Capital punishment right or wrong?

[Bonez899]

How much does it cost a year to run places like that prison? How much does it cost for those toxins to kill them? I'd rather have a one time payment of my tax money and see them dead and gone, then have them taking thousands of dollars every year to house them and keep them alive. I know that it is worse for them to be there but we are complaining about money all over the place yet we lock people up for 10, 20, 30 years and pay for all their needs while our goverments go into deficits and bankruptcy.

 

Executions are very, very expensive.

More so than providing for criminals for decades of time?

[Jonanananas]

How much does it cost a year to run places like that prison? How much does it cost for those toxins to kill them? I'd rather have a one time payment of my tax money and see them dead and gone, then have them taking thousands of dollars every year to house them and keep them alive. I know that it is worse for them to be there but we are complaining about money all over the place yet we lock people up for 10, 20, 30 years and pay for all their needs while our goverments go into deficits and bankruptcy.

 

Executions are very, very expensive.

 

Yup. There's no way around it. Unless you're doing it dictator-style, death penalty is definitely more expensive than being in prison until your death. Part of that comes from them ALSO being locked up for a few decades, but that's good as it's given quite a few people the chance to show they are innocent.

[Assume Nothing]

I think some figures would be nice to put things into perspective. The difference could be minute at something like $200, or it could be astronomical at $120,000. Is it closer to the former, or the latter?

[Dizzle229]

I believe the death penalty is vastly more humane than life imprisonment, and that if we have the right to ruin the remainder of a person's life, then we also have the right to end it.

[Jonanananas]

I think some figures would be nice to put things into perspective. The difference could be minute at something like $200, or it could be astronomical at $120,000. Is it closer to the former, or the latter?

 

The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate."

 

 

Taken from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

 

 

@Drizzle: The prisoner should make that decision himself though. And honestly, I think prison for life is better...It's not the death penalty itself that I would be really afraid of, but rather the 20, 30 years spent on death row, never knowing if you'll be going to be executed next year or wait another decade...

[Crocefisso]

Epiphenomenalism holds that we essentially act in a mechanistic way and then give reasons for our actions afterwards - in such a worldview, capital punishment is perfectly fine, because trying to rehabilitate is a complete waste of time.

 

I'll post a link from Stanford.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/

 

Just thought this might add something new.

[Assume Nothing]

The discussion above brings about a question to be put forth: If the prisoner doesn't want to live a life of torturous hell, should we stop them taking their own lives? In fact - should we provide them the means to commit suicide if they wanted to?

 

I pretty much adopt that view, Croce - except it might be too costly for capital punishment to really be feasible for relatively small crimes like third degree murder. That's not to say that I support life without parole either - since the inmate would have no incentive to behave, that would probably encourage misbehaviour in prisons - although arguable in high security cells. Hmm, lots of food for thought.

[Randox]

Solitary confinement is the motivator to behave. I believe that at least in American Max Security, solitary confinement cells are also partial sensory deprivation, to ensure they are unpleasent enough that you don't want to go back, while being reasonable enough that its not cruel and unusual punishment.

[Assume Nothing]

I'd say solitary confinement is more akin to torture than imprisonment. How is torture legally defined, by the way?

[Jonanananas]

Epiphenomenalism holds that we essentially act in a mechanistic way and then give reasons for our actions afterwards - in such a worldview, capital punishment is perfectly fine, because trying to rehabilitate is a complete waste of time.

 

I'll post a link from Stanford.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/

 

Just thought this might add something new.

 

Well...I guess you could say it's fine, but without it, it still works better.