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I also think that prisoners should be forced to work and be productive members of society if they want societies benefits.

You want to allow murderers and rapists to be in the community being forced to work? Do you know how many escape attempts there would be?! Hell, if I was a murderer, I would view this as the perfect opportunity to escape. In addition, why are we taking work away from non-criminals when there are already so many people unemployed or homeless. Why not give them work to do instead.

Penalties as a deterrant are a very debatable feature. Beyond a certain point do you think they really affect any criminals? Do you think any would be rapist thinks to himself, "if I rape this girl I will get 30 years in jail, that is ok"?

Penalties being used as deterrents are one of the primary purposes considered in sentencing by the courts. And I have no doubt that they can be effective. If I know that I would get 3 years in jail for drink driving, then I would be far less likely to do it than if I only got a $100 fine and no demerit points. It would deter me. As for the rapist, if there is even one person that is deterred, then I think it has worked.

Make it cost neutral through science, technology and inmate production.

What's the point though? Why are we wanting to live in a world where murderers and rapists are kept alive. If you could click your fingers and tomorrow every single person in the world that has murdered someone or raped someone (excluding mere statutory rape) would die painlessly, would you do it? Note: No innocent people die. Do you not think the world would be a better place without these people in it?

http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country....

Over the last 20 years the prison population in Australia has doubled. And a greater number of the population is going to jail. You might not consider that to be a problem just yet, but what about in another 20 years, what about in 100 years? Imagine how large the prison populations will be then. And Australia is lucky that we have such a low amount of prisoners currently. Look at countries like the U.S. and China that have almost 4 million people in jail between them. There are more than 10 million people around the world in prison, currently. And this is increasing every year.

Regarding population limits, take a look at this:

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/how-many-people-can-t...

"Take the world’s human population. We only made it to the first one billion people within the last 300 years. But then we really started packing them in. When I was born in 1963 there were 3.5 billion people. Now, just 47 years later, we’re double that figure and still climbing rapidly.

The question then becomes: how many people can the world support? There’s surely nothing wrong with 7 billion people, or 10 billion or 20 billion if everyone gets what they need to live. And there’s the rub. It takes a defined amount of water for each person to drink each day (a few litres for survival depending on local conditions) and the food we eat needs to be grown on land, the size of which is dependent on what we choose to eat. Air can be endlessly recycled but air quality needs to be maintained to keep it breathable.

Unfortunately the choices most of us make mean the consumption of more water than is available, the tilling of more arable land than exists on earth and pollution of the air to make it toxic to the hundreds of millions of people who have to breath it in the heavily populated megacities that are growing rapidly around the world.

The carrying capacity of the world is more than a simple question of how many people there are or will be. It’s the matter of how the resources of the world are divided among those people that is the current problem.

There is the concept of seven Earths: that it would take seven planets like ours to provide the resources consumed by the Earth’s current population if they all had the standard of living comparable to that of Australia or the USA.

The sad fact is we in the West can only maintain our standard of living at the expense of the rest of humanity. 1.6 billion people do not have enough to eat and half the world’s population consumes less than a tenth of all the resources used by humanity. We are quite literally living a fine life at their expense."

There is only so much space. There is only so many resources. And we are fast approaching the point where we will have far too many people on this planet. Keeping the murderers and rapists alive is not the answer, even if it is "cost-neutral".

http://www.correctiveservices.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pd...

People do escape. And more and more people are going to escape if we do as you suggest and put murderers and rapists out into the community to work.

What % of prisoners are you proposing executing?

Every murderer and rapist. So whatever percentage that happens to be.

Rwanda. One of the worst genocides of all time. We need to punish the guilty right? What did the government do in some cases? Rounded up all suspected Hutu militia and put then in literal dungeons. So crowded they couldn't all lie down at the same time. Put on starvation rations. No toilet facilities so eventually people are ankle deep waste. No medical attentian. No sunlight. Disease rampant. Deaths by the hour. How do you get out? Confess to genocide. If you are innocent tough choice. What would you do?

How many of those do you really believe were innocent? 1 out of 100? And the situation you described is exactly why the death penalty is essential. We should not be mistreating them in crowded dungeons, where they will starve and are ankle deep in their own waste. Death is merciful. Imagine how grateful all of those people would have been if you simply gave them all the lethal injection. Painless death. If you do happen to be the one innocent person there, then that does suck. But as we illustrated earlier, sometimes people have to die for the greater good. If you were the 7 year old girl you said you would kill, then you wouldn't be thrilled about it, but at the end of the day killing the girl is the right thing to do.

But to impose the death penalty on someone would take years of court cases, etc, and the person has to be imprisoned while that is going on. I wonder just how much cheaper it would actually work out to be...

In the current system, yes, it takes ages, and costs a lot. But this can easily be changed, and less appeals will be granted once judge-alone trials become more prominent. They should get one trial, and the required appeals, but that's it. We shouldn't drag it out.

I don't think it would be much of a deterent either - as you say , most people would probably see life imprisonment as a worse sentence than the death penalty. If life imprisonment doesn't deter somone, the death penalty won't.

Life imprisonment offers hope though. It offers them hope that they might some day find a legal loophole and be free. It offers them hope that they might one day escape. From the point of view of the criminal they, generally, wouldn't want to die, and would prefer life imprisonment at first. However, if you asked criminals that have been in prison for decades, then you would find that many of them would have preferred to have died upon their incarceration.

And I don't accept the collateral damage argument. I'm sure if it was you who was on death row for a crime you didn't commit, you would have a different view on the matter :P.

You are right, if I was the one on death row, I would think it would suck! I wouldn't want to die for something I hadn't done. However, that's where emotional bias comes in. And it clouds people's judgement. Let me give you the same example I gave Yoda. Imagine there is a 7 year old girl in front of you. If you kill her, every single person in the world would be cured of cancer. Would you kill her? Is she not collateral damage in this scenario? Yes, it is true that if one of us were the little girl then we would think the situation sucks, but decisions should be made objectively.

You make some strong points, Naker, but so does Yoda. As for the 7 year old girl scenario, I would not sacrifice my 7 yr old for the sake of curing cancer. Nor would I sacrifice a 7 yr old girl I do not know. No parent would. It's that simple.

While I have never been an advocate of corporal punishment, I do believe it may become possible in the future where the element of 'doubt' is removed through science. If this eventuates then I would say that corporal punishment should be mandatory, paricularly in the case of premeditated murder. However, as you would appreciate, life and law consist of shades of grey and rarely comprise of definable black or white scenarios and, for this reason alone, corporal punishment has no place until science catches up.

As for your objection to prisoners working, I think Yoda meant (I'm assuming) that the prisoners would work within the prison enviornment and not out in the community where, as you so rightly noted, there is an increased risk of escape and additional crimes.

I will make one last point which, if nothing else, simply highlights what I said above about the shades of greay that exist currently and why corporal punishment has no place at present. I am a school teacher working in a low socio-economic area/school. The home lives of the students in my school would send shivers down the nape of your necks were I to relate them. I stand out in the playground on duty most days and as I scan the students' faces, I instinctively recall parts of each students' background known to me. As I mentally move and reflect on student after student I am often reduced to a sad place. Overtime these reflections have lead me to seriously worry about the kind of adults they will become. More importantly, the situations these students may find themsleves in on account of their lack of upbringing.

While I hope that many will mature, with the support of those of us in education, into functional adults, there will no doubt be many (already know of too many) who will find themselves commiting serious crimes. It is possible, perhaps likely that someone I have taught may one day murder another human being. Now, if I had a simple and unrealistic view of life and the law, I might demand the death penalty for such a person without knowing the background. However, it is knowing this history that often allows us educators to find solutions or routes that might allow a student to grow. It is this possibility for rehabilitation that the government no doubt holds on to. Hope is one attribute the human species has that is admirable.

I know your rebuttal, Naker, might be along the lines of "we cant ignore every murder because every murderer has a bad upbringing", I simple suggest, or try to highlight the shades of grey that life comprises of. To sit back and objectively make decisions on whether another living being deserves to live or die is not a simple one and definately not one we are ready or capable of making. As a species we are too young, immature and disconnected. Perhaps science can bridge this.

That's my two cents worth.



Last edited by Mr J at 9/30/2012 5:02:36 AM

As for the 7 year old girl scenario, I would not sacrifice my 7 yr old for the sake of curing cancer. Nor would I sacrifice a 7 yr old girl I do not know. No parent would. It's that simple.

I understand what you are saying, but that is because you are letting emotion overpower reason. You are right though, I personally wouldn't sacrifice my 7 year old daughter. However, that would be because I would let emotion cloud my judgement. Killing the 7 year old child is still the right thing to do, even if you can't bring yourself to do it. If you don't kill the 7 year old child, even the one you don't know, then you are essentially responsible for every single person that dies from cancer. You are responsible for the mother of three with breast cancer passing away. You are responsible for the 4 year old with lung cancer that passes away mere hours before his fifth birthday. You are responsible for all of them because you let emotion over power you. There is a reason we don't let families of victims decide the punishment for criminals. There is a reason we don't let doctors operate on loved ones. This reason is emotion. It prevents you from acting in the "right" way. The right thing to do would be to kill the child. Yes, it is hard to accept, but doing the right thing isn't always meant to be easy.

As for your objection to prisoners working, I think Yoda meant (I'm assuming) that the prisoners would work within the prison enviornment and not out in the community where, as you so rightly noted, there is an increased risk of escape and additional crimes.

Why should they work in the prison environment? Who does that benefit? What possible gain is there for society?

In relation to your story about the children in the playground, I understand that environment plays a huge role in making us who we are. But that does not mean that we should not be held accountable for our actions. As you rightly predicted, "We can't ignore every murder because ever murderer has a bad upbringing". I realise that life is hard for some people, and even harder for others. But let me try give you an analogy:

Imagine that you own a factory. You are the manager of it in every way, shape or form. Your factory produces T-shirts of various colours and designs. You have recently purchased the best T-shirt making machine available on the market. The quality of some of the shirts are superb! But unfortunately, once in every 100 shirts the shirt has a small rip in it or has been shredded completely. You've investigated the problem and have found that sometimes the material of the shirts are just weaker and so tear more easily, and sometimes the labels on the shirts get caught in the machine causing rips. There is nothing you can do to stop the ripping. Unfortunately, the people buying your shirts are getting upset that they sometimes receive bad shirts. You need to find a solution to the problem. Do you just do nothing and let the bad shirts get shipped out to stores along with the good ones? Do you try and sew the rips back together and hope the people buying them don't notice? Or do you do the responsible thing and throw away the damaged shirts? You could recycle the shirts or burn them, I don't think it matters, but at the end of the day you need to remove the damaged shirts from shipment, even though it is not the shirt's fault that it tore.

Really good read guys, good points by all...

Slightly off this topic but can someone stop these bloody illegal boats!

Disclaimer: Now im not comparing murderers or the scummiest of scum in jail to boat people because obviously a lot of those people have come from terrible situations or horrific backgrounds on those boats..

Ok so when you talk about the financial cost to the country keeping murderers and other scum alive for years on end, I would hate to think how much as a country we are spending on these boat people in detention who are trying to jump the queue! Because being soft is only encouraging more boats. We have an official process in place to let refugees and displaced individuals who need to escape and want to come to Australia. It's tough because there is fellow human beings involved but in my opinion anyone who tries to get in on a boat should never be allowed in, now or in the future as a deterrent. This will stop a majority of boats and then we can focus some of that money and put it into helping the real refugees and speed up the official immigration process in place to help them asap

Anyway just my thoughts after seeing another 500 boat people intercepted in the last 3 days.

Naker "The Dictator" Virus

:D

I understand your point, Naker, but comparing living beings to t-shirts is an unfair analogy. However, using your analogy (where the manager is the goverment, the factory society and the machine the prison system) you are, in effect, suggesting the prison system is at fault. I would disagree with that given that societal views and expectations and the laws we have in place have a greater impact on producing poor t-shirts ;-) Perhaps the analogy you have used isn't quite accurate but I see your point. However, I will say this: your analogy reinforces my previous point regarding the need for science to catchup in order for our laws to be more effective. The "best T-shirt making machine available" if we viewed this machine as the legal system, would be more accurate. Removing that 'reasonable doubt' through science would allow for corporal punishment to exist and function as it should.

As for the 7 yr old girl example, I would reluctantly accept the responsibility for future cancer-caused deaths as I would not sacrifice a single living spirit. Yes it's an emotional repsonse but we are emotional.

In the end, my friend, we will simply have to agree to disagree. :-)

In the end, my friend, we will simply have to agree to disagree. :-)

haha fair enough :)