There is an unwritten rule in debating that as soon as anyone uses Hitler or the Nazi's as an example to prove their point then they've lost the arguement........Good night :-)
I wonder how many people pro death penalty and happy to dismiss the problem of innocent people getting caught up in the system would be so casual if it was them or someone close to them on the receiving end?
Although I'm against CP theproblem with this sort of statement is you can't personalise subjects like this. If someone raped/murdered your wife/mum/daughter you would want them dead (you'd probably want to do the job yourself).
Anyone who thinks jail, particuarly high security prisons where these monsters go are "cushty" really doesn't know what they are talking about. Another stated benefit of keeping people who perpetrate truly heinous crimes is that doctors and law enforcement agencies often heavily investigate these people to understand why they commit the crimes they do, how they think, triggers that may have caused them to develop in such a way and early warning signs, all with the aim of trying to prevent this happening again. If these people were just "hung the next day" as suggested above we'd lose the oppertunity to gain this insight - the only positive we can gain from this situations - and more people would likely suffer in the future.
There is an unwritten rule in debating that as soon as anyone uses Hitler or the Nazi's as an example to prove their point then they've lost the arguement........Good night :-)
but whether that rule (?Godwin's rule) should exist is another debating point :-)
I think the word "evil" tends to cloud the debate because of the association it has/has had with some religious beliefs that suggest some outside "supernatural" influence. The premeditated desire to kill, and the acting upon that impulse or wish often would appear to stem more from a fundamental lack of empathy allied to a significant personality disorder. Personally I am against the death penalty, but I can appreciate the arguments for it, and how my view might change if a family member of mine was murdered. But, if you hang an innocent person you can never bring them back. Life imprisonment ( or a long term) may not appear to satisfy our desire for clear and equal retribution for appalling acts, but it is probably the only, if imperfect, alternative we have.
I think the word "evil" tends to cloud the debate because of the association it has/has had with some religious beliefs that suggest some outside "supernatural" influence. The premeditated desire to kill, and the acting upon that impulse or wish often would appear to stem more from a fundamental lack of empathy allied to a significant personality disorder. Personally I am against the death penalty, but I can appreciate the arguments for it, and how my view might change if a family member of mine was murdered. But, if you hang an innocent person you can never bring them back. Life imprisonment ( or a long term) may not appear to satisfy our desire for clear and equal retribution for appalling acts, but it is probably the only, if imperfect, alternative we have.
I wonder how many people pro death penalty and happy to dismiss the problem of innocent people getting caught up in the system would be so casual if it was them or someone close to them on the receiving end?
I don't think anyone has seriously made a comment dismissing it. If the guilty party was 100% guilty then I am pro death sentence. The one thing i would like is that we thought about the victim and their family a lot more than the criminal in this country.
If they are not 100% guilty then they wouldn't be convicted of murder.
Slightly left-field but what about those doing the killing. What makes it OK for them to kill. It used to be a known problem that the hang men got addicted to the rush of killing with impunity.
A one time friend of mine at school killed 3 oaps in 1986, his case was near identical (same year, my ex mate was 15 tho not 13)to the guy in the program who killed at 13. The kid I knew served 20 years, got out a much changed individual according to the stories I have read - studied law, earned himself a degree, became a counsellor/mentor to fellow inmates. Should he have been executed back in 87 if we still had CP, should he still be inside now with no hope of release like his fellow criminal in the USA?
He was a messed up kid, his father comitted suicide and this sent him off the rails, fell in with an older crowd, got into drugs - all no excuse for what he did (killed the oaps) while burgaling their homes for drug money.
I think he should still be inside, i am very much against the death penalty but life should mean life.
We are used to the idea that America is hard line on crime, what with the 'three strikes' and all. However some parts of the traditional American judicial system are re-thinking what they're doing. I know this isn't exactly about death row, but is shines a light on to the debate in as much as America does not always act in the same way everywhere.
January 28, 2011|By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Atlanta — Reduced sentences for drug crimes. More job training and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent offenders. Expanded alternatives to doing hard time.
In the not-too-distant past, conservatives might have derided those concepts as mushy-headed liberalism — the essence of "soft on crime."
Nowadays, these same ideas are central to a strategy being packaged as "conservative criminal justice reform," and have rolled out in right-leaning states around the country in an effort to rein in budget-busting corrections costs.
Encouraged by the recent success of reform efforts in Republican-dominated Texas — where prison population growth has slowed and crime is down —conservative leaders elsewhere have embraced their own versions of the strategy.
South Carolina adopted a similar reform package last year. Republican governors are backing proposals in Louisiana and Indiana.
The about-face might feel dramatic to those who remember the get-tough policies that many conservatives embraced in the 1980s and '90s: In Texas, Republican Clayton Williams ran his unsuccessful 1990 gubernatorial campaign with a focus on doubling prison space and having first-time drug offenders "bustin' rocks" in military-style prison camps.
Now, with most states suffering from nightmare budget crises, many conservatives have acknowledged that hard-line strategies, while partially contributing to a drop in crime, have also added to fiscal havoc.
Corrections is now the second-fastest growing spending category for states, behind Medicaid, costing $50 billion annually and accounting for 1 of every 14 discretionary dollars, according to the Pew Center on the States.
That crisis affects both parties, and state Democratic leaders have also been looking for ways to reduce prison populations. But it is conservatives who have been working most conspicuously to square their new strategies with their philosophical beliefs — and sell them to followers long accustomed to a lock-'em-up message.
Much of that work is being done by a new advocacy group called Right on Crime, which has been endorsed by conservative luminaries such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.
The group has identified 21 states engaged in some aspect of what they consider to be conservative reform, including California.
On its website, the group concedes that the "incarceration-focused" strategies of old filled jails with nonviolent offenders and bloated prison budgets, while failing to prevent many convicts from returning to crime when they got out.
"Maybe we swung that pendulum too far and need to reach a cost-effective middle ground here," said Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which launched the advocacy group last month. "We have to distinguish between those we are afraid of and those we are just mad at."
The right's embrace of ideas long espoused by nonpartisan and liberal reform groups has its own distinct flavor, focusing on prudent government spending more than social justice, and emphasizing the continuing need to punish serious criminals.
Even so, the old-school prison reform activists are happy to have them on board.
"Well, when the left and the right agree, I like to think that you're on to something," said Tracy Velazquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington think tank dedicated to "ending society's reliance on incarceration."
Comments
Anyone who thinks jail, particuarly high security prisons where these monsters go are "cushty" really doesn't know what they are talking about. Another stated benefit of keeping people who perpetrate truly heinous crimes is that doctors and law enforcement agencies often heavily investigate these people to understand why they commit the crimes they do, how they think, triggers that may have caused them to develop in such a way and early warning signs, all with the aim of trying to prevent this happening again. If these people were just "hung the next day" as suggested above we'd lose the oppertunity to gain this insight - the only positive we can gain from this situations - and more people would likely suffer in the future.
As for the death penalty, I don't sit easy with it but as bigstem says sentences should be longer.
I also find it strange that something as important as the DP can change from state to state in the US with a third not having it.
The premeditated desire to kill, and the acting upon that impulse or wish often would appear to stem more from a fundamental lack of empathy allied to a significant personality disorder.
Personally I am against the death penalty, but I can appreciate the arguments for it, and how my view might change if a family member of mine was murdered.
But, if you hang an innocent person you can never bring them back.
Life imprisonment ( or a long term) may not appear to satisfy our desire for clear and equal retribution for appalling acts, but it is probably the only, if imperfect, alternative we have.
They are in prison and it is punishment. The point you don't get is that lifers can get
If they are not 100% guilty then they wouldn't be convicted of murder.
He was a messed up kid, his father comitted suicide and this sent him off the rails, fell in with an older crowd, got into drugs - all no excuse for what he did (killed the oaps) while burgaling their homes for drug money.
I think he should still be inside, i am very much against the death penalty but life should mean life.
January 28, 2011|By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Atlanta — Reduced sentences for drug crimes. More job training and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent offenders. Expanded alternatives to doing hard time.
In the not-too-distant past, conservatives might have derided those concepts as mushy-headed liberalism — the essence of "soft on crime."
Nowadays, these same ideas are central to a strategy being packaged as "conservative criminal justice reform," and have rolled out in right-leaning states around the country in an effort to rein in budget-busting corrections costs.
Encouraged by the recent success of reform efforts in Republican-dominated Texas — where prison population growth has slowed and crime is down —conservative leaders elsewhere have embraced their own versions of the strategy.
South Carolina adopted a similar reform package last year. Republican governors are backing proposals in Louisiana and Indiana.
The about-face might feel dramatic to those who remember the get-tough policies that many conservatives embraced in the 1980s and '90s: In Texas, Republican Clayton Williams ran his unsuccessful 1990 gubernatorial campaign with a focus on doubling prison space and having first-time drug offenders "bustin' rocks" in military-style prison camps.
Now, with most states suffering from nightmare budget crises, many conservatives have acknowledged that hard-line strategies, while partially contributing to a drop in crime, have also added to fiscal havoc.
Corrections is now the second-fastest growing spending category for states, behind Medicaid, costing $50 billion annually and accounting for 1 of every 14 discretionary dollars, according to the Pew Center on the States.
That crisis affects both parties, and state Democratic leaders have also been looking for ways to reduce prison populations. But it is conservatives who have been working most conspicuously to square their new strategies with their philosophical beliefs — and sell them to followers long accustomed to a lock-'em-up message.
Much of that work is being done by a new advocacy group called Right on Crime, which has been endorsed by conservative luminaries such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.
The group has identified 21 states engaged in some aspect of what they consider to be conservative reform, including California.
On its website, the group concedes that the "incarceration-focused" strategies of old filled jails with nonviolent offenders and bloated prison budgets, while failing to prevent many convicts from returning to crime when they got out.
"Maybe we swung that pendulum too far and need to reach a cost-effective middle ground here," said Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which launched the advocacy group last month. "We have to distinguish between those we are afraid of and those we are just mad at."
The right's embrace of ideas long espoused by nonpartisan and liberal reform groups has its own distinct flavor, focusing on prudent government spending more than social justice, and emphasizing the continuing need to punish serious criminals.
Even so, the old-school prison reform activists are happy to have them on board.
"Well, when the left and the right agree, I like to think that you're on to something," said Tracy Velazquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington think tank dedicated to "ending society's reliance on incarceration."
Thoughts?
And I don't think anyone could say 5kg is a "bit" of coke !