small country like Luxembourg was the only remaining Western democracy to execute its citizens? It would quickly become a pariah among its peers. > it's because the person has done something society has judged to be worthy of death as punishment for that crime The basic problem with this is that it _does not work_, and it does not accomplish anything than pleasing the victims of a crime. Killing convicts has been the default punishment for millenia and still it hasn't deterred anyone from doing crimes. It simply creates a state where people are harshly punished for what they've done, and that often is used as a way to avoid doing absolutely nothing to fix the issues that caused the offense to occur in the first place. Europe has abolished executions decades ago, with some places like Italy doing that in the '800s. Still, Europe has a much lower crime rate than the US, where prisons are much harsher and the worst convicts may face an execution for their crimes.
staunch 5y ago
1. Execution absolutely guarantees that the criminal will not hurt anyone ever again. In prison, criminals can still hurt prison guards and other prisoners. They can also escape or be freed by mistake. There is a clearly benefit in terms of risk to innocent people. There are certainly innocent people that have been spared harm or death by virtue of executions. I don't view execution as punishment or revenge. I view it the same way I view putting down a rabid animal. I would never take pleasure or vengeful satisfaction in it, even if the criminal had hurt me or someone I knew. 2. It's not significantly more ethical to keep someone that is innocent locked up in a prison for their entire life. Someone being freed after 50 years in prison has had their life stolen from them, even if they were not actually executed. The stakes for life imprisonment are just as high as execution. Arguably, the torture of prison makes it worse than execution in many cases. 3. Execution makes sense in some rare cases, where the criminal is very clearly guilty (e.g. video evidence of them murdering multiple people) but only as a way to prevent them from hurting people in the future. Not as a deterrent, punishment, and not for revenge. 4. If I was a sociopath serial killer that couldn't help myself, I might view execution as a relief. Even if outwardly I was begging not to be executed, I might appreciate that my society had the courage to kill me instead of leaving me to rot in prison for 50 years. 5. Ultimately, we need to be able to cure these people and release them back into society. Science just isn't there yet, so for now we have execution and life imprisonment as our primary tools. No one should be satisfied with either option. They're both terrible options that are not as dissimilar as some portray them to be.
- cortic 5y ago
  1, only applies if you are right about the verdict, which we can never be sure about. In fact execution almost guarantees that the criminal will re-offend if he is watching an innocent man being put to death for his crimes. 2, Its significantly more ethical to potentially give some of an innocent persons life back and make some restitution. Than none. 3, There is never cases where we are sure; There can always be new evidence or a new way to look at old evidence that changes the amount guilt or innocence. To think you can be sure for all time about a set of events, even if you were there, is just wrong. If we replace reasonable doubt with no doubt at all then No one would be convicted of anything.
- 5y ago
GavinMcG 5y ago
> it strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment It's only hypocritical if the justice system claims to be solely about re-education. But you point out two other goals—deterrence and isolation—and there really are people out there who believe punishment is a moral good and a necessary component of justice.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  As I've said in my other post, a penal system that focuses on punishment and not on rehabilitation is not positive for a society, because it doesn't actually help reducing the causes behing crime (and thus stop it from happening), and often degenerates towards being unfair to certain groups and minorities.
sershe 5y ago
Why would there need to be appearance of re-education? The society doesn't owe anyone a re-education. It's not really about punishment either... If someone doesn't respect others' life and property, why would theirs be respected at all? There's no more revenge here than in drowning a tick that bit you instead of releasing it back into the wild. In abstract, I'd apply it to many more crimes with an unambiguous victim and selfish intent, even minor ones. The only problems I have with death penalty is potential for abuse (to be clear, I don't believe it's the present danger, more of a future danger if the death penalty was normalized), and wrong convictions (and that I think would mostly be solved by requiring multiple separate convictions before it's applied).
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Maybe not vengeance, but there is passionate cruelty in drowning an ant if you had a vision of the world where the ant was no longer dangerous. What's wrong with indefinite imprisonment over death? Now you can figure out if you accidentally killed people, at least; you don't need abuse to accidentally put people to death. And on the matter of death penalty, does one lead with an attitude of "Why should we help unless we owe you?" Is that the right moral motivation for death penalty? I mean, that's the attitude of big business in commerce.
  - sershe 5y ago
    I'd argue it's a minor component. Especially with something like a tick, that will go on to bite someone else. I am morally indifferent between life imprisonment and death, but life imprisonment costs more and can fail. On the other hand, the original comment framed death penalty as "hypocrisy" of "justice being about re-education"; I am saying justice doesn't have to be primarily about re-education, no supporter of death penalty argues that; there's no hypocrisy. I think the removal is the most important component. Punishment and re-education should be prioritized depending on the crime, but in any case both are just nice, optional perks.
    - threatofrain 5y ago
      > Punishment and re-education should be prioritized depending on the crime, but in any case both are just nice, optional perks. Again there is this framing about what is deserved and what is owed. This is in contrast to the framing of what is best for society — if your prevailing theory is that some people are safe and some people are dangerous (as opposed to some people are criminals and some people are owed), then those individuals who still have a good future story ought be candidates for rehabilitation. From this perspective, it is not a matter of what is a "perk" and what is owed, but rather what the state has to gain.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

"strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment." Well... duh. The death penalty being a punishment is a feature, not a bug. Nobody says the death penalty is about re-education. It's because the person has done something society has judged to be worthy of death as punishment for that crime. If somebody molested my prepubescent daughter, I would say that person should _die_, as _punishment_, and that would be fair and just. You are operating from the premise that justice is only about re-education. There are plenty of people who reject this view and say that justice is about both re-education and punishment for the crime. And that yes, justice involves punishment, not re-education. "Would have it be possible for the USA to keep executing prisoners if it wasn't the most powerful country on Earth? IMHO, probably not." What planet are you living on? There are lots of countries far less powerful than the US who execute far more prisoners than the US. The US executed 22 people, Egypt 32, Iran 251, Saudi Arabia 184, China over 1000, and Iraq over 100 in 2019.

f38zf5vdt 5y ago
The problem of lifetime state issued punishments that are designed to make people feel really bad is their economic insanity. Applying the death penalty in the US involves spending millions in legal and incarceration fees. It also seems to have no deterrence effect on mass murderers, which the US has a high concentration of. The cost of lifetime imprisonment or execution is outright massive, in the millions over the lifetime of imprisonment. When you look at it in terms of economic output, these sentences are a calamity. For $2m USD spent on achieving a death penalty outcome, you could buy over 600k healthy school lunches for $3 each or pay the salary for one extra school teacher per year over a lifetime.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  In my mind, that would be a problem with the justice system, rather than the death penalty as a concept. Also, as for why it seems to have no deterrence, how many people in the whole United States were killed? Only 22 in 2019, and you probably have never heard the names of even one of those people. If the fact of who was dying, for what crime, was highlighted more often in the media, the statistics may be significantly different. Like, imagine if CNN and FOX had a simple image of who was dying each day with a two-or-three-sentence description of the crime, each time someone was put to death. To most people, that would be about every 2 weeks. Public awareness would explode. And criminals would have a far greater awareness that they could die for crimes.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Or bring back public-square and courthouse executions.
qalmakka 5y ago
> The US executed 22 people, Egypt 32, Iran 251, Saudi Arabia 184, China over 1000, and Iraq over 100 in 2019 None of those countries are neither Western nor democracies. All western democracies have been pushed by the influence of the others to abolish death penalty (for instance, it's a mandatory requirement in order to join the EU), the US being the only outlier. What if the situation was different, i.e. the US was an abolitionist country and only a small country like Luxembourg was the only remaining Western democracy to execute its citizens? It would quickly become a pariah among its peers. > it's because the person has done something society has judged to be worthy of death as punishment for that crime The basic problem with this is that it _does not work_, and it does not accomplish anything than pleasing the victims of a crime. Killing convicts has been the default punishment for millenia and still it hasn't deterred anyone from doing crimes. It simply creates a state where people are harshly punished for what they've done, and that often is used as a way to avoid doing absolutely nothing to fix the issues that caused the offense to occur in the first place. Europe has abolished executions decades ago, with some places like Italy doing that in the '800s. Still, Europe has a much lower crime rate than the US, where prisons are much harsher and the worst convicts may face an execution for their crimes.

staunch 5y ago

1. Execution absolutely guarantees that the criminal will not hurt anyone ever again. In prison, criminals can still hurt prison guards and other prisoners. They can also escape or be freed by mistake. There is a clearly benefit in terms of risk to innocent people. There are certainly innocent people that have been spared harm or death by virtue of executions. I don't view execution as punishment or revenge. I view it the same way I view putting down a rabid animal. I would never take pleasure or vengeful satisfaction in it, even if the criminal had hurt me or someone I knew. 2. It's not significantly more ethical to keep someone that is innocent locked up in a prison for their entire life. Someone being freed after 50 years in prison has had their life stolen from them, even if they were not actually executed. The stakes for life imprisonment are just as high as execution. Arguably, the torture of prison makes it worse than execution in many cases. 3. Execution makes sense in some rare cases, where the criminal is very clearly guilty (e.g. video evidence of them murdering multiple people) but only as a way to prevent them from hurting people in the future. Not as a deterrent, punishment, and not for revenge. 4. If I was a sociopath serial killer that couldn't help myself, I might view execution as a relief. Even if outwardly I was begging not to be executed, I might appreciate that my society had the courage to kill me instead of leaving me to rot in prison for 50 years. 5. Ultimately, we need to be able to cure these people and release them back into society. Science just isn't there yet, so for now we have execution and life imprisonment as our primary tools. No one should be satisfied with either option. They're both terrible options that are not as dissimilar as some portray them to be.

cortic 5y ago
1, only applies if you are right about the verdict, which we can never be sure about. In fact execution almost guarantees that the criminal will re-offend if he is watching an innocent man being put to death for his crimes. 2, Its significantly more ethical to potentially give some of an innocent persons life back and make some restitution. Than none. 3, There is never cases where we are sure; There can always be new evidence or a new way to look at old evidence that changes the amount guilt or innocence. To think you can be sure for all time about a set of events, even if you were there, is just wrong. If we replace reasonable doubt with no doubt at all then No one would be convicted of anything.
5y ago

GavinMcG 5y ago

> it strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment It's only hypocritical if the justice system claims to be solely about re-education. But you point out two other goals—deterrence and isolation—and there really are people out there who believe punishment is a moral good and a necessary component of justice.

qalmakka 5y ago
As I've said in my other post, a penal system that focuses on punishment and not on rehabilitation is not positive for a society, because it doesn't actually help reducing the causes behing crime (and thus stop it from happening), and often degenerates towards being unfair to certain groups and minorities.

sershe 5y ago

Why would there need to be appearance of re-education? The society doesn't owe anyone a re-education. It's not really about punishment either... If someone doesn't respect others' life and property, why would theirs be respected at all? There's no more revenge here than in drowning a tick that bit you instead of releasing it back into the wild. In abstract, I'd apply it to many more crimes with an unambiguous victim and selfish intent, even minor ones. The only problems I have with death penalty is potential for abuse (to be clear, I don't believe it's the present danger, more of a future danger if the death penalty was normalized), and wrong convictions (and that I think would mostly be solved by requiring multiple separate convictions before it's applied).

threatofrain 5y ago
Maybe not vengeance, but there is passionate cruelty in drowning an ant if you had a vision of the world where the ant was no longer dangerous. What's wrong with indefinite imprisonment over death? Now you can figure out if you accidentally killed people, at least; you don't need abuse to accidentally put people to death. And on the matter of death penalty, does one lead with an attitude of "Why should we help unless we owe you?" Is that the right moral motivation for death penalty? I mean, that's the attitude of big business in commerce.
- sershe 5y ago
  I'd argue it's a minor component. Especially with something like a tick, that will go on to bite someone else. I am morally indifferent between life imprisonment and death, but life imprisonment costs more and can fail. On the other hand, the original comment framed death penalty as "hypocrisy" of "justice being about re-education"; I am saying justice doesn't have to be primarily about re-education, no supporter of death penalty argues that; there's no hypocrisy. I think the removal is the most important component. Punishment and re-education should be prioritized depending on the crime, but in any case both are just nice, optional perks.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    > Punishment and re-education should be prioritized depending on the crime, but in any case both are just nice, optional perks. Again there is this framing about what is deserved and what is owed. This is in contrast to the framing of what is best for society — if your prevailing theory is that some people are safe and some people are dangerous (as opposed to some people are criminals and some people are owed), then those individuals who still have a good future story ought be candidates for rehabilitation. From this perspective, it is not a matter of what is a "perk" and what is owed, but rather what the state has to gain.