For or Against Capital Punishment?
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We don't need to rely on the opinions of people who've never murdered to get a good read on the question of whether death or lwop is worse.
People on death row spend a great deal of time and other resources trying to get their death sentences commuted to life. Most of them think life in prison is better than execution.
It's the result of the Nintendo Generation morphing with the Texting Generation, Obtuse.
I have an alternate idea that will save taxpayers a s**t-load of money and free up prison space.
Take all those serving life without parole and drop their sorry asses on a habitable island with appropriate survival conditions that's not swimable to land and let them fend for themselves. After a few years they will have divided up into sects, groups, colonies and tribes and have built houses and so forth.
Now we don't have to rape the taxpayers to house and feed these dirtbags or ever deal with them again.
Or use them as slave labor. the 13th Amendment was vary carful to not totally abolish slavery. :giggle:
oops...
anyway...
usually referred to as AdSeg
Using prisoners for labor is punishment for a crime not slavery.
Also, iirc, prisoners only get those jobs by volunteering for them.
Slavery is the punishment. The CJ System isn't nearly as harsh as it could get away with.
Look, I worked in criminal prosecution, criminal defense, parole hearings etc. I worked in prisons. You don't know what you are talking about.
You are employing a traditional leftist technique. Abuse the definition of an inflamatory word in order to bend it and pound it into a shape that allows you to mischaracterize a situation.
Prison is where we send felons to punish them for crimes and to protect society from their further predations. Slaves are chattal that may be bought and sold. Prisoners are not chattal that can be bought and sold. Slaves do not volunteer their labor it is forced. There is currently ONE county in the US that uses chain gangs - Maricopa County AZ and prisoners are not forced to labor. They may volunteer but cannot be compelled.
And so, we see that they are slaves only if you use a definition for slave that doesn't mean slave.
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Once we have the death penalty we create perverse incentives. Kill one? Might as well kill more. Kill your wife? Might as well also kill the policeman trying to arrest you etc etc etc
Capital punishment is supported by those following an emotive reaction to crime. Punishment systems deserve better. It should be about minimising the social costs from crime.
Capital punishment is supported by those following an emotive reaction to crime. Punishment systems deserve better. It should be about minimising the social costs from crime.
The fact that death row inmates figt tooth and nail to avoid getting killed means they'd prefer lwop to death. They obviously think death is worse and they actually face the issue directly
Presumes the killer believes he will be caught, arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, lose all his appeals and actually be executed.
Killers don't think that way.
Although I am not a killer I have worked DP cases and many other homicide cases. You are making an esoteric argument that doesn't have a real world application.
Penal systems exist to punish and protect society from criminals.
The DP is not a reflexive emotional response. Trials often take place years after the killing and in order to receive the DP a prosecutor must first get a guilty verdict from a jury. Then a second trial is held to decide penalty. In many (maybe all) states this means all 12 must agree on death. That's not emotion but cold deliberation. Amazingly hard but deliberate rather than emotional
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No, it only requires a cost-benefit analysis with criminals prepared to accept that there is a probability of being caught.
The notion of perverse incentives is well known in criminology. Its also been tested empirically with regards the encouragement of multiple murders. Given the empirical evidence supports the crime theory, the 'real world application' comment is difficult to justify
You offer up the reasonable criminal. OK.
The reasonable criminal will be able to understand all the layers of safeguards in place to be sure we only execute those guilty of homicide. That being true they'd be reasonable enough to know that the more violence he commits the more evidence he creates which makes his discovery and capture more likely rather than less likely. The more evidence the more likely a conviction. The more violent the crime the more likely the DP will be handed down.
In short... blood is very very expensive and the more one spills the closer one gets to the chair. This being true the DP creates a disincentive to commit additional murders for the reasonable criminal.
Perverse incentives don't work with the rational murderer. Only the irrational. You posited the rational murderer would be incentivized to kill more. I disagree and explained why.
The problem with your empiracal evidence comment is that at best you read it in a report (and more likely in some bit of editorial journalism) whereas I got my understanding from working with actual murderers. Reports are abstractions whereas murder trials are not.
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