Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
>
Should there be a death penalty for the most heinous crimes? (Poll Result: More of you vote YES than NO!)
date
newest »
newest »
Great the majority voted No! There is hope for us yet!
Iona wrote: "Great the majority voted No! There is hope for us yet!"If 40.6% is a "great majority" ;)
56 people voted no, 53 people voted yes
Lisa wrote: "56 people voted no, 53 people voted yes"and the extra 3 were Undergrounders on death row, I heard on the grapevine...
I'm thinking you need to screen the voters...
James Morcan wrote: "Lisa wrote: "56 people voted no, 53 people voted yes"and the extra 3 were Undergrounders on death row, I heard on the grapevine..."
And their votes shouldn't count...so really the result's a draw. Yay!
Not a draw as 60% did not vote against the death penalty, they either voted YES or UNSURE
Lisa wrote: "unsure is basically a YES"I agree Lisa.
Just sayin'
Nope! Give them life imprisonment. Make them live with what they did.
Lisa wrote: "unsure is basically a YES"Genius, Lisa - now there's a clear majority :)
I feel like you just pulled off a political miracle ala the 2000 US Presidential Election when Bush "won" at the last minute!
James Morcan wrote: "Lisa wrote: "unsure is basically a YES"Genius, Lisa - now there's a clear majority :)
I feel like you just pulled off a political miracle ala the 2000 US Presidential Election when Bush "won" at ..."
A crazy miracle would be Jeb Bush winning at the last minute!
This is indeed a challenging area. Usually those in favour of the death penalty are viewed as the harsh right wing side who want to punish; and the anti death penalty are viewed as the progressive, liberal side who want to rehabilitate. However the reality is that prisons do not rehabilitate... the recidivism rates are above 50% for inmates in most prisons. This means that prisons as they exist today are a very expensive torturous means to keep people out of society for a limited period... ultimately to be released back into the community in worse psychological shape than they went in.
For me personally if I was the criminal I would prefer the death penalty to 25 years in prison.
So my question is which is really the more compassionate and effective route?
Rehab is okay when it is feasiblePunishment rarely works on adults
Removing from society 0-5 years for minor
Death penalty for major crimes
That is the honest way to deal with crime
Christina & J.D. - very valid points!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGTWC...Interesting point in this 7 min clip is that once in prison, you can't judge the person by their crime anymore in terms of fair treatment... they are all 'just inmates'.
More humane to execute than imprison? Doubtful... the type of disturbed individuals that need to be executed are not the victims of sodomy or other improper treatment that would want them wish they were dead. Allowing these individuals the opportunity to lie in their cells reliving their crimes and contemplating ways to reach out to and manipulate whoever they come in contact with is not torture, but rather an opportunistic setting. I'd rather they cease to exist.
Perhaps certain criminals should be given suicide opportunities.....
Lisa wrote: "Perhaps certain criminals should be given suicide opportunities........"Ha!
And maybe they should be taken to parts of prisons where health and safety cannot be assured...And "unfortunate accidents" could occur...
But I agree with you that for some psychopaths they could be quite happy being in prison for life. Hardly punishment for many I suspect. And what you say about "manipulate whoever they come in contact with" is my primary concern with letting the worst serial killers live...There will definitely be more victims in the future one way or another, directly or indirectly, if such killers are allowed to remain in prison where they can implant ideas into other inmates' heads (inmates who will be released in future), they can give media interviews thereby influencing warped minds in the general population, and worst of all some of these mass killers will eventually be released as old men or on technicalities or whatever and kill again...For some reason, life rarely means life in prison, which is ridiculous considering some of these killers have murdered and tortured so many.
The prison system has too many flaws to secure these psychos 'get what they deserve'....how do we really know they are getting what they deserve in prison? Their emotional incompetency cannot be judged or measured by the average person. What if what we consider torment is actually a pain that is pleasing to their psyche?
Lisa wrote: "The prison system has too many flaws to secure these psychos 'get what they deserve'....how do we really know they are getting what they deserve in prison? Their emotional incompetency cannot be ju..."Let's face it. No non-psychopath or sociopath can understand the appeal of killing for killing's sake, or manipulating others as a matter of course. If you establish that they cannot be a dependable part of society, and need to be removed from it, then we should at least be honest and terminate the threat to society. Putting them in prison 'for life' is like letting your kid eat hamburger, but not letting him know where hamburger comes from.
J.D. wrote: "Let's face it. No non-psychopath or sociopath can understand the appeal of killing for killing's sake, or manipulating others as a matter of course. If you establish that they cannot be a dependable part of society, and need to be removed from it, then we should at least be honest and terminate the threat to society. ..."They are indeed like a sub-species within the human race.
I would like to learn more about psychopaths and this whole subject dovetails in with the following discussion thread I started a while back:
How to spot a sociopath -- https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Round 2 of the death penalty poll is now on: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...Pro death penalty votes are surging ahead, but the poll has another week to go, so let's see what the final result is.
I read that solitary confinement in move nerve racking, mentally painful, and terrible than death
Voting for this poll is now over as of Feb 1, 2017.So to the question of 'Should there be a death penalty for the most heinous crimes?' here are the final voting results:
42.0% voted YES
37.0% voted NO
21.0% voted UNSURE
Check out the comments section beneath the poll for more info: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...
Meanwhile, for anyone who missed out on the poll or has more to say on the issue, you can keep the discussion alive in this discussion thread.
WORLD'S MOST DEPRAVED KID KILLER Paedo’s sick campaign of child rape and murder is so horrific the Philippines plan to bring back death penalty just to execute him https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1837152..."A MONSTER who filmed himself raping and torturing children and babies in the Philippines has been charged with such horrific crimes there have been calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty."
New Mexico to bring back death penalty for killers of children https://www.rt.com/usa/361817-new-mex...
Could Sierra Leone revive the death penalty to curb rising violence? http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/could-sierra...
Nebraska Votes to Bring Back Death Penalty http://www.newser.com/story/233787/ne...
New Jersey senators introduce legislation to bring back death penalty http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/ne...
"The legislation would permit the death penalty in five scenarios; killing a law-enforcement or corrections officer on duty, killing a child during a sex crime, terrorism, a perpetrator previously convicted of murder, and serial killers."
Voting in one house is not the sam thing as signing into law.
The problem, in real life, is "the most heinous crimes" are defined rather arbitrarily by prosecution agencies throughout the USA. While most people would agree on the easy ones (the bin Ladens of the world), the lack of consistency after that should be troubling to all of us. I could only support the death penalty in an ideal world where only the worst of the worst truly get it and people are not regularly exonerated for being falsely convicted.
Well said, Jesse. I agree with all you say.
I agree with Jesse as well. I've seen innocent people serve years while the confessed-guilty walk free. We need rules that avoid knee-jerk emotional responses. Rules that apply to dirt poor & filthy rich equally. No more of, "they would not do well in jail" crap that some judges use to get their buddy's out of real sentencing. I would love to see the scamming-bankers serve time in Leavenworth as opposed to the minimum security clubs they get sent to. Equality is all I want for everyone. (Sorry, I wasn't trying to get on a soapbox) :-)
I agree with Jesse on the larger points. I would add that while I would have been quite happy to put Bin Laden's head on a pike on the capitol dome, others claim that 9/11 was a false flag. This uncertainty is the problem with state sanctioned murder. We human beings are fallible, and we know that we can be wrong. The death penalty is decided upon and carried out by human beings. Therefore, the death penalty will inevitably lead to the deaths of innocents. The question becomes, "Is vengeance worth the lives of innocent people?"The poll itself raises an interesting question in my mind. The sample size is too small and geographically spread out to be useful in larger studies, but it does offer a glimpse of the thought processes of a specific subset. It is limited to people who don't trust what our governments tell us. If we don't tust our governments to tell us the truth, why do about half of us trust them with our lives?
I can understand where people who vote YES are coming from; I myself have been on the fence regarding this issue for a while. But today I feel my response is a clear NO. Aside from the philosophy that you shouldn't use death to combat death, the biggest point for me is that you can never be 100% sure that someone has committed a crime - especially with police corruption, forensic errors, and malicious set ups which we can see throughout history. With the death penalty there is no going back: no leeway to correct errors, no way to conpensate, no chance for the innocent to live out the rest of their life. The cost of such decisions as the death penalty when they are applied erroneously is just far too great.
I would support the death penalty for properly defined heinous crimes, but never for one crime, nor for one court case. As others have mentioned, there is the scope for mistakes, although again, I think a lot more effort should be made to avoid those. I am far from convinced that life in prison for something you did not do is a great advance over death. I would rather see the right decision made in the first place.
Tim wrote: "Is it possible to withdraw citizenship as a punishment? I was thinking about an effective punishment for this new wave of Islamic extremism and decided I'd simply withdraw citizenship for these ind..."Can we do it? I'd like to say we could Tim, but I suspect the P.C. Brigade would prevent it.
Tim wrote: "Is it possible to withdraw citizenship as a punishment? I was thinking about an effective punishment for this new wave of Islamic extremism and decided I'd simply withdraw citizenship for these ind..."The ancient Greeks used to do it, and exile remained a common punishment for felonies well into the Renaissance. Often the punished preferred execution, as exile was usually seen as a slow and often horrific death. For most of human history civilization was the state and the state was life.
Before you get too enamored with the idea, there were some who thrived in exile. Their homecomings were sometimes hellish affairs for their former countrymen.
I definitely think there should NOT be a death penalty for even the worst crimes! If the death penalty served any other purpose than death to another human, perhaps I could support it in some cases; however I have never heard a reason that was based on scientific research or fact that could make me support the death penalty (keeping in mind that I do not subscribe to the belief that ultimate incapacitation is a valid reason for that extreme a penalty)! If a loved one was taken from me in a brutal murder, I would probably want to kill the person myself. That is totally different than the death penalty...in my humble opinion. Let me also add that, in the instance i just described, I do not believe that i would actually kill someone not that it is an appropriate solution in lieu of the dp!
For those of you who may have lost people under such horrific circumstances, I am sorry for your loss and the losses of all of those who lost people in such a way! I just abhor murder enough to not engage in it myself. When someone is sentenced to execution, they are being sentenced by "the people " of the state, not by the judge themselves. I can't get on board with that!
Here are the results:
40.6% voted NO
38.4% voted YES
21% voted UNSURE
(But wait, there's more!!!)
----------------------------
UPDATE: ROUND TWO (Jan-Feb 2017) ...
We decided to open up the poll again over a year later as we now have a lot more members - 3,500+ in fact. Thought it'd be interesting to see how this revisited poll ended up.
And so to the question of 'Should there be a death penalty for the most heinous crimes?' here are the final voting results (inclusive of original poll voting results):
42.0% voted YES
37.0% voted NO
21.0% voted UNSURE
Check out the comments section beneath the poll for more info: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...
Meanwhile, for anyone who missed out on the poll or has more to say on the issue, you can keep the discussion alive in this discussion thread.