Will the Terminator Terminate Tookie?

Exactly...... I dont undertstand how someone can be Pro-Abortion and anti-death penalty, or vice-versa....

 

I agree that on it's face, this issue seems hard to understand. I think that the standard resolution relates to the general idea that an adult, by definition, is in control of his actions and that a child/fetus, by virtue of it's innocence, is deserving of all benefits.
My own opinion
Jack

 

Tookie Williams dead at 12:36 AM PST on 12/13/2005

See my post here.

 

Vengeance is mine, saith the state. Of course, the purpose of punishment is vengeance and possibly deterrence. Let me paint you a picture here. Oftentimes, there are people in our lives who are so irritating that we just feel like strangling them. But why is it that most people do not actually strangle the people they feel like strangling? I would suggest that the reason for that is that most people find the notion of living inside of a cage for 10 or 20 or 30 years or life to be sufficiently miserable fate that they cause their mind to override the body's desire to choke the living shyte out of some jerk that desperately deserves it. For those incapable of causing the mind to override the body's desires to strangle others, we put them in a cage for awhile so they can't go around strangling others ... for awhile. If the prisoner wants to rehabilitate, that's up to him. But the prisoner who wants to rehabilitate has to come to the realization that, if he himself would not want to be strangled, it's probably not a nice thing to do to go around strangling others.

 

1. The idea of the state is the idea of having one authority who gets to decide who needs to be killed.
2. Anyone who violates another person's rights to life, liberty, and property forfeits their own rights to life, liberty, and property.
3. The Declaration of Independence does, of course, say that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights; however, the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, merely says that life, liberty, and property may not be taken without due process of law.
4. Good!
5. People have to grow up sometime, Jack!
6. Apparently not your "victims" in 5, above; you're thinking like a social worker!
7. God can decide whether their souls are forgiven and allowed into Heaven; the government can still punish their bodies here on earth.
8. All the more reason to give them a one-way ticket to go see Jesus.

 

Those who are for abortion but against the death penalty think that we somehow oughta keep you alive once you get here but, before that, you're just some annoying inconvenience to your mother and tough luck if she just offs you because of it. Those who are against abortion but for the death penalty think that it is impossible for unborn babies to have committed such heinous crimes as to warrant their being executed.

 

Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, China (People's Republic), Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic), Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, North, Korea, South, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Philippines, Qatar, Rwanda, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

This is the list of countries,which together with the US, have the death penalty.

 

You forgot England. Were some gets the death penalty for killing a police officer.

Godspeed!

 

The UK banned it in 1973. Otherwise, it couldn´t be a member of the EU.

 

In the immortal words of former LAPD Chief Ed Davis, "I have yet to see anyone escape or get paroled from a cemetery".

Tookie got the big needle. Good riddance to bad trash.

 

Amen. Right decision.

 

No evidence for deterrence

Oddly, TH, it is by no means easily demonstrated that fear of prison keeps people in line. You'd think so, wouldn't you? But the common wisdom runs up against a couple of problems (according to the literature)

-recidivism rates for parolees from prison run around 65%. In other words, a MAJORITY of those caught and successfully convicted AND SENT TO PRISON reoffend.

-interviews of prisoners seem to suggest that prison does not deter because most criminals DON'T EXPECT TO GET CAUGHT.

-Although there are few reliable studies to prove this either way, the consensus in law enforcement is that most crimes (other than homicide) do not get reported. Property crimes, even if reported, usually don't get solved. In other words, for the most part, the lower level criminal that doesn't expect to get caught is likely correct!

The UK Home Office (which produces the most wonderfully detailed research and posts it on line) has discovered that supervised release programs have lower, in some cases, MUCH lower recidivism rates. (However, this data needs to be approached with caution since criminals sentenced to "community punishment" are NOT selected arbitrarily from convicts as a whole population.)

You just can't trust "common sense" in this area. Common sense is simply wrong.

Actually, you might ask YOURSELF whether your refrain from, say, commercial burglary because you think you might be caught OR because you are at bottom an HONEST MAN. I don't know you personally but I'd guess that you wouldn't commit burglary even if the maximum penalty was a $15 fine.

 

Re: No evidence for deterrence

Humans are a walking dichotomy: angels and monsters. I think ethics are a little more complex than that.

 

Oh, I absolutely agree! I think that what motivates someone not to burgle a house is probably quite different than what motivates a person not to cheat on his income tax.

The point of my post was only that fear of prison really can't be shown to be a particularly effective as a deterrent.

 

Are you simply denying that rehabilitation and deterrance are possible? Or are you implying that some method other than punishment will rehabilitate and deter?

If you think that people who suffer the death penalty eventually return to the street, then you have been hanging around the Christians too long. Nobody's going to roll away the stone from Tookie's tomb.

In fact, if prison doesn't work to rehabilitate or to deter, then isn't that a pretty good argument for extending the death penalty to many more classes of crime? The death penalty can terminate criminals simply and inexpensively, with absolutely no recidivism.

 

It seems to me that some people need to learn that actions have consequences. Rubbing criminals' noses in the consequences of their criminal acts might help to teach a few of them that lesson.

 

Well, that's my point.

Before we can say what we want our criminal justice system to look like, we need to be clear on what we want it to DO. Kneejerk reactions aren't very useful. If vengence is the main idea, then let's SAY so and design a system for punishment only. But once we do, we need to accept the inevitable consequences of the vengence model, to wit: great expense and little or no dimunition in crime. Remember, when England had public executions of pickpockets, pickpockets were working the crowd!

Are rehabilitation and deterrence possible? It depends. First, an honest approach to the question will require an honest approach to criminals AS HUMAN BEINGS and not as monsters or statistics in bulk. A criminal is no less human, no less individual, and no less complex merely because he is a criminal.

Some criminals are what they are because of clear "career choices". Others commit crimes to support addictions and are addicts FIRST and criminals SECOND. Still others commit crimes because they don't see what they do as wrong. Child sex offenders sometimes fall into this category.

How we deal with criminals also depends on the threat each individual criminal actually poses to society at large. Tax evasion is a serious crime but it is not likely to result in the tragic consequences of armed robbery.

So, in answer to your question, SOME criminals can be rehabilitated. SOME cannot. SOME would be criminals can be deterred. SOME cannot. SOME criminals need to receive life sentences to protect the rest of us from their depredations. MOST probably do not.

Just as important (to me, anyway) SOME criminals will require enormous amounts of money for long term incarceration. MOST, including, I suspect, a good many present inmates, DO NOT.

 

Well, he's dead....


Hows everyone feel about that?

 

What's wrong with vengeance?

Vengeance affirms that actions have consequences. The death penalty teaches that ultimate actions indeed have ultimate consequences. In religious mythology, doesn't the whole idea of post-mortem judgement (or karma for that matter) send the same message? If you transgress, you can't avoid eventually paying the inevitable price.

I've noticed that when the death penalty, and often punishment in general are being discussed, opponents often take a pragmatic line. The moral principle that vengeance embodies is ignored and attention is directed to the issue of whether punishment works in securing some other social end.

But if somebody argues for an extension of the death penalty or even for an introduction of Islamic-style judicial mutilation (there is a pretty good case to be made for it), and if people try to justify those things on pragmatic grounds, the response is always moralistic in nature. Cutting off criminals' hands or putting out their eyes is savage, uncivilized, evil.

So apparently the purely moral principle that actions have consequences is ruled inadmissable for pragmatic reasons, while the idea that criminals be coldly and clinically rendered incapable of reoffending is ruled inadmissable on purely moral grounds, despite whatever pragmatic utility it might have.

Those kind of inconsisencies alert me to the liklihood that all of this high-toned stuff is probably just intellectual rhetoric, ad-hoc argument intended to support the various conclusions that we all hold for fundamental gut-level reasons.

 

Oh, we all have a significant stake in the rehabilitation (or "habilitation" for the first time, really) of inmates. With more than 2 million people incarcerated, and with the vast majority of them returning to society, we have a huge stake.

You can't make anyone do anything anywere at any time. But you can motivate people, many of whom will take your lead.

Prison is about three things: punishment, rehabilitation, and separating inmates from the public. These are applied, to varying degrees, in each inmate's situation.