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This year we can end the death penalty in California

paulgraham.com

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Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#221

Post by carapace »

maxerickson wrote: post #125
pm90 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard to fix the jails and prisons when widespread poverty still exists in society, for the simple reason that if the prisons offer a better lifestyle than living in the society, more people would choose to go to prison.

There are many changes that could be made to prison without making it a better option than living free but below the poverty line.

Inverting the logic: We must let or make the conditions in our prisons be harsh, harsh enough so that poor people don't commit crimes just to get "three hots and a cot" on the taxpayers' dime.

Doesn't that sound insane?

Let's fix the prisons, and let's have something like a basic standard of living, below which we only let people live if they want to. I.e. so-called Universal Basic Income, or something. I think we should literally give people housing, food, water, and health care, just because.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#222

Post by BlackjackCF »

breatheoften wrote: post #174

When I was young, I was certain the death penalty is obviously, trivially an incorrect thing to do. Regardless of what was done, there was no cause for society to choose to take someone's life. Now that I'm older, I worry about the possibility that banning the death penalty is an implicit acceptance of the policy of locking people away for life. According to the article 4% of people who are sentenced to the death pen…

I'm stuck in this weird place as well.

I see the death penalty as almost more humane than life imprisonment (and--this rationale is a little cold--also much less of a tax burden.)

The US really needs to get its shit together in terms of figuring out how to rehabilitate criminals and get them back into society.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#223

Post by breatheoften »

J-dawg wrote: post #209
breatheoften wrote: post #174

When I was young, I was certain the death penalty is obviously, trivially an incorrect thing to do. Regardless of what was done, there was no cause for society to choose to take someone's life. Now that I'm older, I worry about the possibility that banning the death penalty is an implicit acceptance of the policy of locking people away for life. According to the article 4% of people who are sentenced to the death pen…

The US practice of locking people up for life is pretty shocking to many people in Europe. In the UK, the number of people who will never be released is somewhere around 50, in the USA it's something like 50,000. Maybe I'm a limp wristed liberal, but 'Three strikes' has always seemed utterly barbaric to me. Even its name being based on a sports metaphor seems totally inappropriate for something so serious.

Wow -- US population is roughly 5x the UK population, yet we have 1000x people serving life sentences ... I can't help but think of that quote that we should judge the state of a society by the state of their prisons ...

I really wish we could do something to dramatically change the prison system in the US -- its insane how much horrible inertia guides its current trajectory ... Given how much more we know about humans than we did 200 years ago, why aren't there better ideas on the role of prison and the justice system disciplining their mutual evolution than were available in the past?

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#224

Post by BlackjackCF »

danhak wrote: post #169

Important note on Prop 66, which PG unfortunately glossed over: it will override 62 if it passes with more yes votes than the other measure. Therefore, if you're opposed to the death penalty and intend to vote yes on both measures--reasoning, for instance, that the reforms on 66 such as expedited appeals for death row inmates are an improvement regardless of whether 62 passes--you're undermining your own vote.

I find it annoying as a California voter that both of these made it onto the ballot at the same time. It seems to make more sense to me to FIRST vote on whether or not the death penalty should be repealed before voting on whether or not to expedite the process.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#225

Post by abfan1127 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #74
abfan1127 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4% of innocent put to death vs. Ted's 3? Don't forget the pressure on prosecutors to arrest a serial killer, the chances of pinning it on someone (say a relative) is nonzero. But the chance of undoing a wrongful death penalty is exactly zero.

True. But the chance of undoing a murder is also exactly zero. 4% innocents on death row is a higher number than those killed by escapees, I will agree. But where do you stop? That means at least 4% of those sentenced to life without parole are innocent. Now what? Is leaving them to rot in jail for the rest of their life really that much better than executing them?

The happy clients of the Innocence Project seem to enjoy the rotting in jail option over the execution...

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#226

Post by bolocker »

Karunamon wrote: post #211
bolocker wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does and that's not what seems to bother people about the death penalty. It's the act of killing that tugs on their heartstrings. They happily ignore the millions serving decades in prison because they didn't have the basic requirements to lead a good life. The agenda is: 1. End the death penalty. 2. Assume someone else will help innocent people, which they largely won't. 3. Go bad to enjoying blissful ignoran…

Does this entire chain of comments have any purpose or goal other than the same old tired "shame the rich" meme that gets so much play? PG thinks the death penalty is bad, but PG isn't worried enough about other things you think are worse, therefore PG is wrong? (???) I honestly don't see where you're going with this other than cheap sniping.

He's like someone who is anti-abortion but doesn't worry at all about people after they exit the womb. They're lying when they say they actually care about life. In reality, they just care about how abortion makes them feel.

He's anti-death penalty in the same way. The orders of magnitude more suffering in our prison system can't get a tweet but the nearly disused California death penalty urgently bothers him...

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#227

Post by bolocker »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #216
bolocker wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but if you live in an elite life bubble you'll only care about things that make it through that bubble. Why are so many rich celebrities obsessed with animal rights, the death penalty, and climate change? Because those issues affect them personally in some way. They gnaw at their conscience in a way that the extreme suffering of hundreds of millions of their fellow citizens does not.

I don't think this is right. Climate change is not known for personally affecting anybody. It's more of an ineffable millenarian idea. Rather, I would say rich celebrities are obsessed with animal rights, the death penalty, and climate change because those ideas are fashionable among rich celebrities, not because they're relevant to rich celebrities for any fundamental (i.e. would still apply if no one knew what the…

Plenty of educated elites are well aware the problems climate change could cause for them personally. Civil unrest, rising sea levels, and pollution. Things personal wealth only partially mitigates.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#228

Post by bolocker »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #218
bolocker wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does and that's not what seems to bother people about the death penalty. It's the act of killing that tugs on their heartstrings. They happily ignore the millions serving decades in prison because they didn't have the basic requirements to lead a good life. The agenda is: 1. End the death penalty. 2. Assume someone else will help innocent people, which they largely won't. 3. Go bad to enjoying blissful ignoran…

>Yes it does and that's not what seems to bother people about the death penalty It does seem to bother Paul Graham as he writes "The police often arrest the wrong person. Defendants' lawyers are often incompetent."

Clearly not, since that argument applies far more strongly to non-death penalty cases where there is far less scrutiny.

It's also clearly an argument intended for Other People who need pragmatic reasons for ending the death penalty. He is against it on purely ethical grounds, or in my opinion, because it makes him feel bad about himself.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#229

Post by kasey_junk »

harryh wrote: post #177
J-dawg wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can release a wrongly imprisoned person or refund a wrongly imposed fine.

But given the existence of error rates there will always be wrongfully fined or imprisoned people. We won't ever get a chance to fix the vast majority of false convictions. So even though you're partially(1) right about reversibility it doesn't really matter given that this won't actually come up most of the time. There will still be wrongfully penalized people. 1. I would argue that you're only partially right becau…

There is a pretty strong line drawn at death. I was once asked to justify that line on the record as part of a jury selection process and I couldn't do it. That didn't make it untrue and it didn't convince me that the line doesn't exist.

I'm pretty far down the scale of "logical justification". At least enough to make Jesuits blush, and I personally cannot justify my line that is right before "killing someone". I'm happy to consider that one of the many areas where logic fails us and move on.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#230

Post by jacquesm »

greglindahl wrote: post #165
WillPostForFood wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people didn't want contradictory things, they wanted the death penalty, and they wanted the courts to implement it. The court wasn't caught in the middle, it was just composed of judges with opinions out of alignment with the general population.

So you don't think that the people want the Constitution, or the court system?

Think of a constitution as guardrails about democracies, the constitution nails a couple of very basic rules down hard and leaves room for interpretation and variation. It's a good principle, the constitution guarantees long term stability and the 'basics', the parliaments/congresses/whatever the local variation is called deal with day-to-day variance.

So 'the people' will want both, depending on whether they have the long or the short term view and those two views can and do contradict at times.

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