Explosions at the Boston marathon

IrishMarc said:
I may respond to this properly tomorrow but the actual evidential truth is as societies move away from violence in general the less violent crime is committed in kind.
The least violent societies on the planet at the moment reside in western Europe, oceiana and Asia (in countries where capital punishment is pretty much abolished) with homicides per capita of less than 2 per 100,000.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Map_of_worl...
As a promient example the united states has a homicide rate per capital if 4.8 per 100,000
480% that of the western European average.
Capital punishment is a terrible response to the problem as it invariable puts innocents to death, acts as a useless deterrent (evidenced by societies with capital punishment being more violent), doesn't address any issues and in the developed world can actually cost more than life in imprisonment (with appeal processes etc costing so much).
The best course of action is to take dangerous people out of society (as already mentioned) and to try rehabilitate if possible and if not possible to keep them out of society.
Already written to much I need to go to bed.

Luke82 said:
If all prison sentences were suddenly doubled in this country would you expect a sudden incline in crime rates?

Luke82 said:
Removing dangerous people from society is the best feature of capital punishment. It's an act of sanitation if nothing else. There may be example of people being put to death and later found innocent but this becomes extremely unlikely as detection methods improve and our judicial system becomes more effective. And you'd have to convince me that the number of people executed and later exonerated would out weigh the people killed by dangerous people released from prison that should have been removed from any rational society.

In the UK, reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid. -wiki 2013

If a death penalty acts as no further detterent, so what? Clearly, since murders still happen, the current system is not a detterent either. It's common sense that not every person can be rehabilitated, so who does life imprisonment please? Those that want to give criminals a chance to change aren't happy with it, and those of us that would rather get rid of them and not pay to keep them alive for no reason aren't happy either.

I have a problem with how these statisics you provide are interpreted. It seems absurd to suggest that harsh punishment is responsible for driving up crime. It is far more likely, in my eyes, that as societies become more civilised and affluent they become safer, and the population move away from harsh punishments. This seems a much more likely chain of events than 'the law kills people therefore I can kill people' - give criminals some credit ha ha.

Sir Samuel Romilly, speaking to the House of Commons on capital punishment in 1810, declared that "[there is] no country on the face of the earth in which there [have] been so many different offences according to law to be punished with death as in England."[citation needed] Known as the "Bloody Code", at its height the criminal law included some 220 crimes punishable by death, including "being in the company of Gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age" and "blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime". Many of these offences had been introduced to protect the property of the wealthy classes that emerged during the first half of the 18th century, a notable example being the Black Act of 1723, which created 50 capital offences for various acts of theft and poaching.[citation needed]
Whilst executions for murder, burglary and robbery were common, the death sentences for minor offenders were often not carried out.

A sentence of death could be commuted or respited (permanently postponed) for reasons such as benefit of clergy, official pardons, pregnancy of the offender or performance of military or naval duty.[2] Between 1770 and 1830, 35,000 death sentences were handed down in England and Wales, but only 7000 executions were carried out.[3]

If all prison sentences were suddenly doubled in this country would you expect a sudden incline in crime rates?

Luke82 said:And you'd have to convince me that the number of people executed and later exonerated would out weigh the people killed by dangerous people released from prison that should have been removed from any rational society.

Ramsay777 said:Some ignorance; if anyone would like some rage to channel into a PB tonight...

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/48093470152/two-explosive...

I think I lost half of my brain cells just reading some of those posts.

Luke82 said:Well I would expect a decrease in crime. At the very least habitual criminals would be away twice as long. Off the top of my head I believe longer prison sentences was a big help in controlling football violence.

Taking your logic to its conclusion we might as well not bother with incarceration at all. Good luck reducing crime with that.

Using statistics from the 1950s (not to mention medieval times) is not really relevant. We are leagues ahead now in crime detection. DNA evidence alone will cut the margin of error right down, and like I said the tragedy of executing an innocent person would be extremely rare, whereas innocent people being killed by released criminals who have no business wandering around in a society such as ours.

I was looking at your statistics objectively. It seems to me it is you who have your conclusion in mind when looking at the figures; violent societies have the death penalty, therefore it is the death penalty that makes society violent. This doesn't stand up to a moments critical thought in my eyes, as it is much much more likely that a society turns to the death penalty because of the violent crime, not the other way around. Not only is this more in keeping with common sense, it also allows room for the anomalies such as Japan, which has the death penalty but relatively low levels of violent crime.

What is wrong with our justice system including retribution? It is one of the goals of punishment. Human beings have an inbuilt sense of justice.

You say we cannot agree to disagree with this but to be honest I think that is all that can be done. People ever seem to be set against capital punishment, or like me not see a problem with it. And yes I would be happy to be the executioner, it was within my job to potentially kill whilst defending our society and culture whilst I was in the forces, but even if I personally were not, so what? People might not want to work in an abbatoir but it doesn't stop them eating meat.

slimsim said:
The person who has been killed by lethal injection is your dad/brother/child/mother......

slimsim said:
The person who has been killed by lethal injection is your dad/brother/child/mother......

Luke82 said:
This is mainly because if someone raped or murdered someone I care about I would want them killed, no ifs or maybes.

Luke82 said:
My point was I was far more likely to lose a family member by someone unsuitable being released from prison than I was by wrongful execution.
Marc, I don't disagree with your statistics, in fact I think we are generally agreeing about less violent societies getting rid of the death penalty. But I still don't think that introducing the death penalty, in this country at this time, would be a bad thing. I certainly don't think that murder rates would sky rocket because suddenly people would think killing was ok because we have capital punishment.
We are in danger of going round in circles so ill just say that I, purely personally, agree with the death penalty being an option at sentencing. This is mainly because if someone raped or murdered someone I care about I would want them killed, no ifs or maybes. I wouldn't be so hypocritical to deny others in this position the justice I would want for myself.

macroth said:
So would I. But that has nothing to do with justice, and certainly not a justice
system. What you want is revenge, and statistics from medieval times seem particularly apt in that case.