captital punishment (part 3)

sorry this is a little late and maybe a little short. i'm just going to reply to some of the comments to the previous post.


I think we should buy a REALLY nice island in the pacific somewhere and just drop off the prisoners there and let them fend for themselves.

do you REALLY want me to respond to this or should we all just admit that this is a rather silly proposition?

think CHINA here ....

yes, let us think CHINA for a moment. china, iran, vietnam, and the united states are the top four executing nations in the world. combined, we account for 97% of executions perfomed on this planet. yes, let's think china here. do we really want to look to them as our humanitarian allies? do we want to be like china? check out what amnesty international has to say about china. let us think china. and then let's not think about it anymore.

Or better yet, do what Fidal Castro is doing. Put all the criminals on a boat and aim it at Cuba.

wow. that's almost as bright as the island or china ideas. let's move on.

Could it not also be argued that the money used to support a "killer / rapist / pedophile", instead of for personal gain, be used to strengthen our great nation? fund schools, job training programs, ESL classes, etc. ????

because it costs much less to hold a prisoner for life than it does to take that life, the best option is then to hold the person in prison and use the money saved on such ventures. a great place to put the money would be into the police for to help with the 40% of homicides that go unsolved - a far better way to help out victims and their families.

it's also fact that there is NO KNOWN "therapy" that helps "cure" this problem either. No amount of counceling, or "talking and understanding them" has curbed this either.

there are plenty of things that can deter crime far better than the death penalty. the biggest of them being economic and societal reforms that will prevent poverty and broken homes that are breeding grounds for violence.

I remember one day some terrorist flew planes into a couple of tall buildings in New York, one crashed into a field in PN, and one hit the pentagon. However, that was a couple years ago, we have no proof that any terrorist are ever going to do anything to us ever again, so lets drop the whole military all together, cause unless someone is activly attacking us, what really is the point of having a military?

there is a major difference between having a preventative defense and having pre-emptive executions. just like it was immoral and wrong for our nation to attack iraq for and possible terrorists and possible weapons of mass destruction, it is immoral and wrong to kill someone because they may possibly kill again.

Just b/c they "might" do it again is no reason to be proactive. Especially when some guy in the neighborhood molest a child.

you do have a point. because a person has committed a certain crime, they have statistially raised the likeliness of them committing the same crime again. this should be taken into account and society should use some preventative measures. however, there is no reason why capital punishment should be necessary to do this. if capital punishment was merely a preventative measure to keep a person from committing another crime, then why not use it on any crime. by eliminating the repetative crime rate to zero, much can be said to be achieved! this however is a ludicrous idea (or at least should be) and should make it clear as to why capital punishment a preventative measure against repeat criminals is problematic.

I think the death penalty makes more sense from an atonement point of view. It's more of an eye-for-an-eye thing than any other reason.

wow. is that why christ suffered on the cross, so that humanity might be punished for their own sins? if anyone should have a disgust for the death penalty, it should be christians. the whole notion of the atonement is that people don't have to suffer for their actions, that forgiveness is possible? it's become cliche, but ask yourself what would jesus do? if you are still thinking death penalty, then you need to seriously rethinking christ and his message. as for the eye-for-an-eye thing, go home, open up your bible and read the sermon on the mount. jesus specifically mentions the eye-for-an-eye.

Surely murder is worst offense in our society, so those guilty of it should pay for it with their own lives.

how very christian of you.



to be continued tomorrow... maybe