[Poll] Whose opinion should be considered more? - Which side would you take?

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I just don't think we should use prison inmates to decide the appropriate punishment. Letting horrible gangs have their way in prison to spite a child molester is fucked up.

The death penalty makes sense to me in a form of justice where you can't keep the public safe from someone. So, in the theatre of war, when for some reason you have no usable prison facility, etc. Chronic escapers who commit crimes after escaping would be another time to consider it.

But I'm looking at it from a pretty utilitarian standpoint. The justice system has two main purposes, both equally important, in my opinion. The first purpose is to establish a system of punishment for crimes that are effective at deterring crime and making sure criminals can't victimize people freely. The second purpose is to make the public believe that there is a fair system of justice so they don't take it into their own hands.

That second part is really key. If the justice system is perfect in every way, except the victims don't think the criminals paid a fair price, so they take their own revenge, the justice system is actually worthless. So much violence in human history is due to the cycle of revenge where people aren't satisfied that justice has been served.

So there's the logical angle, then there's the angle that has to consider it's gotta make a bunch of ignorant, unruly monkeys(humans) happy.

 

[MadDamon]

prisons designed around isolating dangerous people that are relatively spartan.

We have that. It's called a mental institution

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

I'm going to pull out of direct context and say that I only want the death penalty for the following:

-Mass Shooters/serial killers
-Pedophiles
-Furries
-Politicians who commit treasonous acts.

Now the first two really require no explanation. However, the latter, I'll explain. If I were the grand poobah of the United States, and could make any single major change to how we conduct business here, I'd make the death penalty MANDATORY for anyone convicted of ANY form of act that subverts the will of the American People. Are you taking backroom donations from a corporation to serve their ends? Your head will roll. Are you a dual citizen in the Senate? Death Penalty. Are you selling secrets to a foreign power, or colluding with them in a way that can be proven in court? You'll hang. Are you pulling a heel-turn on the stances you took during the election candidacy, so you could appeal to a demographic, but not actually intend to make good on the issues you campaigned on? Death penalty!

I'm all for the right to a fair trial, but in my world, you'd have NO ability to plea down from treason, if convicted of a crime that egregious while in office. It should be a pretty fucking good deterrent if you ask me.

 

[Manah]

The victim's family's opinion and the public's opinion really shouldn't matter in legal proceedings for serious crimes.

That said, life in prison is far harsher than the sweet release of death, and it means if the person sentenced to life turns out NOT to be guilty, they can get released. It's a better solution overall, imo the death penalty doesn't really need to exist.

I would look to the cost of feeding and housing a guaranteed lifelong prisoner vs the death penalty.

I've heard that it costs more execute a prisoner than to house them for life, but I have a hard time believing that.

It does, due to how many trials and so on are involved; It's not just the cost of the injection.

 

[queerape]

There is a serial killer in my country who has brutally murdered and raped teens, and because we have no death penalty this fucker gets to live out on our money in protective custody so other inmates can't touch him. We also don't have life without parole, so every few years he gets a (futile) parole hearing the families of the victims are dragged out to which retraumatizes them. Even if we did have life without parole, he's still living off our taxes in protective. If we had the nerve to reinstate the death penalty this guy would have been long disposed of and we wouldn't have to feed him much less deal with hearings every few years. Most of the country would support him getting death if we still had it as an option.

 

[anprim gang]

I believe that there are certainly people who are so evil that they need to be killed, especially those who hurt children. However, people, and to a greater extent the government, are not perfect. Unlike prison, there's no way to release someone from punishment after they've been killed, and as such I'm hesitant to allow the death penalty just because it's possible to make mistakes.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

There is a serial killer in my country who has brutally murdered and raped teens, and because we have no death penalty this fucker gets to live out on our money in protective custody so other inmates can't touch him. We also don't have life without parole, so every few years he gets a (futile) parole hearing the families of the victims are dragged out to which retraumatizes them. Even if we did have life without parole, he's still living off our taxes in protective. If we had the nerve to reinstate the death penalty this guy would have been long disposed of and we wouldn't have to feed him much less deal with hearings every few years. Most of the country would support him getting death if we still had it as an option.

It REALLY fucking bugs me when people bring up the whole "Oh, it takes almost a million dollars to execute someone by way of lethal injection! Keeping them in prison for life is not only a moral weight off my shoulders, but it's cheaper!" thing.

Look, motherfucker. We don't HAVE to do it that way. In fact, we shouldn't. Firing squad is fine. Guillotine is fine. Electrocution is fine. Figging is fine. Putting them in a burlap sack weighted with rocks, and dumping that whole mess in a lake, is FUCKING FINE. Why do they need a chemical cocktail? So they can have slightly less pain with their death? Fuck that, who cares? Throw 'em feet first in a woodchipper, it costs like $2 an hour to run one of those things. At least that way, the criminal is useful to the world for being mulch.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

It REALLY fucking bugs me when people bring up the whole "Oh, it takes almost a million dollars to execute someone by way of lethal injection! Keeping them in prison for life is not only a moral weight off my shoulders, but it's cheaper!" thing.

Look, motherfucker. We don't HAVE to do it that way. In fact, we shouldn't. Firing squad is fine. Guillotine is fine. Electrocution is fine. Figging is fine. Putting them in a burlap sack weighted with rocks, and dumping that whole mess in a lake, is FUCKING FINE. Why do they need a chemical cocktail? So they can have slightly less pain with their death? Fuck that, who cares? Throw 'em feet first in a woodchipper, it costs like $2 an hour to run one of those things. At least that way, the criminal is useful to the world for being mulch.

Most of that cost is legal fees.

And the number of people taken off death row because evidence showed they didn't commit the crime shows it's money fucking well spent. Remember the party administering the death penalty is the FUCKING GOVERNMENT! You know, the same people who brought you the hilarious FBI text messages? The bay of pigs?

 

[spurger king]

There should be two classes of prison.
Prisons designed around reform that are comfortable and prisons designed around isolating dangerous people that are relatively spartan.

I'll do you one better. Prisons should be a set of concentric rings, a la Dante's Inferno. How far in you go is determined by the severity of your crime. The outermost rings have fairly permissive rules and are reserved for nonviolent offenders and the like. At the center, there's a pit where the worst fuckers go, and occasionally the guards drop food in and lift out waste/human remains. Oh and also if you try to escape to an outside ring the inmates of that ring are allowed to kill you with no repercussions.

My actual serious answer to OP's question is that life in prison, without the possibility of parole, is an acceptable alternative to the death penalty. Punishment, in my view, is inflicted on criminals for two reasons. One, for the criminal to make up for the harm he caused. Two, to ensure that the same person does not commit the same crime again. In the case of some guy killing a kid, there's no way to make restitution to the family, and the perp obviously can't be allowed back into society because he's simply too dangerous. For both of those reasons, the guy stays in prison until he dies. He'll suffer a great deal, but that is incidental. If his suffering helped in any way to atone for his misdeeds, we'd torture him every day for the rest of his life. Why bother killing him then? The only reason I can think of is to save money, but then why not just enslave him and make him work for his daily gruel, until he can no longer work and starves? I can only think that medically-induced death is some stupid vestigial tradition from back when people couldn't just be contained indefinitely. I really can't see a practical benefit to killing criminals, so life in prison it is.

 

[AF 802]

Death penalty for the absolute worthless. Rapists, sex predators, murderers, corrupt politicians, fraudsters, and the like.

 

[Jellybean Time]

i think the death penalty is the way to go, honestly. i think of my younger siblings in these situations, if someone were to do this to them i'd want the pedo to be sentenced to death.

 

[Emperor Julian]

The man might be innocent, We live in a society where success is based on statistics so their's an incentive to get guilty verdicts rather than esure justice is done and the system can and does fuck up, this is before we consider crooked cops and inept defence attorneys. If we're wrong we've just added another body to the pile.

Prison without parol ensures order, a degree of justice and reprisals for evil while providing contingenecies for error and a good man will never die for an evil one. it is an infinatly superior option for day to day civic law.