Re: What do you think about death penalty?
Just to clarify slightly, my argument is not "Well nobody could! make that sort of decision", or "everyone is biased", since manifestly if we have some sort of legal system of justice that requires any punishment at all, someone! must make decisions about it and fallible as humans are, humans what we're stuck with in judicial terms and we already trust judges to make decisions about some pretty major sentencing issues anyway.
My point is simply that if! we had the death penalty, we'd need a bloody good legal and ethical framework that those who are required to make the decisions about who should receive it can refer to to support their decisions, and at the moment we don't have that sort of framework.
For example, if it is decided that the chief purpose of the prison service is rehabilitation, then those making decisions about the death penalty need to know what constitutes rehabilitation and what sort of techniques might work.
If the purpose is to remove dangerous criminals from society, then those making the decision need a good way of assessing a given person's possible danger.
If the purpose is as a deterrent (though I'm afraid historically and logically I've always found this a rather weak argument), then the judge needs to decide whether or not the execution will actually deter others from committing a similar crime.
This is what I mean.
At the moment as Turtlepower said, we are not exactly sure what the purpose of prison is. is it supposed to be a horrible experience that frightens anyone away from re offending? Is it supposed to straighten people out through some sort of therapy? Is it supposed to place a potential criminal in a monitored environment where they cannot commit further crimes? Is it supposed to make prisoners perform some good deed for society like community service as some form of compensation?
At the moment, in the Uk at least, it doesn't succeed at any of these things. Prisoners do nasty things to other prisoners, rehabilitation is half-hhearted and being around a bunch of other criminals is hardly a way to get people away from crime.
So, until we can sort out exactly why! we're sending people to prison, what sort of experience prison should be and the sufficient reasons behind making prison that way, we probably ought to leave the death penalty and ultimate legal power to end someone's life alone.
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