capital and corporal punishment?

Question

I truely believe that capital and corporal punishment should be used in many instances as a replacement for prison time. For example say a multiple rapist gets 40 years, hes never getting out is he or if he does he will be so messed up he will probably kill himself. Why not execute him in a proven painless fashion, saves tax payer money and overall the actual convict a lot of pain. The argument that we cant kill them because they MIGHT be innocent seems bizarre... You cant sentence someone to life in prison unless you are really sure can you?

lol did someone actually write anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot?

Answer 1

i guess you're right, we are paying tons of taxes for the well being of our prisoners who wont really have a life when they get out unless they were rich, but they still lose half or more of their life. Maybe people should be in prison for 10 years max or extremely tortured instead of being injailed so they learn a lesson without taking up much money and time

Answer 2

Firstly, the Government covers up that there are almost certainly quite a lot of innocent people in prison. The jury system allows conviction if 10 out of 12 jurors agree, which works out at about 95% certainty. 5% of 80,000 prisoners, roughly the number in jail now, is 4,000. This is an overestimate because many convicts are clearly guilty, but all the same there may well be a couple of thousand innocent people in prison in the UK. One way the Government hides this is to deny early release, or release at all for life prisoners, to people who persist in saying they are innocent.

You cannot be absolutely sure of never jailing somebody innocent unless you never jail anybody at all. This is particularly true for a crime like rape when the evidence (specifically relating to consent) is often problematic. 5% innocent people in jail is too many, but assuming that we do want to punish murderers, rapists etc., as obviously we do, yes we will very occasionally have to unknowingly punish somebody who is innocent.

Given what I have put in the first paragraph, it is not surprising that when there was capital punishment there were in fact quite a few cases where the hung person was subsequently proved to have been innocent. This was a major reason many lawyers were opposed to capital punishment. And don't take it for granted that modern technology is infallible.

There is little evidence that capital or corporal punishment is a deterrent. Indeed you yourself suggest that 40 years in jail is a less attractive fate than death.

An issue that you do not mention is that capital and corporal punishment degrade and brutalise both those directly responsible for the punishment and society in general.

Finally, your question is academic because the punishments you advocate have been banned by international laws which the UK has no option but to obey - they are not in agreements from which we can opt out.

Answer 3

Ideally, if ethics weren't involved and we knew with certainty that these people weren't innocent, capital and corpal punishment could make individuals think twice, but that only solves the symptoms of the problem, not the actual problem. We don't live in such a world, we have to pay taxes if they live or die, especially when they appeal a hearing. To more better answer your question, we need to address the reasons for such violence to begin with.
I admit that I know little about this area, but I have a feeling most crimes are caused because individuals feel they are bored or have no other means to become accepted and or more sucessful in their life and pursue such activities. Or they've been encouraged through what they see or experiance such as violence through their family history or media (TV, Video games) and other propoganda.

People I believe don't become bad over-night, rather it is a sequence of events. A good example of this is Adolf Hitler. We know several things that may of influenced his madness. As a youth, he was possibly beaten by his father, key members of his family died when he was relatively young, he was denied entrance into Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna twice as an artist ,and shortly after this he became a homeless trying to support this aspiration. During this time was probably where he established his ant-semetic behavior, waundering the streets finding medial work as a cartoonist and listening to Austrian propoganda that was very popular at his time.

So what I feel we can do for our society is to have better monitoring of our education programs and offer more services for the community that allow individuals to build an identity rather than destory or corrupt one

Answer 4

How many occasions have you seen innocent victims standing on the steps of the Court of Appeal following a successful appeal hearing? Remember the women convicted of killing their children on the evidence of Prof. Roy Meadows??? - If the Death Penalty still existed these people would not have been able to successfully appeal their sentence. Remember the Guildford 4 and the Birmingham 6 - convicted of alleged terrorist offences - these people would also not be walking this earth if you had your way.

As I pointed out to a previous questioner a few days ago, there have been too many miscarriages of justice and since, our judicial system is, like all others imperfect - with a death penalty there is no chance of rectifying a mistake.

Answer 5

the point is not the convict in question. The point is all the ones that can potentially become ones. It is a lot worse to sit in a prison cell all your life than to be killed. So, if someone is planing a murder or a rape or whatnot, they would think twice before doing it if they know that if they get caught they will spend their whole life in prison. That is some boring and hard life. It would be a lot easier to be killed.
So what I'm trying to say is that you lock them up because you want to set an example.

Answer 6

In a civilised world, there should be no need for capital punishment. Scrapping the death penalty in the 50's in the UK was the right thing to do.

However, I think society can move backwards as well as forwards and I think we live in a less civilised society than we did 50 years ago. More people are prepared to kill than ever before and I think the way to respond to that is to bring back the noose.

Answer 7

Lethal Injection isn't painless and it costs more money than life imprisonment because of Appeals. Corporal punishment, such as whipping or caning a criminal, would be considered unConstitutional as perceived by some to be "cruel and unusual punishment". Both are impractical unless we change a whole slew of laws, which would only make things even more messy and confusing. So pragmatically speaking, NO.

Answer 8

I think execution is right for cast iron convictions, and there are many, with DNA and Forensics today, mistakes are unlikely. I do believe some people are just too evil to walk the earth - even in prison, and there is always the chance they could escape, if a serial killer was waiting for you to return home, would you be prepared to be his next victim or have him executed. I find people very fair minded until the victim is a member of their own family. Quite frankly I am not interested in the criminal, who is going to speak for the person whose life has been cut short, too many do gooders is this find land of ours - the road to hell is paved with good intention. "As I said "comments below" would you be quite as fair minded if your mother was mutilated and murdered? I think Heavenlyhaggis has the right idea. Does a killer give a victim a fair trial, a chance to give reason why they should live - me thinks not!

Answer 9

Gilbert & Sullivan said it well in their operatto, "The Mikado".

"Let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime."

If someone vandalizes a place (as I saw on TV last night) it seems to me the proper punishment would be to make him restore the place at his own expense and work effort (even if he could only partially do it it would be better than sticking him in jail, and he would learn the consequences of his action a lot better).

Rape and child molestation should be considered as capital offenses, in my view, too, for it is a kind of murder of the soul.

Thieves should be required to repay or work off what they stole, with interest. Including the nice big fat cat corporate thieves.

I think we could do a lot better keeping people out of jail that way, and save the taxpayers some money, to boot. And having to do some real work to pay for their crime might make them think twice about doing it again.

I also think foreigners who are incarcerated for non-capital crimes should simply be deported back to to their own countries, and not clog up the jail systems here.

Answer 10

I totally believe in both forms of punishment - in the right circumstances. However, it has been proved again and again that innocent people have been executed. So I can see both sides of the argument.

I think you should give the proven rapist's and child molesters to the Army, if they can get from point A to point B without getting shot they only get life in prison. Gives them a chance and lets us practise our target shooting!