Why do people think that killing convicted criminals will deter murder?

Question

How does violent response to violence break the circle of violence? I see variations of this behavior everywhere. For example, parents spank children for hitting other children. It doesn't work, but parents continue to do it. There is no evidence that executing killers reduces the number of murders, but lots of people think capital punishment is the only appropriate response to killing.

Answer 1

While I have reservations about the death penalty, I think there's at least one logical fallacy here:

Can you really equate an act of justice (i.e., balancing the scales) as decided by careful evaluation of what's most fair to both the criminal and his/her victims, to an act of violence carried out by someone for selfish reasons against an innocent party?

The motivations are entirely different. The purposes are entirely different. The ways the death is carried out (judicious reasoning, the criminal actually is defended, versus murder of an innocent person without any resource or "fair chance for survival") is entirely different.

Philosophically and morally, I don't think you can rationally compare murder to government-sanctioned justice.

We could also get into the notion of not committing yet another injustice against the innocent family of the victim
(i.e., downplaying the victim's death by not returning the crime upon the murderer). It's a real blow to lose a loved one; it's another blow to see the murderer be coddled in comparison. (If the family can forgive, then good, but that takes time and is painful.)

Now, in terms of the PRACTICE of the death penalty, we have some issues. It's been shown that certain demographics -- usually the marginalized people of society -- are convicted for crimes that people from the majority demographics are not. And we also know that sometimes innocent people have been sentenced to death.

I see it as more a problem over how to implement a death penalty fairly, rather than whether death is appropriate in certain circumstances.

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I think you also have to shy away from a blanket condemnation of "spanking" as a practice -- which again would really fudge the line by equating it wholesale with violence.

The ultimate goal of parenting is to shape and guide the child to become all s/he could be and a healthy member of society. Accordingly, the ideal is to teach the child how to monitor his own behavior without resorting to punitive means.

This means the goal is to engage the children cognitively, encourage them to think for themselves, and help them WANT to be good rather than just wanting to avoid punishment.

Often parents spank out of frustration or retaliation, or thoughtlessly. So yes, in those cases, hitting your kids is giving them the wrong message.

However, until a certain age, rational discourse is not possible because the child is not cognitively able to understand what is going on, nor morally reason with the parent.

There are also situations where the parent cannot afford to have the child violate boundaries (such as running out into traffic, sticking things into electric outlets, and so forth) due to the danger level.

Discipline at this age and in these situations has to be swift, unequivocable, and immediately productive -- i.e., spanking.

It's simply a tool that should be abandoned when the child is capable of responding to other methods of discipline.

Answer 2

I do believe in capitol punishment. When people kill other people out of cold blood or mental illness, they should killed in return. Not because an eye for an eye but to keep them from harming others. I think that these murderers who are caught in act, admit what they have done, or have one or more witnesses that seen them do whatever they did should be killed right after trial. The best way to deter people from murdering other people is to bring back public hangings. If you have ever seen someone hung you would not want to end up that way.

Keeping people on death row and in prison for life is very costly. If the government would go ahead and execute the people described above, they could save a great deal of money and there would not be a national debt. There are people out there who would rather serve time in prison because it is better than the life out in the world. They get fed three times a day, work out, and play sports in these prisons and have it made compared to what they did have. This is a reason to kill for these people and more executions would lower the crime rate.

Answer 3

It may not deter other murders from killing, but it guarantees that the person executed will never kill again. I once visited a prison as part of college program. The entire session, the inmates who were confined for life for being cold hard murders pissed and moaned about not having enough weights in the gym, and only two computers with the intranet. One even complained that their in house basketball league had to play shirts vs skins because the big bad warden wouldn't let them have different color tee shirts. Meanwhile every Christmas, and every birthday the family of the victims of these killers are left to stare at a stone in the ground while the killers eat turkey and play basketball. I say fry them.

Answer 4

The cycle of violence will not end simply be refusing to defend one's self or one's society. Each person's rights END where another person's rights BEGIN.

John Locke's famous defense of capital punishment has both a retributive and utilitarian component. Locke argued that a person forfeits his rights when committing even minor crimes. Once rights are forfeited, Locke justifies punishment for two reasons: (1) from the retributive side, criminals deserve punishment, and, (2) from the utilitarian side, punishment is needed to protect our society by deterring crime through example. Thus, society may punish the criminal any way it deems necessary so to set an example for other would-be criminals. This includes taking away his life.

The arguments that capital punishment should be abolished since it is undignified, inhumane, or contrary to love are inherently false: murder and other capital crimes against society are fundamentally inhumane and contrary to love as well, and no amount of incarceration or rehabilitation methods have proven effective in changing the baser parts of human nature which will still lead an individual to commit murder. However, capital punishment creates an example which appeals directly to the human instinct for self-preservation. In fact, capital punishment is actually weakened by lenient sentences and social reintroduction programs as they dilute the effect of the just consequence of murder, losing one's life.

Immanual Kant underscored this point by offering an alternative retributive justification of capital punishment which is not rooted in vengeance. Instead, for Kant, capital punishment is based on the idea that every person is a valuable and worthy of respect because of their ability to make rational and free choices. The murder, too, is worthy of respect; we, thus, show him respect by treating him the same way he declares that people are to be treated. Accordingly, we execute the murderer.

Answer 5

in a way it does deter murder because you have one less murderer around, unless the guy flipping the switch is new. You are right, since the philosophy of not spanking children has come about crime has dropped, vs in the olden days when capital punishment was accepted crime was through the roof.

Answer 6

I don't think it deters them, but it does keep us from having to pay for their lifelong stay in the system. I'd rather my taxes go toward the education of children, not the care and upkeep of a murderer.

I don't believe in spanking, though. Take away something the child really likes. That'll get their attention right away.

Answer 7

The lack of existence penalty will be a extra efficient deterrent if it became utilized extra uniformly and extra right now. that is demanding to discourage crime once you furnish the criminal free room and board, free clinical and dental, and free criminal amenities for something else of their lives in the experience that they commit a significant crime. and then, how do you punish a killer in reformatory if he kills yet another man or woman who became in on a lesser fee (say automobile robbery.) Why might want to the vehicle thief get the shortcoming of existence penalty yet no longer the killer? I accept as true with each person who execution genuinely stops serial killers, and also makes would-be killers end and picture about the own outcomes of their movements.

Answer 8

In the short term, that convicted criminal won't escape or otherwise go free to kill again.

However, we use violence when other methods don't work, or when we are powerless.

So, governments kill people because they are useless. People kill people for a variety of reasons, some good, some bad.

When governments do it, they are morally bankrupt, and use violence in a misguided attempt to stop other similar acts of violence.

Answer 9

It really doesn't seem to deter the criminal but if someone is very evil and can never be released I feel it is more humane to end their life. Apart from the cost and jails bulging at the seams, the victims may have some comfort from it.

Answer 10

I guess the short term thinking is that with the convicted criminal dead, at least that one person can't kill anymore.

And as for spanking kids, it does work if you don't overdo it.