Perhapes you misworded this or it could be that you really think that I'm unfit to live in today's society without help. Dyslexia is a reading disorder where the sufferer confusses the letters of the words he or she is reading or writing. Baiscally, the brain has a hard time decoding the information that the eye is sending. I'm dyslexic but have never commited any violent crime. I have even commited any non-violent crimes for which I would be procecuted. I'm no saint, I drive too fast, drank too young, smoked cigarettes underage etc. But nobody has suffered from any of the laws I have broken. The otherday, I drove without my seatbelt.

A person with dyslexia can be trained to read and write but a serial killer can not be trained to not kill. They were designed to kill, they like to kill, and if given the oppurtunity most confess that they would do it again. I wanted to learn how to read and write but serial killers don't want to be non-violent.

Sorry to double post but...

vujsa

Well, you said so many opinions and I agree with most of them, in addition I could say that death penalty is quite bad, but in other view it is good, I would better stay neutral here, or the prisoners themselfs could choose to stay in jail for the rest of their life or to die..

1. We have all kinds of people in prison here in the States. Even Martha Stewart went to jail. Tom DeLay, a major political figure, might actually find his stupid butt in prison as well. Poverty DOES have a part in it, of course - there are plenty of poor people in jails and prisons all over the U.S. - but that doesn't mean that it's the biggest factor.

There are actually a ton of reasons for the overcrowding - not the least of which is the fact that criminals often don't serve even half of their original sentences. Even rapists and murderers are let out early on parole because, oops, we need their cells and beds for the new criminals.

Also: if you look at the U.S. prison system's rates of reincarceration (i.e. the percentage of inmates who are paroled/released/cleared/whatever and then are reincarcerated for committing another crime) ... it's gone up. Even though the inmates have access to FREE college education and job training (i.e. so that they don't have to be poor anymore - and unlike the rest of us, they aren't burdened with student loans), many still go out and commit more crimes instead of doing something with the opportunities that tax dollars have given to them. Poverty stinks, yeah, but it's not like inmates have no choice but to remain poor.

2. I made the "not commit crimes" comment in direct reference to the incident that started this particular thread (drug smuggling). That's usually not considered an unjust law.


3. I spent the rest of the "work camp" paragraph explaining what I meant. That paragraph serves to clarify for any people who have knee-jerk flashbacks to horrors that actually don't have anything to do with what I'm talking about.

Actually, there are lots of bits of missing data here. People are not getting early parole as much as they used to, because of mandatory minimums. Also, when people DO get out, background checks are MUCH more thorough than they used to be. Getting a job is tremendously harder for that reason. I know this for a fact. A friend of mine got out of jail 40 YEARS ago, and still has it come up in job interviews. If you can't live honestly, you live as best you can. If the only people you know anymore are those that you met in prison, then it should surprise no one if people turn back to crime, especially when some crime is so profitable.


Finally, yes, some people are ****ed up. But those are the extremes. Does anyone think that the US, with its HUGE incarceration rate, really has such a higher percentage of lunatics than other countries. And if so, WHY??? That would be the real question.

Finally, anyone convicted of a drug crime (including minor possession of Marijuana) is banned from any federal education aid or employment. This means that a lot of the people who would be best served by the 'free education' services are those that don't get it. The war on drugs has hurt our social freedoms and created problems with organized crime the exact same way prohibition of alcohol did.

Finally, putting people in jail, trying them, etc, is expensive. Especially for small crimes (drugs again), this is money being wasted without actually achieving anything.

Those who think jail isn't harsh enough have clearly never been there. It is no cake walk. The reason people think this is because the really ****ed up ones are the ones who run things there. I don't mean the guards. I mean the crazy mother****ers have the easiest time because everyone is afraid of them, so their time in prison is the easiest, while the minor criminals get it the worst.

Therefore, the people we would most like jail to frighten are the least frightened.

While killing people may satisfy our hate, anger, and wish for revenge, it doesn't achieve anything positive. Putting someone behind bars keeps them from killing/etc just as well as killing does. The main difference is that even behind bars there is a chance that a person will turn around and do something worth while.

And yes, there are people Like Ted Bundy. But how many of them are their really compared to the entire prison population? Not a whole lot. How many potentially worthwhile human beings are there? A good number. The problem is that we seem to have forgotten that most things don't fit into extremes. Most people are neither bundy nor pot smoking teenager. Most people are moderately messed up, moderately dangerous, and moderately reformable.

The actual thing that needs to be done is to be able to better distinguish who is far gone and who just ****ed up in life and just needs another chance. Do that, and you will lower the incarceration rate, keep the real crazies locked up, and let people who could actually be productive actually do so.

Suggestions: End the war on drugs. Learn from prohibition. It didn't work then, it isn't working now. All it does is fund terrorists and weapons manufacturers.

Remove mandatory minimums. These miss the peculiarities of real life.

Identify crimes of passion and separate them from crimes of serious mental defect. Child molestors are the second. They are hard to reform because they are actually broken in the head, its not just a 'choice' for them (AFAIK, I could be wrong). On the same note, separate ACTUAL child molestation from statutory rape. ACTUAL child molestation involves going after people who aren't physically mature. Some people lye about their age and look older than they are, and this shouldn't be the fault of the people they have sex with (of their own free will).

Raise the quality of our schools. Make the schoolday longer, really. Right now kids get out of school before their parents get off from work, which means there are hours of time where these kids have no supervision and sets the stage for bad things to happen.

Have more cultural festivals and such. I know this seems like a weird suggestion, but around where I live (NC), the kids I knew who 'went bad' did it mainly as a slow offshoot of boredom and parental neglect. You can't make someone a good parent, but at least you can keep kids from getting terminally bored to the point of lighting things on fire.



Oh, and to answer the root question: Death penalty wrong. Come on, we are better than that, at least supposedly. Violent nasty career criminals have no compassion. Hate them for it if you will, but realize that you are a step closer as soon as you no longer care about their life.

Vujsa, that is a little cold and unforgiving. What about people that are falsely accused of doing something, and they are MURDERED before they can be proven innocent? What happens then? "Oh sorry, we got it wrong. Please forgive us". There would be national outcry.

I agree that in a lot of cases, the death penalty would solve the problems. However, something you pointed out is a little obvious:
You can't exactly commit a murder if you aren't alive to do it.

For the likes of rapists, they do need a severe punishment. However, giving them the death penalty is not the answer. Alternatively, depending on the case and the circumstances, I think it should be a variable time in imprisonment. Nobody likes rapists, especially prisoners.

It would save a lot of money having the death penalty more widely used. However, the implications of sending anyone person to their death's needs to be thoroughly examined. A simple, "he raped her, he's gonna pay with his life" will not surfice. There needs to be a lot of reasoning behind it. For example, the person who raped the other one stalked them, molested, whatever. There needs to be more depth to a case in order to publish a death wish. If we start reverting to the "old times" where the community get a say, we will be dooming civillization to reverting back into Medieval times.

With you all the way. It's unimaginable that people could even do that. There is no excuse for stuff like that and people who do things like that deserve much worse than the death penalty.

I agree but as I mentioned earlier what if the law is unjust.


A solution to what?


If someone dies as the result of a fist fight do they deserve the death penalty?


I think this comment really highlight the death penalty is an emotional choice and not a logical choice. You base what crimes are worthy of the death penalty not on how much damage a person suffers but how vile you consider the crime. This is not a position unique to you and it is really hard to argue for or against.

Let me elaborate on this more. One fundamental principle of crime and punishment is the punishment should fit the crime. This is pretty much equivalent to the biblical reference of an eye for an eye. Thus if we accept this as our basis for crime and punishment we do not logically conclude that rape is worthy of the death penalty. But if you try to argue this position the opposition will go on the offensive and make the distasteful accusation that you are supporting the rapist.

At this point the futility of the debate is apparent. People can quote statistics until their eyes are blue but it really comes down to how each individual personally feels. Does our sense of anger and disgust for a crime out way our belief that it is wrong to kill.

I don’t think we can pretend for a second that there is any logic to this debate especially if we choose to give out the death penalty for rape and not for assault. With assault we can measure the damages. We can look at the bruises and the broken bones. We can see what wounds are permeate and what will heal.

For rape the majority if not all of the damages could be purely emotional. They are not quantifiable. I don’t want to dismiss the significance of emotional damage as emotional damage can be far worse then physical damage. As pain is only temporary and many wounds heel. I can’t say if I was rapped if it would be much worse for me then a debilitating assault or not as bad.

All I can say is if it is much worse why is it much worse? Is the majority of the damage that results from rape a natural emotional response or is it something we are taught. And if the damage is purely emotional can we be taught to better deal with it. Can we strengthen our inner self to better deal with things that we don’t like. If one person suffers worse emotionally for a crime then another should the punishment be different? Or to give another example, If a seatbelt could of saved someone’s life is the charge of vehicular manslaughter appropriate.

Anyway, I think society if free to choose or not to choose the death penalty as an action for a crime. Be it murder or rape. However, if you choose the death penalty for rape there will be a lot more mistakes. What bugs me is the clame of a moral high ground of people that choose to deal out death as punishment when infact they are responding more with the emotional mentality of a mob in a which hunt then a companionate missionary.


I don’t know what it would be like to be in prison but I do know it is a place I wouldn’t want to be. As for if it should be harsher, that depends on our objectives. I would like to point out that if our goal is to rehabilitee someone then we don’t want to put them into a prison system that will make them angry and depressed. So how can we be harsh and help rehabilitee someone. Perhaps the boot camp is the right approach. Give them discipline make them work, learn and exercise. Maybe a lot of surveillance to make sure everyone behaves and if they step out of line then we can talk about real punishment. In the old days they use to have solitary confinement. It was removed because it was considered cruel and unusual. But once a person is already in jail what recourse do we have for when they break the rules.


It is a choice we make as society. We have the choice of doing our best to make sure mistakes aren’t made (endless appeals) or doing our best to save money. There is little middle ground.



I find this opinion interesting. It sounds terrible for someone to be wrongly accused but the fact is in every aspect of life there are risks society accepts and people die because of those risks. If we wanted to illuminate all possible risk of people dieing from human error, know one would ever drive a car and maybe not even cross a bridge. The notion that we can save everyone is ridiculous if we want to have a reasonable level of freedom. So the question is not really are mistakes made but what level of mistakes are an acceptable risk.

Just to clear things up, these days people don't get the death penalty unless they really are guilty. Most juries don't give the death penalty if there is any possibility of them being innocent. Usually the death penalty is for people proven beyond guilty by forensics. So I don't think you have to worry about innocent people getting the death penalty anymore.

To ArmTheMob

No, dealth penalty is still given out. And sometimes forensics are wrong. We are even now freeing people based on DNA evidence, where we once thought they were guilty beyond any possible doubt. Now that we have DNA evidence, we may think we won't have this problem anymore. That our evidence is ACTUALLY beyond a doubt. Then, in 30 years, we will discover that.......

You get the idea.

Once we have somebody, killing them is sort of beyond the point. In a cell, they cannot hurt people (provided the cell is actually a cell). On the other hand, we CAN learn from them, and figure out (or try) why the hell they went bonkers, and what we can do about that.

Of course, this solution requires people to listen, and think, instead of freak out and play politics, so...good luck on that ever happening.

On first reaction, I agree. Seems like life in prison would be a slow form of torture. I'd lose my freaking mind after spending half a life time in jail.

But then I look at what happens in court. It's interesting how many people plea down to life, so the don't have to have the death penalty. Somehow, when you're in that situation, when you've been caught and are facing sentencing, when you know you're guilty. Spending the rest of your life somehow appears better than just ending it quickly.

To me the whole thing probably becomes something like and near-death-experience. You realize, "Hey! I really might be put to death!" It's a whole nother feeling (I'm sure, but I wouldn't know!) than what we think of, sitting here and speculating.

Do life-sentence prisoners without parole really change all that much once they are in jail? I don't know. Do the people who were facing the death penalty and plead down make a difference from their cell? I don't know. Is there ever a shawshank redemption-esque enlightenment and improvement? I doubt that.

Do I believe in the death penalty as a valid punishment? Yeah. For Drugs? Probably not. But I do have to point out the effect it has on those Asian countries that have that option open for the judge. It doesn't curtail the huge organized crime gangs, but it cuts down. the small time street guys alot. Worth it? I don't know. I know that I did do things that would have landed me the death penalty if I had been doing them in those Asian countries that do that (though I've moved on). So that right there makes it hard for me to decide if it's worth it. Maybe, you get to punish the druggers but save on the prison overpopulation?

I believe it's a good one for killers and such. The only problem is that we'll never stop those "heat-of-the-moment" killers. How many times have you been angry and done something you regreted? You didn't kill anyone, but that's how some murders happen. How many times in those moments did you think of the consequences when you did the wrong thing? Me neither. Neither do the killers who make the "angry-mistakes." Sometimes this is a reason for a lesser sentence. How does that make sense? It may not be premeditated, but when "heat-of-the-moment" killings are not given lesser sentences, it might cut back on them.

One last thing I have to talk about is a irresponsible statement in this thread



Excuse me? You mean if I am in poverty than I'm not responsible for my actions? Poverty is never the reason for a crime. People making choices are reasons crime happens. That has to be one of the most socially irresponsible suggestions I have seen in a while.