capital punishment is wrong

AngryBadger wrote:

Given that America has a population of nearly 300 million people i think it's fair to say they're going to have more crim that most countries, and a larger prison population.
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Highest in the world per capita (of any reporting nation. North Korea's is thought to be somewhat higher).

patzer117 wrote:

Ok, Devil's Advocate approach here, what's wrong with beating the ****e out of convicted criminals and giving them a shorter sentence? It may not rehabilitate them or deter crime - but then as people have pointed out neither does prison. What's the matter with simply punishing people extremely harshly?

Patzer117

It dehumanises us as a society, and would probably do no good. There is evidence that a well-run prison can work, especially for comparatively minor crimes.

Freelancer wrote:

Again semantic quibbling, you don't face up to life imprisonment for growing the other three crops. The fact that cannabis is such a massive industry despite such serious penalties for it's growth, proves severe sentences aren't a deterent..

It proves that they consider the risks worth it. If a huge crack down occured with very harsh sentences being given most of 2007 crop would be dumped. You cannot threaten a man unafraid to die with the death penalty true, but I would argue that it is more the low chances of getting caught that encourage people to commit crime. We have high numbers of rape, because we catch few people. Our murder solving rate is high and so we have few murders. People must know that they will get caught before they fear the consequences.

Freelancer wrote:

Answer this very carefully Firespinner, are you calling be a liar? Are you suggesting I was aware that this was untrue when I first said it?.

Yes, I am. Without paying huge attention to the news I knew that they had ceased to execute minors. Since such acts would be unacceptable in todays society it is reasonable to assume that you would have checked such a fact. The same for cannabis being the US's largest crop: simple logic indicates that this would not be true as such a figure would generate a massive retaliation against growers. Thus the figure would be rendered untrue. Assuming that you have basic human cognitive function, it seems that the only option is that you knew the facts were false and used them anyway, hoping that shouting "pedantic" would hide your duplicidous nature

Freelancer wrote:

The overall thrust of my point still stands despite your pedantry. The US is western country with the death penalty, and severe penatlies and sentences, depsite this the murder and crime rate is high and it's prison population growing, therefore claims that the death penalty and severe sentences act as a deterent are untrue.

Did you ever thnk that maybe the rates would be higher without the death penelty? The US has a very individual orientated culture so I would expect high crime.

Highest in the world per capita (of any reporting nation. North Korea's is thought to be somewhat higher).

May that be due to simply better detection, and higher conviction rates for longer sentences with less chance of parole? The U.S. system tends to be less orientated towards the crinimal with less in the way of suspended sentences, early release schemes and so on as far as I know. The 3 strikes law in California for example, or the zero tolerance approach to policing in New York. Let alone the death penalty itself.

In Irish terms its popular wisdom that prison is a revolving door, that its not worth reporting anything less than extremely serious crimes, and judges are seen as handing out ridiculously light sentences. Is that the perception of the US police/courts?

Prison isn't just supposed to be about punishment, this isn't Victorian England. Prisoners are supposed to learn new skills and we're supposed to make at least an attempt at rehablitation.

Ive been thinking about this. Prison should foremost, and above all else be for the protection of society from dangerous criminals. I was annoyed, like a lot of people today, to hear about the scum who abducted, tortured and raped two teenage girls before forcing one girl to watch whilst the other was butchered and then shooting her (sheer miracle she survived). Whats really incomprehensible is that 4 of the gang who committed this crime were enabled to do so by the British Parole Board.

They were released from their sentences thanks to a an misguided attempt to rehabilitate them in the community and a system that failed to accurately rate their chances of re-offending ( I doubt very much that the murder was the only crime they committed on their release) and failed to ensure even somewhat adequately that they were not a threat to the public. Simply, the parole officers let scum loose on the public and two families are forever destroyed by it. Their only oversight was a twice weekly meeting. Theres talk about "lessons learned" but nothing will be. Who knows, maybe theyll introduce a new self assessment form for the scum. Oh yippie, I feel safer already.

Im strongly of the opinion that parole/community sentences and so on need to be cut back in a major way. Above anything else society needs to be protected from these scumbags. They should serve their full sentences, and their sentences should be from the perspective of punishing the crime rather than protecting the criminal. Also multiple sentences need to run seqeuntially, not concurrently - otherwise youre only being punished for the most serious crime. The only use Id have for a sentence review board would be to evaluate if criminals at the end of their sentence still pose a threat to people. If they do, then their sentence should be extended.

I think its time to recognise that rehabilitation is not possible for career scumbags and the focus needs to go to minimising the damage they do. The very least that can be done is to locate the parole officer who worked the 4 cases above and sack them as incompetent. The families of the two victims should sue the British government for every penny it can claw out of them.