This year we can end the death penalty in California

Post by mibbiting » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 8:30 PM UTC

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.

Prisoners are big business in the US. It's slavery. They manufacture car license plates, washing machines, etc etc etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUyZkwSDar0

Post by alphapapa » Sun, Nov 06, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #141

alphapapa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jail is not there to remove people from the pool, it is there to rehabilitate. According to whom? > But executing them makes 'us' just as bad as 'them'. So you're saying that, for example, the state executing a mass murderer is just as bad as mass murder?

According to much of the Western world. And even if you don't accept that, just consider: most crimes aren't murder. They don't get people sent away for life, but for a period of 1-a few years. They will be released back into society. If we do not rehabilitate them, we can expect recidivism from either failing to counter the errant impulses, exposure to similar or worse criminal elements while incarcerated, or failur…

There is much to unpack in this topic, but I'll just point out that the idea that its purpose must be singular, one of punishment or rehabilitation, is a false dichotomy.

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

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