Poll

Another thing I don't understand is I don't get the difference between sociopath and psychopath, or if there is even one. Maybe it's just degrees of being incapable of compassion? Or is it their actions? e.g. a ruthless politician who screws voters might be called a sociopath and a murderer a psychopath?

You are absolutely correct that many of the 283,000 inmates with a mental illness would fall under "victimless crimes." How many of these type of inmates are sensitive and compassionate, it's hard to tell and would be extremely hard to measure. It's per speculation.

As far a the psychopathic state not being related to mental illness. Take a look at the excerpt I found in an article from Pyschology Today, dated January 13, 2013, entitled What is a Psychopath?

The book that psychologists and psychiatrists use to categorize and diagnose mental illness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM IV) contains a category for something called “antisocial personality disorder” (APD), while the World Health Organization delineates a similar category it calls "dissocial personality disorder." These are much broader categories than that of psychopathy. The category of psychopath is seen as included within this category but considerably smaller so that only roughly 1 in 5 people with APD is a psychopath (Kiehl and Buckholtz, 2010).

The psychopathic state, according to the DSM IV is part of a mental illness,

Michael wrote: "The psychopathic state, according to the DSM IV is part of a mental illness, ..."

Okay, thanks for the clarification on that score.
Being incapable of feeling any compassion toward others certainly sounds ill to me - I mean compassion is the thing that makes us human in many ways. Otherwise we are just living a dog-eat-dog world and it's every man for himself with no sense of community.

James Morcan wrote: "Another thing I don't understand is I don't get the difference between sociopath and psychopath, or if there is even one. Maybe it's just degrees of being incapable of compassion? Or is it their ac..."

Great Question and I think I have an answer for you. From that same article, I mentioned above, here is another excerpt that answers your question.

First a bit of terminological history, to clear up any confusion about the meanings of “sociopath,” “psychopath,” and related terms. In the early 1800s, doctors who worked with mental patients began to notice that some of their patients who appeared outwardly normal had what they termed a “moral depravity” or “moral insanity,” in that they seemed to possess no sense of ethics or of the rights of other people. The term “psychopath” was first applied to these people around 1900. The term was changed to “sociopath” in the 1930s to emphasize the damage they do to society. Currently researchers have returned to using the term “psychopath.” Some of them use that term to refer to a more serious disorder, linked to genetic traits, producing more dangerous individuals, while continuing to use “sociopath” to refer to less dangerous people who are seen more as products of their environment, including their upbringing. Other researchers make a distinction between “primary psychopaths,” who are thought to be genetically caused, and “secondary psychopaths,” seen as more a product of their environments.

I hope this helps. Good stuff!

James Morcan wrote: "Michael wrote: "The psychopathic state, according to the DSM IV is part of a mental illness, ..."

Okay, thanks for the clarification on that score.
Being incapable of feeling any compassion toward..."

Can't agree with you more, James.

What just happened here? I missed out certainly.

What the hell...if some people think they can play god with other people's lives and commit the most horrendous crimes that haunt the victims family members for the rest of their lives, i say kill the bastatd!

We condemn people for killing, but commit the same crime? That does not work for me in a just world, which pretends to be morally superior.

Lisa wrote: "What the hell...if some people think they can play god with other people's lives and commit the most horrendous crimes that haunt the victims family members for the rest of their lives, i say kill the bastatd! ..."

Actually, Lisa, you raise an interesting point I hadn't previously considered...A lot of people in this debate, including in this poll, have said that having a death penalty is playing God by deciding to kill certain criminals. But I think your point is equally valid: Those psychopaths who rape, kill and torture innocent people and terrorize victims' families and even entire communities are playing God just as much, if not more so, by deciding who lives and who dies....

So the question remains: how do we deal with the worst scumbags of all? And is it just or appropriate to let them live out their days alive and in relative comfort, watching TV reading whatever they want etc?
Someone mentioned it costs on average US$100,000 per year of taxpayers money to house each of these serial killers in maximum security facilities...Is that cost to society better than the immorality that supposedly comes from putting these suckers to death?

I am starting to swing on this poll a bit now. At first I voted UNSURE and said I was 99% sure the death penalty was wrong, but had a lingering doubt. Now, I am still unsure but moving toward 50/50!!!

Looking forward to hearing other Undergrounders arguments as I plan to get off the fence by the end of the poll and vote one way or another.

Morally superior to who? We are the only species, as far as i know, defining morality.
We are already making the judgment of locking people up and isolating them from society and they are often treated in an inhumane way. ..how is that any better than taking a person's life?

I think it's better if a person who is a murder (with intention) to be sentenced death for his crime/s. We are not talking self defence or no intention crimes such as accidents, but harmful and purposeful crimes should be sentenced to death. I vote YES for death penalty, who kills once will kill again and again; same goes for raping and torture.

James Morcan wrote: "Lisa wrote: "What the hell...if some people think they can play god with other people's lives and commit the most horrendous crimes that haunt the victims family members for the rest of their lives..."<
It actually costs more to put them to death. ..

Lisa wrote: "It actually costs more to put them to death. .. ..."

(Apparently) it costs approximately $100,000 per year ongoing to keep them alive.
And a criminal could live in maximum security for decades, even 50 years...That could cost maybe $5m to society by the time they die.

How much does it cost to put someone to death???

Cases without the death penalty cost $740,000, while cases where the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 million. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population. There are 714 inmates on California's death row.

Deathhpenaltyinfo.org

Something obviously counting against the death penalty is that innocent people are sometimes killed. I think I heard an estimate that about 1.3% of those put to death in the US are later proven to be innocent.

So if the death penalty was kept, it should be only for those where the evidence is so emphatic that there is literally 0% chance that the killer could be innocent.

James Morcan wrote: "Something obviously counting against the death penalty is that innocent people are sometimes killed. I think I heard an estimate that about 1.3% of those put to death in the US are later proven to ..."

Agreed...definitely don't agree with the death penalty as it is today or has been in the past, but i do think that some people are better off dead.

Another concern with today's system is that politicians are basically pulling the trigger. ..so i guess it becomes more of a game than anything. I don't think that is appropriate at all.

Lance Morcan wrote: "I may be going against the flow here, but I voted 100% YES for the death penalty. I'd even pull the switch if there's no other volunteers. ..."

Ha!
Best comment in this poll so far!

Lance Morcan wrote: "I may be going against the flow here, but I voted 100% YES for the death penalty. I'd even pull the switch if there's no other volunteers. Reason being...there are recidivist offenders out there who are just plain evil and beyond education, rehabilitation, redemption, salvation or any other 'tion'. Beyond hope in other words.

Why spend $100K (est.) a year to keep a proven killer in lockdown when that money could actually go toward saving lives? Seems society is more focused on looking after offenders than the offenders' victims and victims' families. Is there a seconder for that?..."

That logic is hard to argue with actually.
Am still UNSURE but am 60/40 in favour of the death penalty for the worst of the worst.

Lisa wrote: "Another concern with today's system is that politicians are basically pulling the trigger. ..so i guess it becomes more of a game than anything. I don't think that is appropriate at all. ..."

Well, I think we should flip that and make it that voters can decide to put the worst, most fraudulent politicians to death. Maybe that'd make politicians behave more! I'm actually only half joking as the bottom line is politicians have peoples lives at stake by sending people to war or stealing the people's hard earn tax dollars, so why shouldn't politicians lives by on the line also?

Tim Dees explains it better than me. Saying a specific amount is a bit of a fallacy as every state and every prison is different. Surely the cost of running the prison plays a role in the cost. ...

"It costs roughly (very roughly--the costs vary widely depending on the state and the age of the prisoner) $25,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated. If an inmate is sentenced to life at age 25 and lives to age 70, that's $1,125,000. Typical cost of a death penalty case from criminal conviction to execution of the condemned varies from $2.5 to $5 million. The additional cost is attributable to the special custody and security measures for people on death row, and the cost of mandatory and inmate-initiated appeals. With rare exceptions, the state pays for the costs for both sides in a death penalty appeal" Tim Dees ..................https://www.quora.com/profile/Tim-Dees

I look at this situation like this. I have one life, with free will, regardless of anything that happened to me in childhood. Many people have suffered atrocities far worse than any of us have, and yet are still compassionate humans. If you kill a person for an understandable reason, or accidentally, or for the hell of it, you can be rehabilitated. But if you kill and kill again (unless you are Dexter) for no reason, other than pleasure or insanity, you are a blight. Kill them, and spend the money saved on helping homeless people, abandoned animals, impoverished children - people, beings, who will relish the opportunity to thrive and repay the community that they live in. Plus, we have a whole plethora of sociopaths and psychopaths, waiting for their day to fulfil their mission. You either give them a war to fight in, or a job cleaning up the society they want to function in. I don't want a war. I want the trash taken out. No one is 'made' evil. They made a choice.
Bu having said all that; I would not want to be the person making the choice. A hypothetical is easy. Reality is somewhat different. I fear I would remove myself from the debate and allow someone else to decide, which is cowardly and unethical. So - throw them in prison and give them a paintbrush and a canvas. Insane art is quite inspiring.

Sorry to skew your poll...i did vote Yes, even though I'm not 100 percent positive. I feel i am more towards yes than no , but only under certain conditions.

Carmel wrote: "If you kill a person for an understandable reason, or accidentally, or for the hell of it, you can be rehabilitated. But if you kill and kill again (unless you are Dexter) for no reason, other than pleasure or insanity, you are a blight. Kill them, and spend the money saved on helping homeless people, abandoned animals, impoverished children - people, beings, who will relish the opportunity to thrive and repay the community that they live in. ..."

Right, that's the final straw!
You just convinced me to change my vote from UNSURE to YES!
But with a proviso that it's only repeat killers, beyond the point of any reform who have caused countless suffering to victims and their families, and who are 100% proven guilty beyond "reasonable doubt".

It's not about the cost.
It's not about whatever the heinous crime in question is (which incidentally, is open to human definition).
It's about: If we kill someone for doing wrong, we do wrong ourselves.

Right and wrong can be debated, of course.... :)

I can't kill an ant personally.

I'll kill it for you, harry

Another goodreader and I have often discussed this. I'd favor death for the most heinous crimes--except.....when your politicians are corrupt, they use the criminal justice system to oppress people, and then the death sentence becomes an irreversible action. For that reason, right now I oppose it.

No institution or goverment has the right to kill anybody. That doesn't mean that revenge, as an individual and personal matter, should be forbidden, but no way to be applied by a so called "superior" instance such as, for example, the State.

Harry wrote: "It's not about the cost.
It's not about whatever the heinous crime in question is (which incidentally, is open to human definition).
It's about: If we kill someone for doing wrong, we do wrong ourselves...."

Agreed. But I'd also take the debate a step further.
If we exact no justice and allow some people to live even tho they have taken countless lives, do we also wrong ourselves? And is it possible that society swings from one extreme to the other? Meaning, we used to be very Right Wing when it came to crime and punishment and hang anyone who committed the slightest crime. And that indeed was wrong. However, have we swung too far to the other extreme and become too Liberal or Left Wing where we almost pander to the worst criminals and inadvertently disrespect the memory of the victims as well as their families?

Harry wrote: "I can't kill an ant personally. ..."

Okay, so if we take your ant analogy, what if there was one evil ant killing millions of the ant kingdom? Might it be best to kill that ant for the good of the ant colony?

And so that evil ant represents psychopaths.
How do we deal with psychopaths?
We either need to figure out how to rewire their brains or do something else as they're slowly destroying society.
And in the meantime, do we let the worst of the worst psychopaths live out their days or not?

Personally I feel the victims and their families are the most important aspect of this debate. They deserve to have what is right for them.
I'd therefore be curious to hear from any victims of crime in this poll. Or family members of victims. Would like to know whether they felt justice was served and the sentence was appropriate for the crime committed?

Lisa wrote: "I'll kill it for you, harry"

I'll have you arrested for Insecticide.

James Morcan wrote: "Harry wrote: "I can't kill an ant personally. ..."

Okay, so if we take your ant analogy, what if there was one evil ant killing millions of the ant kingdom? Might it be best to kill that ant for t..."

I wish we could hear from such people.

There's a dialogue in one of our Hindi movies. It says, "People unnecessarily disrespect death. Real pains are given by life!"

Not exactly translated there. Much more feel comes when spoken in Hindi.

But it's true, life can give much more pain than an infinite sleep. They should just make them realize that they've done something wrong!

James, you're sometimes making it sound like us against the death penalty are all for 'let them live their lives out in a wonderland of happiness and TV'.
I support justice. Not death.

I don't agree at all that victims' families have more right in the say so. Otherwise you might as well say that the victims of any crime get to decide on the perpetrator's fate.

We should set by example to make a better world.

How do we deal with psychopaths? Just as we already are - and it's best to pose that question to qualified psychologists, not congressmen.

Yes, it'd probably be best for the ants to kill the ant in your analogy, because ants aren't capable of building and guarding prisons.

Well, Harry, sometimes I think it's useful to take an extreme example to take an argument to its logical conclusion and see if it holds up....

What if their was the ultimate serial killer who was one day found out to kill let's say 1,000,000 people. This included the worst crime imaginable to women, children, etc etc.

Is there a point, given all that suffering, all those victims and their families' despair, and all the carnage to society, where someone in power might just say "You know what, it would be best for all of us to know this mother*%&$(* is no longer alive anymore"?

I mean, would it be enough in that scenario for everyone to know that the dude is simply locked up? After all, being alive in prison is still a life and perhaps some of the most resilient of psychopaths actually enjoy prison life as they get to read, eat, sleep, watching TV, working out in the gym, never have to worry about paying bills, etc etc, and so for all we know in their warped minds being locked up is the equivalent of the "wonderland of happiness" you mention.

James,

No, I don't think there is a point where we say 'You know what..." - because that's not the point.
As you say, "being in prison is still a life". Exactly. Who are we to take it away? I guess most are seeing (psychotic) murder as a most heinous crime, so how can we ever then murder the perpetrator? It makes no sense to me on moral or logical grounds whatsoever. Surely, you're basically saying: we have the right to have revenge so we can all feel better. I say that's not the right way forward in creating a better world.

I'm all for leaving them in a box with no reading material, no TV etc. etc. by the way. Let's not confuse arguments. :)

Harry wrote: "As you say, "being in prison is still a life". Exactly. Who are we to take it away? ..."

But equally: who were they to take the lives of innocents?

I wonder if us worrying about the moral implications of putting serial murderers to death is an example of us becoming too Liberal minded?

Indeed: 'who were they to take lives...'
Which is why we shouldn't.

I don't see how locking someone up away from society is too liberal.

The prisoner's rights/the prison system is another matter.

Harry wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I'll kill it for you, harry"

I'll have you arrested for Insecticide."

Thank you for this comment.
I would hate if someone thinks to be empowered to kill someone or some animal in my name. If I think I don't have the right to kill, nobody else has the right to do it in my name.

And by the way, the percentage of later found innocent death sentence victims is at about 60% or even much higher (I even heard of about 80% in certain states of the U.S. in a TV report which got information by Amnesty International a short while ago). Just the data is not openly revealed or researched more deeply, not to get people off the support for death penalties.

Death penalties just show how ill our society is and are no cure for it.

Perhaps we should consult zoltan on this one ;)

Harry wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I'll kill it for you, harry"

I'll have you arrested for Insecticide."

Lmao! Im already a serial insecticidal maniac...perhaps about time i get locked up in ant prison...omg..that sounds horrific!

Lisa wrote: "Perhaps we should consult zoltan on this one ;)"

Zoltan Istvan where are you, where are you?



Something tells me that according to his book The Transhumanist Wager he would be in favor of the death penalty.

p.s. Zoltan is still running for US President isn't he? 2016. The Transhumanist Party, I think it's called.

Christine wrote: "And by the way, the percentage of later found innocent death sentence victims is at about 60% or even much higher (I even heard of about 80% in certain states of the U.S. in a TV report which got information by Amnesty International a short while ago). Just the data is not openly revealed or researched more deeply, not to get people off the support for death penalties.
..."

I'd certainly be against the US death penalty system, but that's a different story to this poll perhaps. I guess it really comes back to: do the worst of the worst serial murderers, the Ted Bundy types, deserve to live out their days in any form?

Or maybe we can just lock them all up in an underground bunker together and see what they'll wait do to each other....for the aliens to take them

Lisa wrote: "Or maybe we can just lock them all up in an underground bunker together and see what they'll wait do to each other....for the aliens to take them"

Not so much aliens, but I'm in favour of giving these psychopaths what they want: they are happiest terrorizing and tormenting others, so if the death penalty is not allowed then why not just put them in an environment where it's every man for himself?

One more interrelated point to consider: A number of killers have said they wrote to imprisoned serial killers like Manson and others and via correspondence they learnt how to kill in better ways or learnt from them in general...

So there is a case to make that simply locking them up is not enough to be 100% sure they will not harm society further and indirectly create more victims...

So how much patience as a society should we have?
How many times should we turn the other cheek before we say enough is enough?

Killing a killer doesn't make you a better person nor live a better life, it just makes you, just as bad as killer yourself.

Making a criminal rot in jail is the best solution than killing a killer.

James Morcan wrote: "One more interrelated point to consider: A number of killers have said they wrote to imprisoned serial killers like Manson and others and via correspondence they learnt how to kill in better ways o..."

Again mate, that's not the point in discussion! I think we're all agreeing the prison system needs to be changed.

What I don't understand (forgetting arguments about cost issues for a moment) is why anyone thinks locking up someone forever isn't good enough? Why they'd have to go that extra step of killing.

I don't get it.

I love your passion inclusive of exclamation marks, Harry :)

But I think at least some of these interrelated points perhaps are related to the discussion and do kinda answer your question of why just letting the worst of the worst criminals spend the rest of their days in jail is not enough (in the eyes of some/many citizens).

So things like letting these criminals talk to other inmates (ones who may be eventually released) or conduct interviews is never really going to go away no matter how much you change the prison system.

Likewise, the idea that some psychopaths could be quite happy in prison (given they probably hate people) seems perverse in a way...I mean, why should they not only be allowed to live, but also have a degree of happiness?

And lastly, how immoral can it be for us to humanely put these uber-serial killers to death? To my mind, not very.

James Morcan wrote: "I love your passion inclusive of exclamation marks, Harry :)

But I think at least some of these interrelated points perhaps are related to the discussion and do kinda answer your question of why j..."

I don't see why it should be infeasible to stop things like contact with other prisoners IF you changed the system. That's how it used to be not too long ago. Isolation and gruel.

As for the rest, I'll only end up repeating myself. :)