Do you support the death penalty?

[Raziaar]

The percent of people who can be "undoubtedly" considered guilty is so small that it would be impossible to implement such a rule in praxis.

There are plenty of people who fall under the category of undoubtedly guilty though. People who commit blatant murders and are seen by many, people caught in the act, people who have DNA evidence plastered all over the scene, etc. Many of these most shocking shooting incidents and terrorism related incidents we see in the news are people who usually fall under the undoubtedly guilty category.

Those are the people who I have no issue being put to death.


Though honestly, I think those 'particular' individuals should undergo psychiatric evaluation and those who are deemed to not have any problem with dying, should be the ones given life without parole, and the ones who are terrified to die should be the ones who receive the death penalty.

Yep. I have no issue with that sort of thing. And for those who say the Government should have no right to sentence people to death. It's not the government that typically does it, it's the people, through the law system.

 

[Krynn72]

Don't put words in his mouth. He said torture isn't the point of life sentences, not that the conditions couldn't be viewed in such a way.

Hardly a significant distinction when he claims that the point of prison is to keep people out of society, and yet he calls for those additional conditions in the name of "not giving them luxuries".

Though honestly, I think those 'particular' individuals should undergo psychiatric evaluation and those who are deemed to not have any problem with dying, should be the ones given life without parole, and the ones who are terrified to die should be the ones who receive the death penalty.

How sadistic of you.

It's not the government that typically does it, it's the people, through the law system.

AKA: The government.

 

[The Monkey]

There are plenty of people who fall under the category of undoubtedly guilty though. People who commit blatant murders and are seen by many, people caught in the act, people who have DNA evidence plastered all over the scene, etc. Many of these most shocking shooting incidents and terrorism related incidents we see in the news are people who usually fall under the undoubtedly guilty category.

Those are the people who I have no issue being put to death.


Though honestly, I think those 'particular' individuals should undergo psychiatric evaluation and those who are deemed to not have any problem with dying, should be the ones given life without parole, and the ones who are terrified to die should be the ones who receive the death penalty.

What if the DNA evidence has been tampered with (by the police or someone else)? What if the witnesses have been bribed or threatening into lying?

Yep. I have no issue with that sort of thing. And for those who say the Government should have no right to sentence people to death. It's not the government that typically does it, it's the people, through the law system.

The implementation of the law is so far removed from the will of "the people" (by that I assume you mean the majority) in most countries that it's hardly a legitimate point. And if we for the sake of argument say it indeed is "the people" who decide, then you are in effect saying that the majority of the people have exclusive right to decide who lives and dies.

 

[Raziaar]

How sadistic of you.

I wouldn't call it sadism... I'd call it a desire for the consequences to be as effective as possible, without some guy being able to just bow out of life and avoid the consequences for what he's done. And let me remind you, the things that these people have done are unspeakably horrible acts of aggravated murder, so I can't feel compassion for them.

Call me a monster if you will, it doesn't ****ing bother me. Those people are sadistic ****s and should be punished. And it's not like I'm advocating physical torture which I'm not. If you want to call incarceration torture, well then we might as well let them go free since we're so monstrous.

What if the DNA evidence has been tampered with (by the police or someone else)? What if the witnesses have been bribed or threatening into lying?

The implementation of the law is so far removed from the will of "the people" (by that I assume you mean the majority) in most countries that it's hardly a legitimate point. And if we for the sake of argument say it indeed is "the people" who decide, then you are in effect saying that the majority of the people have exclusive right to decide who lives and dies.

Good god man, do you honestly think you can apply a plausible deniability to every single case on earth? There are times when people are so unambiguously guilty that there's not really going to be room for tampering. Maybe the DNA thing is a bit much, but I'm mainly talking about individuals like the Norway shooter and others who commit similarly heinous acts and are caught with pretty much no chance of being innocent.

Or do you think there's really believable deniability to be had in the case of the Norway shooter? Yeah, he should get his trial, but it's not like he's going to have even the remotest chance in hell to be found innocent or not guilty... unless it's some crap about not guilty by reason of insanity. Either way, he still did it and it's hard to deny it.


I'm not talking about jury assigned guilt here.


I just can't get on the side of people who believe the punishments we have currently for the most heinous criminals in our society are barbaric. People are too soft and I question how they would punish those individuals, since they oftentimes question any type of punishment we provide at all. "Incarceration is too barbaric and torturous! Those poor souls!"

AKA: The government.

What, do you have a better suggestion of "non-government" than the current system of a panel of peers?



My support for the penalty involves the tiniest sliver of the criminal population. Not your typical murder suspect who may have reasonable doubt to be determined in a court of law, but the individuals that are well documented to have committed the acts, by either being caught in the act by police, or filmed doing so, etc. And you guys still have a problem with that? Well that's an issue for you to deal with I guess.

 

[Stylo]

Hardly a significant distinction when he claims that the point of prison is to keep people out of society, and yet he calls for those additional conditions in the name of "not giving them luxuries".

What are you even talking about? "Calling for those additional conditions"? Dude, I like how you can respond really sarcastically to things as if people are being overdramatic and then word your sentences in ways like that.

The point of prison IS to keep people away from society. It's hardly an additional condition to not pamper them. I don't even know where you've come out with all this "windowless" malarchy and exact cell measurements. I simply stated they should be stuck in a cell and left there. I never specified it be completely windowless and tiny. What I'm saying about non-luxury relates to the media attention the British jail sytem got from ex-inmates claiming they had it better off in jail and telling of how they could sit and watch DVDs and play XBOXs.

In fact in another thread I linked to articles about the issue of some prisoners having it pretty comfortably in certain prisons. You don't think every prison is like you see on TV where everyone gets buggered in the showers and stabbed at every opportunity, do you? Not all jails are like that at all.

I dunno how you got "Let's take away all their human rights" from "Devoid of luxury."

 

[Krynn72]

I dunno how you got "Let's take away all their human rights" from "Devoid of luxury."

I got it from this statement you made after quoting those things I mentioned.

Agreed, its much better to lock them in tiny windowless jail cells for their entire life and only let them associate with terrible people who beat, kill, and rape each other, and force them into slave labor,

I mean the whole "windowless jail cells terrible people blah blah" comment - Well why should they get luxury in jail?

That statement pretty blatantly implies that such things should be considered luxuries.

Also, I came out with that wordless "malarchy" and exact cell measurements by looking up facts. In America, prison cells have no windows, and are 8'x6' big.

If you want to see what American prisons are like, read a couple first hand accounts. Heres one to get you started.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=136858

So while I was inside I made a list of the worst things about prison to share with the boards I used to frequent. Seemed like any discussion of prison would be all like 'lolrape' and no actual info for anons that might find themselves in my shitty situation. So here it is, the top 10 worst things about prison that you never knew about:

10. The Smell

Prison smells like shit. Smells worse than shit. You know the smell you imagine jenkem to smell like? Imagine that, only it's being rubbed on the arm pits of a sweaty mexican and then his armpit pubes are being set fire too. It's that bad. No one flushes the ****ing john. Ever. You know how clean prison looks in all the pictures? It is, because we spend all ****ing day cleaning it. And then convicts just basically shit themselves for a laugh. I switched buses on the way back and sat next to this guy wearing cologne. I'm not gay (well, as not gay as you can be after being inside) but I got a boner as soon as I smelt it. ****ing amazing.

9.

White people.

After the first year, I was ashamed to be white. In the world, white people are capable of all kinds of great things, and all kinds of bad things. But inside we're just universally ****s. Aryan Brotherhood weren't a big presence in my block, but they were bad enough to make you kind of wish your mother had been raped by a ******. And that's before you meet your boss's. Correctional Services officers come in all flavours, but white screws were the worst. Black screws, you could tell were just poor ******s trying to get by in a shitty job. Only white guys ever seemed to enjoy their shit. Rape, dispite the rumours, is not a big deal inside. It doesn't happen that often. But everytime it happened on my block it was a white guy. And every time anyone got murdered, it was a white guy. There were 33 murders while I was inside, 12 of them in my block. All because white ****s couldn't keep their dicks in their pants, or else 'cut someone's eyes' which was slang for stealing someone's shit. Being black in prison would have been awesome.

8. Getting fat.

There is no gym equipment in prison. That whole, 'bunch of guys sitting around pumping iron' image you have? Forget it. Gym equipment is a weapon, and weapons are forbidden. Our block had one treadmill that would occassionaly work. You couple that with high fat food, all day, everyday, you start to go flabby really quickly. One of the things that occupies a lot convict's days is finding someway to try and do some physical activity. After about six months I could feel my muscle mass going, so me and my cellmate would deadlift each other for a few hours. Gayest thing you've ever seen, but it filled in the time.

7. Solitary

I was ****ing terrified of solitary confinement when I first went inside, which contributed to me behaving myself. Until I realised that solitary isn't something you can hold off by just not being a dick. It's a reality of life and you will, at somepoint, be put in solitary for no ****ing reason at all. Usually, because there is a remand inmate that needs to be cycled into gen pop before trial and they need to free up your cell - so you go into solitary because there aren't any other beds. I did two months of that all up. No books, no blankets, no light, 23 hour lockdown. Most they can do is 1 week at a stretch - worst part was knowing you were going to go back after a week if the block was too over crowded. You spent your whole time in gen pop just anxious as **** because you could get dragged off the chain at any moment and sent back.

6. The Drugs

After a while, drugs become a viable option inside. There is a lot on offer. If you can get it out in the world, you can get it inside - for a better price strangely enough, considering the difficulty of getting it in. That is if it is what your man says it is. I decided to get onto horse after a few months, mostly as something to do. I'd tried heroin outside, but hadn't liked it since getting on the nod seemed like a waste of time. But inside, it's great - a shot in solitary can make a week pass in no time at all. Problem is the shit it will be cut with. Flour, baking soda, jell-o crystals - all shit that should not be in a vein. After a while, you just end up doing things that outside, you never would have dreamed of. I was paranoid about getting the AIDS, so I kept this one needle the whole time I was inside. Went rusty and I ended up spending a month in sick bay with tetenus. When I couldn't score for junk, I scored for codeine tablets. Grew my thumb nail long and wrecked it on the concrete so it was sharp enough to cut open my thigh, and would stick the crushed up tablet inside.

Yeah, shit got that bad.

5. The Economy

I joked to my cell mate on the first day that at least the GFC couldn't **** us inside. He'd been done for assaulting a cop when his house got taken by the bank. But within months 'GFC ******' became the standard reply to any query as to how black market prices were suddenly going through the roof. The price of a deck of smokes tripled. There was an actual economic reason about this. I went away in Michigan, where a lot of people lost their houses, mostly poor people already. When they had to move away from the prison, it meant they couldn't bring their loved ones as much contraband group, which meant the price of what there was sky rocketed. And the worse things got, the more the people who worked in the store would wonk and take home with them, which meant stocks ran low which ****ed us even further.

Bet you didn't read about that one in the Wall Street Journal.

4. Losing everyone you ever loved.

No one ever talks about this because prison makes you a hard ass. Or at least you teach yourself to think it does. The first ones to go are your friends. They tell you they'll write and send you stuff - take every friend you've ever had, now pick one. There will be one that actually does it. But they'll stop after a few months. Then your sister - they might say they'll wait, but you know they won't. I called mine on my second week and told her it was over. Apart from the total shock of going away, I couldn't stand spending every night wondering if she was getting cranked by some other dude. Was one less thing to worry about. My kid, who was about to turn 1 when I went away, will never have any idea who the **** I am. Her mom took her away the second I went inside. Never called. Don't even know where to begin looking. My Mom and Dad were the worst. They promised me when I went inside that they'd stick by me if I stuck by them, that all they wanted was the occassional phone call to let them know I was okay, and they'd make sure they visited regularly. I was so ****ed up half the time I forgot when visiting day even was. I realised, and tried to tell the boss that I didn't want to see them, that I was too messed up. So the ****s dragged me by the hair through the block to the visiting room and propped me up on a chair in front of them and laughed. They never came back, and they haven't seen me since I got out.

3. Lonliness

An old timer told me that when he first went inside, in the 80s, prison was all about cliques. There were different gangs, people stuck together because of ethnicity, even religion. Back then there were Irish Catholic cliques, Nation of Islam cliques - even white collar guys started cliques to avoid getting stepped on.

One thing the boss' do very well is create an atmosphere of constant paranoia. If you get shaken down and you get contrapedophile group found on you, they'll stick you in solitary and finger your best friend for setting you up. If you come inside with a pre-existing gang affiliation, like a lot of black guys do, they start by stepping on your friends straight away and blaming you for it until you're a pariah. Forget about the yard being full of big groups of guys chilling together. No one hangs with anymore than three people for a stretch. If you're seen with a big group, you'll be targeted by the screws. Mostly, people do their time alone. Pacing the yard, or even just ignoring their cell mates completely.

That gets to you more than anything. The constant suspicion, and knowing you're alone.

2. Death

I saw 12 deaths inside. Three of them were at the hands of screws. One of those was a gunshot to the head while a guy was trying to escape. The other two were beatings, and I didn't know they'd died until later. It's not right to call a prison shanking a 'stabbing' because that's not how you die. Inside, we called it 'digging a hole' or 'digging a well' like 'he got a well dug in him' or 'pulled out a hole'. The reason for this is the make shift weapons used inside are not easy to kill with. You basically make a hole as fast as you can, by stabbing as fast as you can, and then you try and get a grip inside it and just start pulling. I saw this right up close one time. I had the distinct misfortune of having my cell behind a pillar, like a bulkhead kind of thing in the middle of the block. So if you wanted to shank someone, it was a great place to hide. On the flip side, it meant the boss' gave it a lot of extra attention, which was bad for rubbing one out or taking a hit. Two guys were loitering around the pillar one day, waiting for this fresh kid to wander past. Prison gossip said he's been worked over on his first night by someone who wanted him for a wife, but the kid fought back and nearly bit some ****er's nuts off. So his friends wait with a t-shirt, and a filed down toothbrush. They've cracked down on plastic toothbrushes, but there used to be enough of them that a lot of guys have them stashed away. You can file down the ends on the concrete to a point. One guy wraped a t-shirt around the kid's neck and lifted him off the ground from behind, and the other starts stabbing his gut. After a few stabs, he starts trying to get his fingers inside and he just pulls all this meat out. I thought he was going to pull out his intestines like you'd see in a horror movie, but instead, he just pulls out fist after fist of this yellow jelly shit, and then big hunks of meat like raw mince. Screw's arrived and tasered everyone. Even the kid. He was on his side, right in front of my cell, and every jolt from the taser made the big hole in his stomach smoke.

You don't see something like that and not have it **** you up worse than you already were for being incarcerated.

1. Getting Out

On my last day I started writing this list in my head, and thought it would be funny to post it on the Chans. But really, now I've written it, it's not funny. For lols, I was originally going to talk about prison rape. But really? It's a small part of doing time. On any given block, you might only have a dozen or so convicts who are likely to rape someone. And they go after the same kind of convicts every time too. Because if you try to rape the wrong guy... you might end up with your guts pulled out.

That's not to say consensual gay sex doesn't happen. I had it, and I enjoyed it. I'm not going to go and **** a man on the outside, but a combination of drugs, lonliness and boredom do strange things.

So instead of rape, the thing that tops my list was getting out. After 18 months, I felt like I had the whole prison kick down. I felt like I belonged. New guys looked up to me, like someone who'd seen shit and made it through. As I scaled back on my pretty huge habit, I started to get this kind of zen calm about incarceration, and I liked to think I helped a few guys through their first weeks.

The last months before I left was the happiest of my entire life. I started making lists, like this one. Lists of what I was going to do. Lists of things I was going to eat. Lists of places I was going to go. I almost felt like I'd had a near death experience, and now I had to live a better life. Then I left.

Two years is a long time. The world literally changes without you. I got off the bus and went to my favourite bar. It was empty. I went to a cafe my friends used to touch dicks at. None of them were there. I went to my house, pulled the boards off and went inside. Everything was just as I'd left it with two years worth of dust. Most depressing thing you've ever seen. I lay down on my bed and paranoia started setting in. I realised I was pretty much squating and was paranoid about being picked up by the cops and breaching my parole, so I went to my parents house. They let me in, but told me I couldn't stay until they were sure I was off the drugs. I checked into a motel and sat on the edge of the bed, watching MTV and ordering Pizza. I must have ordered like five pizzas from five different places, stayed up till dawn. Thing about prison, is that sleep becomes like a chore you do each day. You're never really tired, so you never really want to sleep, it just breaks up the time. I felt like I didn't want to sleep ever again. Next morning I decided to go for a drive, and thought I'd rent a car - but my driver's licence had expired. I went to get a new one, but because I'd been inside they needed me to get a letter from my parole officer. So I just wandered around for a day. Felt like everyone was staring at me.

You just feel completely lost.

 

[Shem]

I read it all. Damn.

 

[Stylo]

That statement pretty blatantly implies that such things should be considered luxuries.

No, it implies that your comment was an exaggerated response to what I said, so then I elaborated on what I said. It was in no way a statment that windows = luxury.

News flash, not all prisons are the same as American prisons. I was under the impression this thread was about The Death Penalty which is applicable to the whole world.

 

[Krynn72]

No, it implies that your comment was an exaggerated response to what I said, so then I elaborated on what I said. It was in no way a statment that windows = luxury.

News flash, not all prisons are the same as American prisons. I was under the impression this thread was about The Death Penalty which is applicable to the whole world.

Most non-minimum security prisons in the world are like this though. There are of course examples where they're not, but when a huge first world nation like the United States of America with all of it's human rights advocacy groups still has prisons this terrible, you can bet your ass many, many other nations have prisons just as bad, and in all likelihood, far worse. I'm positive that the majority of the world's prisons operate under similar conditions.

 

[Maestro]

Why is this in the Lounge?

 

[The Monkey]

Good god man, do you honestly think you can apply a plausible deniability to every single case on earth? There are times when people are so unambiguously guilty that there's not really going to be room for tampering. Maybe the DNA thing is a bit much, but I'm mainly talking about individuals like the Norway shooter and others who commit similarly heinous acts and are caught with pretty much no chance of being innocent.

Or do you think there's really believable deniability to be had in the case of the Norway shooter? Yeah, he should get his trial, but it's not like he's going to have even the remotest chance in hell to be found innocent or not guilty... unless it's some crap about not guilty by reason of insanity. Either way, he still did it and it's hard to deny it.


I'm not talking about jury assigned guilt here.


I just can't get on the side of people who believe the punishments we have currently for the most heinous criminals in our society are barbaric. People are too soft and I question how they would punish those individuals, since they oftentimes question any type of punishment we provide at all. "Incarceration is too barbaric and torturous! Those poor souls!"

But how would you formulate such a policy? I agree that in certain cases they it is seemingly obviously that the person is guilty (as with the Norway shooter), but such cases are rare. Even if they confess they could be lying to protect someone else.

But is your stance motivated solely by revenge? Doesn't really seem applicable in modern society. And it's not like it deters crime; America is the only country in the West with the death penalty, and its crime rate is also the biggest in the West.

 

[Raziaar]

But how would you formulate such a policy? I agree that in certain cases they it is seemingly obviously that the person is guilty (as with the Norway shooter), but such cases are rare. Even if they confess they could be lying to protect someone else.

But is your stance motivated solely by revenge? Doesn't really seem applicable in modern society. And it's not like it deters crime; America is the only country in the West with the death penalty, and its crime rate is also the biggest in the West.

Why are you asking me how I would formulate such a policy? I have no ****ing idea, and it isn't the point of this thread. I'm simply stating my criteria for supporting the death penalty. It's not a plain yes or no for me, it's a conditional.

I'm certainly not motivated by deterrence. You can't deter people like the Norway shooter. When it comes to those very rare(and yes they are very rare, which are the only times I absolutely support the death penalty as is the whole point of this thread, to ask) situations, I am a firm believer of stripping the rights to life and liberty in the very same way those individuals did to their victims. Not eye for an eye exactly, but harsh punishment nonetheless. It wouldn't sit right with me that someone like that Norwegian murderer wouldn't receive punishment. I don't believe in rehabilitating those people and I never will. Prison and the death penalty for them would be punishment only.


And you cannot compare the crime rate in the US to the death penalty. Our crime isn't influenced by our punishments for crime. The crimes would still be there if our punishment system were different. Capital punishment is applied so infrequently as it is and it isn't the fate of most inmates. You're only talking around a thousand individuals in the history of the United States, at least officially recorded.

 

[morgs]

Those are the people who I have no issue being put to death.

I agree. For example last year here in NZ, a guy stabbed his girlfriend 200 times with a pair of scissors and was caught in the act by her mother. I think in a case like that, or the Denmark shooter, it is very necessary.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Most non-minimum security prisons in the world are like this though. There are of course examples where they're not, but when a huge first world nation like the United States of America with all of it's human rights advocacy groups still has prisons this terrible, you can bet your ass many, many other nations have prisons just as bad, and in all likelihood, far worse. I'm positive that the majority of the world's prisons operate under similar conditions.

I was under the impression that the US prison system was pretty ****ed on account of being largely privatized. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Krynn72]

I was under the impression that the US prison system was pretty ****ed on account of being largely privatized. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You're right. In fact, the account posted above was from a privately owned prison.

 

[Escaep]

Why is this in the Lounge?

Where else should it be?

 

[Remus]

Where else should it be?

Politics section.

 

[Bad^Hat]

How can you morally justify locking a thread in that windowless hellhole full of murderers and rapists.

 

[Sulkdodds]

As long as you have a reasonable amount of appeals, last chances, checks and balances for death row inmates, sentencing someone to death ends up more expensive than sentencing them to life. If you don't have a reasonable amount of appeals, last chances, checks and balances, then it's too dangerous in terms of convicting innocent people. However bad the death penalty might be, it would be even more unconscionable to operate death row without all the extra legal scrutiny which makes it cost so much. That being the case, there's no actual point in it, save that the victims are unquestionably gone from the world, which, assuming a decent level of prison security, seems dubious to me.

And yeah, you can say that there is some imaginary class of people who are definitely and undoubtedly guilty. But this would have to be determined by human beings. The justice system is run by humans and therefore not only 'innocently' fallible but open to corruption. So if innocent people can already fall foul of it - even when the threshold for criminal prosecution is "beyond reasonable doubt" - then they could still fall foul of some extra level of trial. And anyway, it would still end up as more expensive: you'd have to pay all the lawyers and judges for their time.