• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Death Penalty more often

D

Dutch321

New member
Joined
Sep 19, 2008
Messages
20
Reaction score
12
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Very Conservative
The Death Penalty needs to be applied more often and it needs to happen quicker, whether or not it makes would be criminals less likely to commit a crime. Our tax dollars wouldn't be used to feed and house child raping, murderers, who are also cannibals.
 

We had a huge debate about this just a couple of weeks ago... I agree.
It has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with logic... :2razz:
 

We had a huge debate about this just a couple of weeks ago... I agree.
It has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with logic... :2razz:

This is your competition:


To which I basically responded:


http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/32489-death-penalty-33.html#post1057656653

The whole thing can be read from here:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/32489-death-penalty.html
 
There are three main arguments in support of capital punishment. We start with deterrence. The argument looks simple enough: increase the costs and you'll reduce the supply of murderers. However, the empirical analysis is, at best, 'dodgy'. Zimmerman (2006, Estimates of the Deterrent Effect of Alternative Execution Methods in the United States: 1978-2000, American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Vol. 65 Issue 4, pp 909-941) notes that "[t]he empirical estimates suggest that the deterrent effect of capital punishment is driven primarily by executions conducted by electrocution. None of the other four methods of execution (lethal injection, gas chamber asphyxiation, hanging, and/or firing squad) are found to have a statistically significant impact on the per capita incidence of murder”. Thats a tad suspicious. We could argue that it reflects the importance of perceptions over brutality. Perhaps more likely we have to wonder whether the econometric methodologies adopted are producing biased results. The standard analysis is based on the original work of Ehrlich. Its been way too easy to choose an econometric methodology to 'encourage' the results you want.

Now clearly your argument is not based on deterrence. However, you still have to consider it. Your “whether or not it makes would be criminals less likely to commit a crime” inappropriately implies that we have effects ranging from zero to positive deterrence. In fact, deterrence is likely to be negative. By ensuring that the marginal cost of committing additional murders is zero, the death penalty can increase the murder rate. If these effects are not considered, we're left with a simple result: emotionalism ensures that optimal punishment strategies (that minimise crime rates) cannot be achieved.

The second argument is what you've focused on: accountancy costs from the criminal justice system. Its one of the weakest arguments available as its inconsistent with the available data. The Economist succinctly reported about it last year: e.g. Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland, says that, but for the death penalty, his state would have been $22.4m richer since 1978. That money would have paid for 500 extra policemen for a year, or provided drug treatment for 10,000 addicts. "Unlike the death penalty, these are investments that save lives and prevent violent crime," he told the state legislature in February, in a speech urging it to repeal capital punishment in Maryland. To use the accountancy cost argument you have to construct your argument around the notion that it doesn't matter how many innocent people that the state kills.

We're therefore left with the third argument. Its usually lumped (perhaps unfairly) in the “religion” camp, given its summarised as an “eye for an eye”. However, we ultimately have to refer to psychology and how conservative social norms are reinforced. Garland (2007, The Peculiar Forms of American Capital Punishment, Social Research, Vol 74, pp 435-464) puts it nicely;

[T]he collective killing of hated criminals (or merely the assertion of the people's right to do so) remains one of the ways in which groups of people express their autonomy, invoke traditional values, and assert their local identity (Garland, 2005a; Simon, 2007). Somehow it serves all these functions while also generating news, dramatizing the dull business of punishment, and giving casual pleasure to prurient onlookers.

Understandable, ultimately rather distasteful!
 
Have fun Dutch, but don't expect compromise at all, let alone him answering any questions directly or conceding anything...

This is gonna be fun to watch. :rofl
 
Bodhisattva said:
Have fun Dutch, but don't expect compromise at all, let alone him answering any questions directly or conceding anything...

This is gonna be fun to watch. :rofl
Click to expand...
The amusing aspect is my previous post destroyed your whole blubbering on the earlier death penalty thread. You still haven't worked out the importance of deterrence theory, but I still have high hopes for you.

The blip may seem a tad too obese in its blippyness, but I'm not one to judge!
 

Is this a joke?

The system already is broken. At least 72 people have been executed wrongfully. God knows how many innocent people are in for life as well. And your premise about cost is backwards. The primary cost to the death penalty is proving that the person did commit the crime beyond a shadow of a doubt. Decreasing the time and applying it more to an already backlogged system that can't even get evidence tested at an acceptable rate is going to result in even more people being put away and executed wrongfully. Essentially you are saying that we should be increasing state sanction murder of innocent people.

Now, if we had a system that COULD test evidence quickly and cheaply and if we could reduce the cost without reducing the quality of trials, perhaps so. But that isn't the system of America.
 
For the DP to work we can't hide it in a brick building, out of sight. That almost defeats the entire purpose of the DP as a deterrent. Also the 10-15 year span between sentence and execution is nearly as inexcusable and makes the process almost worthless.


Want to put a dent in gang crimes, drug related crimes and crime in general?

Start doing public hangings in the center of town, bring the schools down to observe the consequences of being "cool". Maybe kids will realize "Hey, this whole Gansta thang isn't really such a glamorous or cool thing to do".

But that would be oh so cruel, and we can't have that! Society is soft, and incapable of protecting itself.
 
The death penalty is a waste of resources. Its cheaper to put someone in prison than it is to order their execution. The death penalty cannot be reserved and thus requires extra scrutiny to go forwards. Life without parole is functionally the same to society, and I see no reason to waste any more taxpayer dollars on emotional vengeance when we already have a deficit.
 

You're proposing not only changes to the system that would increase the chances of the innocent being executed, but that we expand the crimes people are executed for to drug crimes?

Dutch: You'll wind up spending more tax dollars to execute inmates. Then you also have to deal with the negatives that are implicit in the death penalty such as the possibility that the individual is innocent and making it impossible that they could contribute anything useful to society.
 
Re: In which country?

oberhaenslir said:
.
In which country?
Click to expand...
We'd normally think of some uncivilised cesspit that hasn't grasped the basics of an effective criminal justice system...
 
I don't think we really need the death penalty anymore. We need less laws, that's for sure, but I think we've gotten past the time when we need a death penalty. Life in prison without parole is good enough. Plus I'm not so certain I like the State having a legal means of offing its own citizens. I think we'd just be better off without it on the whole.
 

QQ more?

Your system isn't stopping crime, denting crime or even slowing it down.

It's time we took back society and showed the worthless types how we deal with their unwanted behavior.
 
Last edited:
MrVicchio said:
It's time we took back society and showed the worthless types how we deal with their unwanted behavior.
Click to expand...
Why do you think the US has so many "worthless types"? I hope you're not going to be all anti-American about it
 
Prohibition Does Not Work

"Prohibition Does Not Work"
MrVicchio said:
Want to put a dent in gang crimes, drug related crimes and crime in general?
Click to expand...
If you want to get rid of drug related crimes get rid of the institution of laws that creates criminal organizations.
 

In Bold: What in the world are you talking about? This makes no sense whatsoever. :lol:
 

Plus it would be cheaper in the long run. And the harsh on crime people should actually support this. For one, the tests for life in prison are lower then capital punishment. Therefore, the same resources can be used to convict even more people. And since less evidence is required, labs can process evidence faster. Capital punishment is a pain in the *** due to proving beyond a shadow of a doubt.
 
I dunno, doesn't that seem like saying "Yeah, we need to fight WAY more wars and win them faster."? State executions take a while because of the appeal process, which is necessary for justice. Considering how many death sentences are overturned, decreasing the odds at a successful appeal means increasing the odds of killing an innocent person. I can't imagine anyone being comfortable with that.

As for the "more often" thing, I dunno. The jury is still out on whether or not the death penalty is an effective deterrent. I wouldn't think it would be prudent to apply it to more crimes until we were sure.

BTW, are all Dutch criminals on death row cannibals? I don't think that's very common here in the US.
 
I agree that capitol punishment should happen quicker... infact... for Christians such as my self...

"Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man.
- Genesis 9:6


So even God says that capitol punishment is right so if we know someone murered they should be killed as well in a fair death penalty after trial but it should happen quicker
 

Build more jails instead. Quicker and cheaper.
 
Last edited:
I would prefer that we replace capital punishment with "living hell" type punishment, where their entire remaining life is very unpleasant for convicts doing capital crimies. I also fear wrongful convictions resulting in the death penalty.

But, if you are going to have a death penalty, don't tell me life in prison is cheaper. It is so only because of the way the legal system handles the death penalty (and everything else, for that matter). The legal system is more concerned with following (sometimes stupid) rules than finding the truth, resulting in unending appeals, which get expensive.

I also think that, if we must have a death penalty, puplic executions would have a deterrent effect.
 


...Well said, and what the hell is with a the appeals system. Decades long? :lol:

I fear wrongful convictions as well, but they are becoming more and more scarce...

Guilty?
Appeal. 1 year Max.
Unless overturned they are executed that day.
Done.
 
I agree on the expediency issue rather than spending decades with appeals processes on the other hand I am completely against many of the reasons people are on death row to begin with. Each case is not scrutinized or reviewed under appropriate guidelines. For example, there is a big difference between a death sentence for a bank robber killing someone in the act and a father killing someone who raped his daughter or a wife who finds her husband committing adultery and so on. Their is a HUGE difference.
 

You're right, there is a HUGE difference and those differences are taken into account.
Have you heard of Extenuating circumstances?

Check it out...

Extenuating circumstances - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…