5 ms·

My opinion is simple. We should just never kill people except when there's an imminent threat. The death penalty doesn't deter crime, and life in prison is sign

by arpyzo 5y ago

My opinion is simple. We should just never kill people except when there's an imminent threat. The death penalty doesn't deter crime, and life in prison is significant enough punishment. As far as I can tell, the death penalty mostly just serves to satiate the appetite of those who want revenge. Does it provide victims with enough solace to justify its downsides? I doubt it.

FriedrichN 5y ago
Absolutely. And let's not forget innocent people do get convicted and even if there is a 99% accuracy the state still kills innocent people. You can't get years behind bars back, but at least you're still alive if your conviction gets overturned.
bluedino 5y ago
>> life in prison is significant enough punishment. What is the point of keeping a human behind bars for 50, 60 years? Especially in a clear-cut case like a mass shooting. Those guys are still alive, behind bars, forever, unless they shoot themselves when they are done.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  My local grocery store cards everyone for alcohol, even people obviously in their 90s. It turns out it's really hard to determine what counts as "clear-cut", and there are consequences for fucking it up.
  - sixothree 5y ago
    It's not like we _don't_ find out that people who were executed were not guilty in the first place.
endominus 5y ago
What would you say to people like myself who view "life in prison" as essentially the death penalty with 'entropy' chosen as the method of execution? Is the purpose of prison punishment or reform? If the latter, there is no reason for life in prison; what use is reformation to someone who's stuck in prison for their entire life? If the former, then life imprisonment is a terrible punishment from an economic standpoint. Incarcerating an inmate can cost anywhere from $80,000[0] to $200,000 per year. Death row inmates can double that amount. Looking at the situation from a completely cold-blooded perspective, life imprisonment is a worst-of-both-worlds compromise. It maximizes the suffering of the individual prisoner and wastes the maximum amount of the people's money. How many other people's lives could that money save if we weren't subject to identifiable victim bias? [0]: https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost [1]: https://www.golocalprov.com/news/maximum-security-prisoners-cost-rhode-island-200k-each-per-year/ https://www.golocalprov.com/news/maximum-security-prisoners-...
- rahkiin 5y ago
  If prison is so expensive, stop putting people there for no-victim crimes like smoking some weed. Then the money can go to humanely incarcerating real criminals without giving them the easy way out of death. And no longer wrongful death penalties
- runako 5y ago
  Your premise implies that there is no value in either: - an inmate living the remainder of his natural in prison instead of being killed today - a society not having killed a person in an act of state-sponsored revenge
  - endominus 5y ago
    Revenge is an interesting way to put it. Question; if, upon finding a defendant guilty of a severe enough crime, they were instantly and automatically transported to a foreign island not under the control of the state, would the government have a duty to deliver food and other amenities to them? That is to say, are the people of a nation morally obliged to provide for people that they no longer want to be part of their community? If your answer is no, and no other country will take in the person found guilty of the crime, then what is the government supposed to do? If your answer is yes, that's quite a strange position to me. It prioritizes the needs of criminals above that of law-abiding citizens (as, with rare exceptions, a law-abiding citizen is unlikely to have their physical needs met in such a manner by the state). Why should your tax dollars go towards the care and housing of a person who has proven themselves eager and able to murder you if the opportunity arose? Also, you have either misunderstood or altered my premise. Regarding the first part, It's not that the life of an inmate has no value; my premise is that said life costs more to preserve than the education and healthcare that could be provided to dozens or hundreds of people for every year that said inmate languishes in prison. I'm comparing the QALY's of a prisoner with others. Life imprisonment as an intervention fails to maximize social utility and fails at the task of killing fewest people because, after all, (regarding the second part) everything that a government does kills people. A state that spends 2 billion dollars on housing death row inmates is choosing not to spend that money on improving its education, infrastructure, social programs, healthcare systems, and everything else it can do that save lives. Hence why I mentioned the identificable victim bias; people on death row feel more like victims than the hundreds of people that will freeze to death in the streets because of a lack of housing, or when wildfires consume their homes, or because higher taxes and regulations have stalled out the economy and left them destitute and hopeless. They are killed by neglect rather than direct action, but they are dead all the same. The American prison complex is an inhumane travesty, and life imprisonment is one of its worst failures. It is the worst compromise possible between those who see the system as fundamentally reformatory, and those who see it in talionic terms. It is maximum punishment at maximum cost.

by arpyzo 5y ago

FriedrichN 5y ago

Absolutely. And let's not forget innocent people do get convicted and even if there is a 99% accuracy the state still kills innocent people. You can't get years behind bars back, but at least you're still alive if your conviction gets overturned.

bluedino 5y ago

>> life in prison is significant enough punishment. What is the point of keeping a human behind bars for 50, 60 years? Especially in a clear-cut case like a mass shooting. Those guys are still alive, behind bars, forever, unless they shoot themselves when they are done.

ceejayoz 5y ago
My local grocery store cards everyone for alcohol, even people obviously in their 90s. It turns out it's really hard to determine what counts as "clear-cut", and there are consequences for fucking it up.
- sixothree 5y ago
  It's not like we _don't_ find out that people who were executed were not guilty in the first place.

endominus 5y ago

What would you say to people like myself who view "life in prison" as essentially the death penalty with 'entropy' chosen as the method of execution? Is the purpose of prison punishment or reform? If the latter, there is no reason for life in prison; what use is reformation to someone who's stuck in prison for their entire life? If the former, then life imprisonment is a terrible punishment from an economic standpoint. Incarcerating an inmate can cost anywhere from $80,000[0] to $200,000 per year. Death row inmates can double that amount. Looking at the situation from a completely cold-blooded perspective, life imprisonment is a worst-of-both-worlds compromise. It maximizes the suffering of the individual prisoner and wastes the maximum amount of the people's money. How many other people's lives could that money save if we weren't subject to identifiable victim bias? [0]: https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost [1]: https://www.golocalprov.com/news/maximum-security-prisoners-cost-rhode-island-200k-each-per-year/ https://www.golocalprov.com/news/maximum-security-prisoners-...

rahkiin 5y ago
If prison is so expensive, stop putting people there for no-victim crimes like smoking some weed. Then the money can go to humanely incarcerating real criminals without giving them the easy way out of death. And no longer wrongful death penalties
runako 5y ago
Your premise implies that there is no value in either: - an inmate living the remainder of his natural in prison instead of being killed today - a society not having killed a person in an act of state-sponsored revenge
- endominus 5y ago
  Revenge is an interesting way to put it. Question; if, upon finding a defendant guilty of a severe enough crime, they were instantly and automatically transported to a foreign island not under the control of the state, would the government have a duty to deliver food and other amenities to them? That is to say, are the people of a nation morally obliged to provide for people that they no longer want to be part of their community? If your answer is no, and no other country will take in the person found guilty of the crime, then what is the government supposed to do? If your answer is yes, that's quite a strange position to me. It prioritizes the needs of criminals above that of law-abiding citizens (as, with rare exceptions, a law-abiding citizen is unlikely to have their physical needs met in such a manner by the state). Why should your tax dollars go towards the care and housing of a person who has proven themselves eager and able to murder you if the opportunity arose? Also, you have either misunderstood or altered my premise. Regarding the first part, It's not that the life of an inmate has no value; my premise is that said life costs more to preserve than the education and healthcare that could be provided to dozens or hundreds of people for every year that said inmate languishes in prison. I'm comparing the QALY's of a prisoner with others. Life imprisonment as an intervention fails to maximize social utility and fails at the task of killing fewest people because, after all, (regarding the second part) everything that a government does kills people. A state that spends 2 billion dollars on housing death row inmates is choosing not to spend that money on improving its education, infrastructure, social programs, healthcare systems, and everything else it can do that save lives. Hence why I mentioned the identificable victim bias; people on death row feel more like victims than the hundreds of people that will freeze to death in the streets because of a lack of housing, or when wildfires consume their homes, or because higher taxes and regulations have stalled out the economy and left them destitute and hopeless. They are killed by neglect rather than direct action, but they are dead all the same. The American prison complex is an inhumane travesty, and life imprisonment is one of its worst failures. It is the worst compromise possible between those who see the system as fundamentally reformatory, and those who see it in talionic terms. It is maximum punishment at maximum cost.