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The real reason to end the death penalty

paulgraham.com

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Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#271

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

djoldman wrote: post #179

On the subject of deterrence: If someone commits a premeditated crime carrying a guideline sentence of {20 years in State A, vs 30 years in State B} do we really think that they're more likely to commit the crime in State A? It's my intuition that for the most part, people committing crimes aren't thinking about potential repercussions, much less measuring them. I mean is someone thinking "Oh, only 10 years? I'll do…

Deterrence is best accomplished by rapid, swift punishment of wrongdoing. So, enable victims to resist their criminal abusers with force. Allow police officers to beat thieves caught in the act. Make criminals pay immediately for their actions.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#272

Post by AnimalMuppet »

I have two thoughts.

First, yes, PG is right that we need to do something about wrongful convictions. If we do away with the death penalty and these people live the rest of their life in prison, but we don't kill them, that's... better, I guess? But it's still horrible, and it's still a problem that we need to fix. Just eliminating the death penalty doesn't fix the problem. If you make eliminating the death penalty a side effect of the campaign against wrongful convictions, that's fine. But if you make eliminating the death penalty the fix, that's hopelessly inadequate.

Second, the moral calculus gets awful. The usual question is, how many guilty people would you let go free to avoid putting one innocent person in prison? That shows the problem - false positives and false negatives are inversely related. But there's another issue, which is that some people who murder do so more than once. So, to avoid putting one innocent person in prison, how many innocent people are you willing to see die because of not-convicted murderers who repeat the crime? (If anyone has recidivism statistics on released murderers, I would welcome them.)

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#273

Post by mensetmanusman »

Life imprisonment/confinement is arguably identical to the death penalty (since you are dead to society, the government kills you by outliving you, etc.).

Since innocent people also get life imprisonment, one could argue that any punishment like this that could potentially harm innocent people should be outlawed.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#274

Post by mbesto »

djoldman wrote: post #179

On the subject of deterrence: If someone commits a premeditated crime carrying a guideline sentence of {20 years in State A, vs 30 years in State B} do we really think that they're more likely to commit the crime in State A? It's my intuition that for the most part, people committing crimes aren't thinking about potential repercussions, much less measuring them. I mean is someone thinking "Oh, only 10 years? I'll do…

What I learned from Criminology 101 in college was this:

By far, the largest factor of deterrence was the likelihood of getting caught.

So, people, do in fact rationalize "I'm definitely going to get caught and the consequences are bad, I won't do it".

So, to your point, the punishment itself is largely a deterrence. I think because a rational human being simply cannot grok the differences in long term effects. This is already essentially proven in how people behave with money - i.e. people suck at long term saving without external forces nudging them to do so.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#275

Post by _bohm »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #253

Wrong accusation is definitely a problem, but ultimately I think people should be free to decide what kind of laws they want. The Machinery of Freedom describes a government-less system in which people voluntarily pay an insurance which defines what the law is and what happens when the law is broken. If people have different insurance companies, they can agree what law is going to prevail in which cases. If capital p…

> with a system of private prisons (another fantasy, given the current trend of increasing the government size, instead of reducing it), maybe someone would be able to turn a profit and make it work.

Both prison labor and private prisons are absolutely a thing in the United States today. As I understand, prison labor is illegal in privately operated prisons. However, state-run prisons are allowed to use prison labor to manufacture goods and sell them to private entities for profit it many US jurisdictions.

Many people find this practice objectionable because it creates a profit-based incentive for states to issue more prison sentences and to make them longer.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#276

Post by jkingsbery »

ufo wrote: post #192
tompccs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but this sort of remark is why the left and intellectuals more widely fail at winning politically. Rather than use arguments that are amenable even to people who disagree on the fundamentals, you would rather retain the moral high-ground by refusing even to debate on their terms, thereby failing to actually influence policy (in this case a matter of life and death). If the de…

Framing this as a left vs right issue is an USA-centric way to frame the question. Consider how the US is basically the only country in the american continent that still goes ahead with capital punishment. Most other countries in the continent, from all kinds of political orientations, have either banned capital punishment outright or haven't executed anyone in more than a decade.

Even in the US, "left vs right" on the death penalty is an oversimplification. A pretty good summary can be found here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/religious-st... ... Anecdotally, as a religious person, I'd say that most Catholics I know either oppose the death penalty or would want it to be much more limited than it is now.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#277

Post by im3w1l »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #246
im3w1l wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my belief that the sentence length affects crime rate indirectly by affecting the collective unconscious . For instance if you see someone who did his time talk about his life in retrospect on the telly that affects you. When you see the (lack of) wrinkles on his face, that affects you. When you uncle Joey misses your birthday bash because he is still in jail, that affects you etc.

There's no effect to the best of my knowledge. Long sentences appear to be a tool for gaining votes and wasting taxpayer resources rather than correcting behaviour. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180514-do-long-prison-s...

Go to the article they cite and you will see two things. 1. They claim that longer sentences do in fact work (but are subject to diminishing returns). 2. The evidence is weak and full of caveats. Like it's not like we have RCT running for generations. We have observational studies rife with problems. They understandably try to make the best of what they have, but frankly it's just not good enough.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1745-9133...

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#278

Post by ludocode »

klelatti wrote: post #232

I absolutely abhor the death penalty. I do find this reliance on a single rationale to stop the death penalty problematic though: - For many people I suspect that there is a combination of level of proof and severity of crime that would lead them to say the risk of erroneous conviction can be ignored. - Someone will say let's focus on improving the justice system to deal with the errors. I'd rather the burden of just…

I agree. Some of the most violent criminals can't ever be re-integrated into society, so the only alternative is life imprisonment. I've seen many arguments that this is preferable to the death penalty because "We will accidentally execute some innocents", as Paul Graham's here, as well as "It costs more to execute someone due to the higher standard of proof required".

In all such cases the corollary is "We can accept a lower standard of proof because we're not actually killing them. We're just locking them in a room forever and waiting until they die." I don't honestly see much difference between these outcomes. Why is one so morally superior to the other?

There are much better arguments against the death penalty. One is that if the death penalty exists, it's much easier for the state to execute political dissidents. If the death penalty is abolished (and there are strong controls on extra-judicial killings, like police murdering civilians during arrests), it's much more difficult for the state to silence critics. Even if they are locked away in jail forever, they will still have a voice.

Another good argument is that if the death penalty is a possibility it gives criminals nothing to lose which makes it more dangerous to apprehend them. If you want your police to be able to more peacefully arrest criminals, it makes sense to abolish the death penalty.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#279

Post by sneak »

chrisco255 wrote: post #269

I think death penalty should be abolished for all crimes except mass murder. There was a killer in Norway that murdered something close to 70 people 8 or 9 years ago. Thanks to maximum sentences in Norway being 18 years or so, the guy will be walking free in another 9 years time. I'm sorry, but some people just want to watch the world burn and those people should be put down.

This position is, from my viewpoint, indistinguishable from that of a mass murderer, as that is literally what you are calling for.

By a strict logical interpretation, you might consider executing yourself as you have met your own stated criterion for being eligible for execution.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#280

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #272

I have two thoughts. First, yes, PG is right that we need to do something about wrongful convictions. If we do away with the death penalty and these people live the rest of their life in prison, but we don't kill them, that's... better, I guess? But it's still horrible, and it's still a problem that we need to fix. Just eliminating the death penalty doesn't fix the problem. If you make eliminating the death penalty a…

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