most people are against it, which makes it interesting to argue in favor of. personally, i would have to say i'm against it, but that's an emotional reaction.
to make this debate much simpler, i'm going to give you two options for the most serious violent criminals we have. supermax motherf***ers.
these options are solitary confinement and the death penalty, both of which I would personally categorize as capital punishment. one is torture, the other is death. we're using the criminal group that has no middle ground and typically live in the box and walk death row on occasion.
you can also disagree with both, but you'll have to provide an alternative for violent criminals. if you think prisoners killing eachother is ok you can offer that as an alternative, it's your opinion
And lastprophet ruins the thread to the surprise of no one
deletedover 8 years
I watched a video, and I follow his opinion completely. Killing people was for the wild west, in a civilized age we should just lock them up and give them therapy
If someone saw someone else about to have an accident and knew what was going to happen and could stop it, they are self aware and should stop it. There is no instincts that have evolved that will give us foresight, as this is related to wisdom without instinct unless you are from special blood lines. You are guilty for the accident and if that person died, you should be put on trial for murder. The only arguments against this is that there is no way you could know if someone was aware of what was going to happen.
This brings me to my final point. Justice is a system created by the process which humans and other animals have evolved.
The technology is coming very soon. For all you guilty people to know, there will be a time for martial law globally. After this, there will be a time when people who are guilty will be made innocent by the complete removal of their self awareness and fixing of their instincts. There will be a cyanide pill in your body that will pop the moment someone catches you without a trial. Capital punishment is necessary because we are working machines and when the machine breaks and you can't fix it, you have to get rid of the broken parts and recycle them into the environment. If a part isn't as efficient and still works, you keep it there. You might not think this will "ever happen again" in history, but, history repeats itself and so long as people care about money too much to automate every job available, this is eventually what it will come to and there won't be a single person who could be blamed for it, because human instincts will take over and society will do so without self awareness.
The subject of guilt involves responsibility. When someone is punished for the crime they commit, it is because they are guilty. Not because they feel guilty, because if they did feel guilty, then they wouldn't regret getting punished, ironically. Criminals are guilty because they have been proven to have committed a crime with intention. Committing a crime without intention means it was an accident, which anyone can do. There is no argument that accidents should be treated as such, but, because humans evolved to communicate through deception and manipulation, most humans end up lying about their intentions. The more someone does something that increases the desire for a solution, the more the solution will force itself upon them.
If someone is guilty with no intent, there shouldn't be punishment.
If someone is guilty with full intent, this bring us to our next subject. Self awareness.
Self awareness is what is left when you take the wisdom you have and subtract your instincts from it. If someone is self aware, it means they truly are guilty to the complete most point of being guilty. They knew what they did, understood all the ramifications, and still did so anyway. In this case, capital punishment might seem right. Nothing is really subjective when you factor in evolutionary purpose.
If someone isn't self aware, like a starving homeless man who broke into a house to get some food, then you can't really say much. If you say to the homeless man that there was a soup kitchen down the street, a starving homeless man might not be thinking nor have the resources to know that in the first place. In this situation, its pretty much society as a whole that is at fault, but, unknowing of the tiny hidden dangers growing behind the scenes, we would hold the homeless man accountable even though one day we might be that homeless man.
actually a rope costs like $10, thats all they really need. they can even reuse it a couple times!
i do agree it needs to be in cases that is 100% proven that the person is guilty, tho.
deletedover 8 years
It's cheaper to pay for life sentences than it is for the death penalty. States with the death penalty like Texas and Florida also have a huge number of cases where the person is proven innocent after they've already been killed.
I think the death penalty has it's place, but it needs to be re worked to be cheaper and needs to be watered down in trigger happy states like Texas.
idk i think that either option is too harsh, i feel like the line between capital punishment and life sentence and then just "you'll probably die during this" sentences and all that is kind of thin. i would argue for putting the people who commit the most severe crimes in a prison together (with tons of security and all that but not total solitary confinement) and doing research to see how their minds work and to see if it's possible to rehabilitate them. and monitor their guards and shrinks as well to ensure that they're not mistreating the prisoners to get some small kind of vigilante justice
but then again i'm a bleeding heart who doesn't know as much as i should about the american legal system. i just hate the idea of ending a life when there might be any opportunity, even if it's small, to make something positive come out of it
People say stuff like the last part of your post for lots of issues they particularly dislike. A lot of which are at least fueled by mental illness. Should we make no attempt at rehabilitation because we can't wrap our heads around the nature of the crime?
Loljk give them solitary confinement till they're 80 THEN electric chair no sponge zappy zappy
So the example we're using has already been found guilty, and refuses to offer any more evidence?
plus, when people are completely isolated for incredibly long amounts of time, it causes them to go insane from sensory deprivation, which is basically extended torture, like cub said. from wikipedia without the citations that wikipedia has: "...extended or forced sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, and depression"
deletedover 8 years
benis
Well, you can also look at it from an economic perspective.
because im not boring im not going to say "third option please, and let someone else figure it out"
i think solitary confinement exceeds death in terms of pain inflicted. the death penalty isn't intended to cause suffering, despite its misapplication in the real world. it's really a mercy killing: remove a violent psychopath from the world without causing them suffering.
