Taboo Topics #1

[vicki_tori_a]

Okay folks, I have decided that I would like to have a discussion on my LJ, so here I will ask a question that most people don't feel is appropriate to ask at dinner with friends and family.

Today's Question has three parts:

What is your opinion about the Death Penalty, where do you stand on it, and how would you make it work? 

Comments

[mirror_cat_21]

Hmmm...interesting question. I wish I had a more thought provoking answer. To be honest, I'm pretty ambivalent about the entire concept. In a practical sense, I agree with it, but I will admit the risk of executing someone who is innocent weighs on me. As to how I'd make it work...not executing the wrong people and not leaving the ones waiting for execution to chill for years for a start! I dunno...not one of my preffered topics, so I haven't thought about it much. I think overall I'm for the death penalty, but our justice system would have to be much improved before I would place any faith in it. LOVES THE VICKIDEE!

[sporks5000]

I don't think that death should be a penalty for crime, per se.

However, I believe that our prison system should be geared toward transforming criminals into functional citizens. Should evaluation show that a person is incapable of undergoing such a transformation, clearly the remaining options for them are living the rest of their life in prison and being killed so that they no longer take up space.

I guess what I'm saying is that death shouldn't be part of the punishment, simply the last option for the solution - regardless of the crime.

[mirror_cat_21]

Oooh...I like that! Can I change my answer? ;-D

[sporks5000]

It's a little bit heartless and some people will take it to the extreme of "if someone can't be rehabilitated out of petty theft, then should they be sentenced to death?"

Honestly, though, there are only two answers to this question: 1) if the current system is incapable of rehabilitating them from petty theft, then chances are that the rehabilitation process itself is broken, not the person. and 2) If the system is perfect and the person still has enough of a problem with petty theft that the negatives of reintroducing them to society outweigh the positives, then keeping them alive is a waste of society's resources.

[amanda_2112]

I like the view of the early settlers in the 1600 and 1700s. They didn't have time nor money to spend into a prison system so they doled out punishment in three different ways. You were either fined, publically beaten,or you were hanged. I like how simple it was. I do not want innocent people to be put to death, but I also don't like the idea of most murders living better than homeless people. That kind of gets under my skin.

[varons_typist]

I've just read 'A Clockwork Orange" so this is pretty ironic.

But right now, I'm all for the idea that we should be allowed to shoot our neighbors, should they continue to filly about with the post box and trample all over family heirloom rose-bushes. I'm half anarchist, half socialist.

But should an innocent man ever meet his undue end, well, it might have been fate. I mean, that guy could have had a butterfly-wingbeat-into-a-hurricane affect should he have lived. I have upmost faith in the workings of the universe and leave to politics to the politicos. If I get my vote, I say the old euthanasia isn't used enough.

[amanda_2112]

I just remembered an amusing theory that one of my co-workers once had. Instead of a prison for the more serious crimes like murder he suggested that we empty the state of North Dakota of citizens. Let it grow back into wild lands and paracute prisoners there. With a knife and camping pack and let the go off to see if they can make it in the wilderness with all the other murderers.

As he put it, "if they don't want to obey our society laws then they can't be a part of our soceity." Not that I would take this seriously, but I mostly thought it amusing.