If that were true, murder would be virtually unheard of in Texas. They execute more people than the rest of the country combined.


Non-viable? Many countries have banned the death penalty without falling into a murderous anarchy.

Excuse me? This isn't true at all when looked at more closely. Petty crime has declined. Sweden, part of that area, has one of the highest numbers of rapes in Europe. In fact, I think the last count was 168 offenders out of 100,000 people.I'm almost positive that sexual related crimes raised over 50% in the last 10 years.

They also have more illegal immigrants to deal with than a large amount of the country, which vastly effects crime rates.

England, Denmark, Iceland, Georgia and Greece left to go then!

Only America bro, you know, the country where all the nuts who were too nutty for Europe ended up.

According to the Constitution of Georgia, religious institutions are separate from government and every citizen has the right of religion.

Also, geographically Georgia is not in Europe, and its "democracy" has turned into a blatant police state nowadays.

You'd fit well in the Salem in the 1600s.

Also this sappy thing.

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Romanian gypsies were there. That explains everything.

The majority of the cost of the death penalty is from the legal processes necessary. Sure, you could cut out all of that, but according to everyone else's logic of "everything or nothing", you'll end up with another Salem.

False.

You can up the penalty for crimes all you want, but the reduction in the incidence is somewhat lower, depending. Death penalty for jaywalking? Yeah, jaywalkers will pretty much disappear. Murders and rapes? Those either tend to be crimes of passion (an emotional human is one that doesn't give a thought to much), or premeditated crimes by people who think they won't get caught, and thus the penalties won't matter to them.

Funnily enough, an eye for an eye was revolutionary back then. Usually people went the disproportionate retribution route, as can often be seen in the Bible ("rape my sister? I kill your whole tribe!").

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1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't leave the game.

If you're for the death penalty, then you could not be any weaker on crime. And you're a killer's best friend for giving them a quick escape. Instead of actually holding them accountable for their crimes, you'd prefer live out some vengeance fantasy and give them some drugs to send them to sleep in a couple of minutes. See, the difference with me is that I actually want criminals held responsible and I'm not a big fan of bailing out murderers and rapists. I want them to spend the rest of their lives in a five by five cell until they're old and sickly and when their bodies start to fail then they can die.

Pretty ridiculous too that some Christians are more pro-death than anyone else. Must be hard to justify that urge internally when Jesus Christ himself was against the death penalty. But what does his opinion matter on it, right?

Yea, but they don't do this either.

So, we're going to go with the route of burning, torturing, and drowning people over a silly oogie boogie man in the sky disapproving of hocus pocus being the same as rape and murder?

Which I said would be fine earlier in the thread. I agree with that. We don't have it in us as a culture to go that far though.

I'll be honest, I don't actually much like the death penalty. My statement about bullets is more of one about prisons being to expensive. California spends something like 50 grand a year per prisoner. I think prison labor needs to make a comeback.

Or America could just stop building for-profit prisons and stop arresting people for the victimless crime of lighting a joint.

Again, you were the one who said that killing innocents is fine.

If you bring back prison labor, than that means less jobs for people who can work for minimum wage, which means they'll get poorer, which increases the chances of them committing crimes. Everything has unintended consequences.

(Though, of course, there are certain hard labor jobs that citizens will not take, like fruit picking and mining, so that can still work.)

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1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't leave the game.

Considering Jesus came to Earth to die on the cross and save mankind from sin, I'd say He was fine with the death penalty. I'm sure He would have preferred the nice, quiet lethal injection that hardcore murdering rapists get in America, but unfortunately, Roman law was a little more swift and brutal in those days.

But, hey, I think Sarah and I agree - if we'd go back to publicly crucifying these scumbags, it'd be a much more effective deterrent.

Fairly sure that's only half of what was said throughout the conversation.

Just out of curiosity, as I'm rather curious and these moral conversations are fun.

Lets take a completely off the base hypothetical situation that will never happen.

Say you are picked up off the street and taken to a building. Inside the building you see 1000 children chained up. You are then walked through another building with 1001 children, and are told that the group of 1001 will be killed unless you personally kill the other 1000.

What would you do?

Or hell, another one. You know you can cure cancer. But to do so would require you to build a facility in a place that a village of 500 people live, and they won't let you do it, and moving them would kill them.

Do you respect their wishes, condemning every person for the next X amount of years until another cure is found to death, or do you get rid of the 500 standing in the way?

For-profit prisons are fine as long as they prove cheaper for the state and aren't being inhumane.

Note: I am for both paid and unpaid prison labor.
But prisoners who are able to work in prison are less likley to recidivate. Prison labor can teach them skills that they can use in the real world, it can keep them away from crime. Also, if they are being paid by private companies they have are able to help pay for some of their incarceration costs, they can pay restitution, they can support family, and they can earn gateway money for when they are released.

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You're against the U.S. Constitution and what Jesus said. Read the Eighth Amendment and John 8:7.

For-profit prisons are not a good idea. If you provide a financial incentive to incarcerate people, then you are going to see more people in jain regardless of whether the arrest has merit or not. That's perverted. Even now, if you look at who is doing the lobbying for longer prison sentences and tougher laws on crime, you will see it is the private prison companies who are pushing for it. They're doing this, of course, because more prisoners are going to make more money. Private prisons are partly the reason why America has such a horrible achievement of having 25% of the world's prisoners despite having only 5% of the world's population. A record that beats even Iran and China, which is disgraceful. Justice should not be a business.

And there already is a prison labour system in place through UNICOR. 18% of U.S. prisoners are employed through it.

Half of what the conversation was about? You said you're fine with killing an innocent person if they're mistaken for someone else who confessed to the crime.

I'd turn on the people who kidnapped me as soon as I got my weapon (or was freed from my bindings), and likely die a horrible death. There's no guarantee whatsoever that they would keep their word.

That's a tough one!

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1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't leave the game.

And how much would it cost the taxpayer to actually ensure that? For-profit prisons provide significant means for corruption (prisons bribing judges for being harshness in sentencing is one that has been seen, for one, even with juveniles) that just aren't there when there is no incentive to the prison to increase the number of inmates regardless of the crime rate.

Yes, the problem is really with the corruption, but how much will it cost to ensure that it does not occur? These policies normally come from types who hang their hats on maximizing liberty, but they sure do tend to screw normal people's liberties over. Funny, that.

Well then you just killed 2,001 kids and yourself in this incredibly pointless example.

I said I was fine with the occasional innocent who looked guilty thanks to the evidence being killed as long as the large majority is actually guilty.

And again, using a 23 year old case of a guy who looks so much alike of another guy that family members couldn't tell them apart is a bit of a crap move.

Honestly, what upsets me more than this guy being put to death while innocent is that the large amounts of money and time spent trying to prove this guy was innocent just went out the door. One would think that, if the other guy was in prison, they could look up the name, just in case. Or at least check for it.

Hell, I'm not even saying that the system doesn't need work. Fairly sure I said it does earlier. But there will pretty much always be innocents wrongly accused with evidence pointing towards them. It's just part of the game. Does it suck? Yeah. Does it need to happen less? Yeah.

In this case, they had very flimsy evidence. It shouldn't have gone as far as it did. THAT'S what should be looked at, not the death penalty.

It's cute how you like to take Bible verses out of context as it suits your argument.

It's also cute how you take the 8th Amendment out of context. My advice to you is to skip any aspirations you have for a career in law.

Cruel and unusual punishment refers to punishment that is excessive relative to the crime committed.

Crucifying someone who, say, rapes and murders children, is not cruel and unusual.

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