Capital Punishment: 「Yes or No?」

[Picairn]

Moreover, it might be useful to garner sympathy for those being executed in such a way that capital punishment is made rare.

Hard to do that if the people executed are terrorists/mass murderers/criminals who committed crimes against humanity. Of course there may be some sympathy among their followers, but society at large rejects those monsters.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Fear is a product of danger AND risk. And brutal regimes don't bother with punishing crimes, they punish anything that's even a bit like a crime. You only get a trial if you're one of the ruling elite, and maybe not even then.

Murder is pretty much the only crime with a good clearup rate. Yet, I think it would happen a lot less if potential murderers were CERTAIN they would be punished for it. As Ifreann said, a murderer probably isn't thinking too clearly ... given that they're doing something that will almost certainly be disastrous for their own life. It's a bad life decision ... if it is one at all.

I disagree on the underlined tbh. I dunno what the stats in Ireland or Australia are but nearly a solid half of murders in the US go totally unsolved and unpunished. It's something you can pretty easily get away with if you have even a bit of foresight.

Which is both an interesting and somewhat scary thing to think about.

Are you counting cases that didn't go to trial or something? Suspicious missing persons? I thought it was a lot higher than that.

Anyway, fifty-fifty I fuck up my life, instead of walking away and letting this asshole keep my money (or whatever) sounds like terrible odds to me. Someone who takes a huge risk for a small reward ... at fifty-fifty ... is not thinking straight.

Or they are thinking straight, but only aware of a fraction of the risk they're taking. "The first day in prison will be terrible, but I'll make friends and after that ... <brain fade>". It's perhaps relevant that anger and fear optimize thinking for fast reactions (like fighting or running away) and for some people whose brains don't work so good at the best of times, it may not be possible to think more than a few minutes ahead.

[Ifreann]

Except in all the places where it isn't, because we've abolished the death penalty.

I don't think the executioners generally get any say in how someone is sentenced, so I don't think that their sympathy towards those they executed would make any difference to how often the death sentence is handed down.

Does your country not have soldiers? If it does, it's sometimes asked of people to use violence.

I would think that there's a difference between the kind of violence we ask of cops and soldiers, which is at least in theory only immediately necessary defence of themselves and others, and the kind of violence involved in executing someone.

---

There isn't really anything you can do to scare people out of committing murder, because odds are they aren't giving any thought at all to what might happen to them if they're caught and put on trial.

Disagree. Plenty of brutal regimes in the not too distant past have curbed most excesses through fear. Best Korea is probably the best example though the stats for things like murder aren't exactly well known it does appear to be a very rare thing. They've carried out very few public executions for it since 2000.

You can also look to non-state actors enforcing similar levels of fear in their territory to prevent crime. ISIS became quite famous early on for beheadings, crucifixions, stabbings etc as forms of public executions in response to crime and if nothing else it seems to have kept people in line and too scared to do anything against their laws until their caliphate crumbled.

Seems to me that anyone who is calculatedly deciding whether to murder people under those kinds of brutal regimes would just join the regime and murder people on their orders.

[Valentine Z]

A different kind of Capital Punishment I support:

Make the person read everything in ALL-CAPS. Now that's CAPITAL.

[Washington Resistance Army]

I disagree on the underlined tbh. I dunno what the stats in Ireland or Australia are but nearly a solid half of murders in the US go totally unsolved and unpunished. It's something you can pretty easily get away with if you have even a bit of foresight.

Which is both an interesting and somewhat scary thing to think about.

Are you counting cases that didn't go to trial or something? Suspicious missing persons? I thought it was a lot higher than that.

Anyway, fifty-fifty I fuck up my life, instead of walking away and letting this asshole keep my money (or whatever) sounds like terrible odds to me. Someone who takes a huge risk for a small reward ... at fifty-fifty ... is not thinking straight.

Or they are thinking straight, but only aware of a fraction of the risk they're taking. "The first day in prison will be terrible, but I'll make friends and after that ... <brain fade>". It's perhaps relevant that anger and fear optimize thinking for fast reactions (like fighting or running away) and for some people whose brains don't work so good at the best of times, it may not be possible to think more than a few minutes ahead.

Just overall murders. I don't have the exact numbers pulled up but in recent years 40 someodd percent of them go totally unsolved each year nationwide. I don't know if this holds true in other nations but in the US at least if a murder isn't solved very quickly the chances for it ever being solved plummet something like 50% and they usually end up remaining cold cases forever. In some specific areas it's even higher. Just under 75% of all murders in Chicago go unsolved for example. In more than a few places murder doesn't actually have a ton of risks to commit objectively speaking, not in the current system at least.

[The New California Republic]

Disagree. Plenty of brutal regimes in the not too distant past have curbed most excesses through fear. Best Korea is probably the best example though the stats for things like murder aren't exactly well known it does appear to be a very rare thing. They've carried out very few public executions for it since 2000.

You can also look to non-state actors enforcing similar levels of fear in their territory to prevent crime. ISIS became quite famous early on for beheadings, crucifixions, stabbings etc as forms of public executions in response to crime and if nothing else it seems to have kept people in line and too scared to do anything against their laws until their caliphate crumbled.

Seems to me that anyone who is calculatedly deciding whether to murder people under those kinds of brutal regimes would just join the regime and murder people on their orders.

The likes of Beria and his goons, who had no love of Stalin, are a testament to the kind of mentality such regimes garner: better to join the regime's appuratus of oppression and thus being the one doing the murdering than being amongst the party rank and file or the proles who are more liable to be murdered.

[Turelisa-]

Yeah no not really why.

Yeah really. A death penalty where it takes well over a decade to be killed or where you sometimes aren't even killed at all and die of old age is nothing to be scared of. Quite the opposite it's kinda funny and makes one wonder why they didn't just get life.

In Britain when the death penalty was used, the system of appeal for commutation was swift. 'Three clear Sundays' was the legal term for the period between sentence and execution, during which the condemned had the chance to appeal to the Home Secretary, whose decision was final.

[The New California Republic]

Yeah really. A death penalty where it takes well over a decade to be killed or where you sometimes aren't even killed at all and die of old age is nothing to be scared of. Quite the opposite it's kinda funny and makes one wonder why they didn't just get life.

In Britain when the death penalty was used, the system of appeal for commutation was swift. 'Three clear Sundays' was the legal term for the period between sentence and execution, during which the condemned had the chance to appeal to the Home Secretary, whose decision was final.

But again even that was not a deterrent.

[Wink Wonk We Like Stonks]

Option 3. There are some crimes where genuine rehabilitation is very unlikely, nothing nearing effective restorative justice can be realistically achieved, and society would not accept that person back unless you go out of your way to create for them a false history to trick people into doing so. In the long run we can work towards minimising usage of prisons for more minor crimes, but the "alternative" to prison for the more abhorrent criminals should in such a case be a much simpler one.

Agree, if someone does something horrendous like mass murder or human trafficking they deserve to be killed quickly and relatively painlessly. The government should look into how the death penalty is administered and who is it given to. I think the preferred execution method should be guillotine, due to its speed and effectiveness. Carbon monoxide or nitrogen might work well, but something about gassing people doesn't sit right with me, seems inhumane, but then again death is inhumane by nature.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Are you counting cases that didn't go to trial or something? Suspicious missing persons? I thought it was a lot higher than that.

Anyway, fifty-fifty I fuck up my life, instead of walking away and letting this asshole keep my money (or whatever) sounds like terrible odds to me. Someone who takes a huge risk for a small reward ... at fifty-fifty ... is not thinking straight.

Or they are thinking straight, but only aware of a fraction of the risk they're taking. "The first day in prison will be terrible, but I'll make friends and after that ... <brain fade>". It's perhaps relevant that anger and fear optimize thinking for fast reactions (like fighting or running away) and for some people whose brains don't work so good at the best of times, it may not be possible to think more than a few minutes ahead.

Just overall murders. I don't have the exact numbers pulled up but in recent years 40 someodd percent of them go totally unsolved each year nationwide. I don't know if this holds true in other nations but in the US at least if a murder isn't solved very quickly the chances for it ever being solved plummet something like 50% and they usually end up remaining cold cases forever. In some specific areas it's even higher. Just under 75% of all murders in Chicago go unsolved for example. In more than a few places murder doesn't actually have a ton of risks to commit objectively speaking, not in the current system at least.

Objectively speaking!?

Taking a 25% chance of life in jail still sounds like a very bad risk to me.

I think we should consider another explanation. Prison, though obviously terrible, might not seem much worse to someone whose life is in the shit already. And returning to the subject, doesn't that sound like someone who wouldn't care much about being executed either? They might live longer on Death Row than on the street ...

[Washington Resistance Army]

Just overall murders. I don't have the exact numbers pulled up but in recent years 40 someodd percent of them go totally unsolved each year nationwide. I don't know if this holds true in other nations but in the US at least if a murder isn't solved very quickly the chances for it ever being solved plummet something like 50% and they usually end up remaining cold cases forever. In some specific areas it's even higher. Just under 75% of all murders in Chicago go unsolved for example. In more than a few places murder doesn't actually have a ton of risks to commit objectively speaking, not in the current system at least.

Objectively speaking!?

Taking a 25% chance of life in jail still sounds like a very bad risk to me.

I think we should consider another explanation. Prison, though obviously terrible, might not seem much worse to someone whose life is in the shit already. And returning to the subject, doesn't that sound like someone who wouldn't care much about being executed either? They might live longer on Death Row than on the street ...

Shit man with the way people around here drive I feel like I have a 50-50 chance of dying every time I leave the house, 25% chance of jail sounds downright comforting in comparison

Your latter point is very true, yes. Even death row is arguably an improvement over some of the poorest areas of the Union, which kinda negates the whole point of it.

[Estanglia]

There isn't a scenario where I'd consider capital punishment the best punishment.

Pretty much up to murderers strike me as either too major of a punishment, or something that has too high of a chance of the person being innocent for me to be okay with them getting killed.

For murderers and higher, I'm someone who sees life imprisonment as a harsher punishment than capital punishment, so I'd much rather see them be imprisoned for life. Plus, if they're supremely evil people and we're punishing them harshly to extract some sense of vengeance or justice, you can do harsher than death.

[Kowani]

I disagree on the underlined tbh. I dunno what the stats in Ireland or Australia are but nearly a solid half of murders in the US go totally unsolved and unpunished. It's something you can pretty easily get away with if you have even a bit of foresight.

Which is both an interesting and somewhat scary thing to think about.

Are you counting cases that didn't go to trial or something? Suspicious missing persons? I thought it was a lot higher than that.

Anyway, fifty-fifty I fuck up my life, instead of walking away and letting this asshole keep my money (or whatever) sounds like terrible odds to me. Someone who takes a huge risk for a small reward ... at fifty-fifty ... is not thinking straight.

Or they are thinking straight, but only aware of a fraction of the risk they're taking. "The first day in prison will be terrible, but I'll make friends and after that ... <brain fade>". It's perhaps relevant that anger and fear optimize thinking for fast reactions (like fighting or running away) and for some people whose brains don't work so good at the best of times, it may not be possible to think more than a few minutes ahead.

49.5% never see anyone charged.