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> Civilized countries outlawed the death penalty for murder a long time ago What do you have against Japan? I would consider Japan arguably the most civilized

> Civilized countries outlawed the death penalty for murder a long time ago What do you have against Japan? I would consider Japan arguably the most civilized country.

rayiner 4y ago
And Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. And while India isn’t as developed as those countries, it’s the world’s largest functional democracy and I’d argue at least meets the threshold of “civilized.” I’d probably concede that China is also “civilized.”
- decafninja 4y ago
  From the perspective of crime, as much as I love visiting Europe I was disappointed at the amount of petty crime that goes ignored there. Such crime is virtually nonexistent in most of the Asian countries listed above.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    If you think petty crime is bad in Europe, don’t even think about visiting Americas. US cities are so much worse than almost of Europe it’s pretty shocking.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      But then again, we're already starting from the assumption that the US isn't a civilized country.
    - decafninja 4y ago
      I disagree. The US has an entirely different level of crime issues (see guns), but I feel safer about petty crime (pickpocketing, scammers, etc) walking about a typical American city downtown than most European capitals. Case in point: I have designer brand backpack I frequently carry during traveling. I carry it without a second thought through the US and Asia. I don’t bring it with me to Europe because it’s likely to be a pickpocket magnet.
      - xyzzyz 4y ago
        Take a walk on Mission Avenue in San Francisco then and see for yourself (actually, don’t do that). Crime is extremely rampant in US cities, and I’m not even talking about shootings here. Assaults (verbal and physical) by mentally ill (or drugged out of their minds) hobos are extremely common. Car break-ins, constant shoplifting, carjackings, etc. For more petty stuff, public drug use and homeless camping on the streets are very common (these are crimes in Europe, and are very actively prosecuted there, unlike in US). I have been a victim or personally observed every single thing I mentioned above (except carjacking) in US multiple times, but have not observed or experienced this in Europe (despite living there longer), and have only once been verbally assaulted there by drunkards on a night bus. Most of US is very safe, but portions of large US cities are literal hellholes.
- skissane 4y ago
  > And while India isn’t as developed as those countries While India has the death penalty, it uses it a lot more sparingly than the US does. Last year, US executed 18 people, India 0. 2021, US executed 11, India 0. 2020, US 17, India 4. Since 2000, India has carried out 8 executions, US has carried out almost 1000. And consider India's population is over 4 times that of the US. On a per capita basis, the US execution rate since 2000 is something like 500 times that of India. I'd like to see the death penalty abolished, but I think it would be a big improvement if the US simply decided to use it no more than India does.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    US murder rates since 1990 have consistently been around double those of India: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/murder-homic... https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd... The US still has proportionally more executions though. I don’t know what the homicide clearance rate is in India, but that is another factor to possibly consider. Another thing (that might also be true of India) is that the US is a federation of fifty states, each of which have their own laws. Many states have no death penalty, and some of the states that still do probably have rates comparable to India. Any national rate for the US is mostly an aggregate, plus the relatively small federal death row.
    - skissane 4y ago
      > Another thing (that might also be true of India) is that the US is a federation of fifty states, each of which have their own laws India is a federation of states too. So is Canada (Canada's provinces are just states by another name), Mexico, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, etc. Many Americans seem to think the US is somehow unique by having states, but it is far from uncommon. Invoking it to explain America's unusual features only makes sense when you don't know that many other countries have similar systems. In both India and Canada criminal law is a federal responsibility, so criminal law is the same across all the states. Indian states and Canadian provinces still have the power to make their own laws in other areas. This means the formal abolition of the death penalty in Canada had to be done at the federal level, and any future such abolition in India would have to be at the federal level too. But in both countries, while the letter of criminal law is federal, state/provincial governments handle the majority of implementation of it, so even with death penalty on the books they still had a lot of lee-way in deciding how much it gets used. Although, in the case of contemporary India, India’s Supreme Court has made clear they will only uphold the death penalty in the rarest of cases, which is a big part of why there are so few executions, meaning that right now state differences in policies/attitudes mean less than they did in the past Whereas Australia, like the US and unlike Canada and India, has separate state and federal criminal laws, which meant (just like the US) some states abolished the death penalty decades before others – Queensland abolished it in 1922, it was abolished federally in 1973, but New South Wales became the last state to abolish it in 1985 (although they'd already abolished it for murder in 1955, so the complete 1985 abolition was only for rare offences such as treason). In 2010, the federal Parliament passed a law which bans any state from reintroducing the death penalty (using the treaty power, since Australia has ratified an international treaty to ban the death penalty)

> Civilized countries outlawed the death penalty for murder a long time ago What do you have against Japan? I would consider Japan arguably the most civilized country.

rayiner 4y ago

And Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. And while India isn’t as developed as those countries, it’s the world’s largest functional democracy and I’d argue at least meets the threshold of “civilized.” I’d probably concede that China is also “civilized.”

decafninja 4y ago
From the perspective of crime, as much as I love visiting Europe I was disappointed at the amount of petty crime that goes ignored there. Such crime is virtually nonexistent in most of the Asian countries listed above.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  If you think petty crime is bad in Europe, don’t even think about visiting Americas. US cities are so much worse than almost of Europe it’s pretty shocking.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    But then again, we're already starting from the assumption that the US isn't a civilized country.
  - decafninja 4y ago
    I disagree. The US has an entirely different level of crime issues (see guns), but I feel safer about petty crime (pickpocketing, scammers, etc) walking about a typical American city downtown than most European capitals. Case in point: I have designer brand backpack I frequently carry during traveling. I carry it without a second thought through the US and Asia. I don’t bring it with me to Europe because it’s likely to be a pickpocket magnet.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      Take a walk on Mission Avenue in San Francisco then and see for yourself (actually, don’t do that). Crime is extremely rampant in US cities, and I’m not even talking about shootings here. Assaults (verbal and physical) by mentally ill (or drugged out of their minds) hobos are extremely common. Car break-ins, constant shoplifting, carjackings, etc. For more petty stuff, public drug use and homeless camping on the streets are very common (these are crimes in Europe, and are very actively prosecuted there, unlike in US). I have been a victim or personally observed every single thing I mentioned above (except carjacking) in US multiple times, but have not observed or experienced this in Europe (despite living there longer), and have only once been verbally assaulted there by drunkards on a night bus. Most of US is very safe, but portions of large US cities are literal hellholes.
skissane 4y ago
> And while India isn’t as developed as those countries While India has the death penalty, it uses it a lot more sparingly than the US does. Last year, US executed 18 people, India 0. 2021, US executed 11, India 0. 2020, US 17, India 4. Since 2000, India has carried out 8 executions, US has carried out almost 1000. And consider India's population is over 4 times that of the US. On a per capita basis, the US execution rate since 2000 is something like 500 times that of India. I'd like to see the death penalty abolished, but I think it would be a big improvement if the US simply decided to use it no more than India does.
- philwelch 4y ago
  US murder rates since 1990 have consistently been around double those of India: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/murder-homic... https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd... The US still has proportionally more executions though. I don’t know what the homicide clearance rate is in India, but that is another factor to possibly consider. Another thing (that might also be true of India) is that the US is a federation of fifty states, each of which have their own laws. Many states have no death penalty, and some of the states that still do probably have rates comparable to India. Any national rate for the US is mostly an aggregate, plus the relatively small federal death row.
  - skissane 4y ago
    > Another thing (that might also be true of India) is that the US is a federation of fifty states, each of which have their own laws India is a federation of states too. So is Canada (Canada's provinces are just states by another name), Mexico, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, etc. Many Americans seem to think the US is somehow unique by having states, but it is far from uncommon. Invoking it to explain America's unusual features only makes sense when you don't know that many other countries have similar systems. In both India and Canada criminal law is a federal responsibility, so criminal law is the same across all the states. Indian states and Canadian provinces still have the power to make their own laws in other areas. This means the formal abolition of the death penalty in Canada had to be done at the federal level, and any future such abolition in India would have to be at the federal level too. But in both countries, while the letter of criminal law is federal, state/provincial governments handle the majority of implementation of it, so even with death penalty on the books they still had a lot of lee-way in deciding how much it gets used. Although, in the case of contemporary India, India’s Supreme Court has made clear they will only uphold the death penalty in the rarest of cases, which is a big part of why there are so few executions, meaning that right now state differences in policies/attitudes mean less than they did in the past Whereas Australia, like the US and unlike Canada and India, has separate state and federal criminal laws, which meant (just like the US) some states abolished the death penalty decades before others – Queensland abolished it in 1922, it was abolished federally in 1973, but New South Wales became the last state to abolish it in 1985 (although they'd already abolished it for murder in 1955, so the complete 1985 abolition was only for rare offences such as treason). In 2010, the federal Parliament passed a law which bans any state from reintroducing the death penalty (using the treaty power, since Australia has ratified an international treaty to ban the death penalty)