im not going to say this is a necessacary if a few innocents die to save the majority of civilization then i still say the death penalty should be enacted. if its 10 or 10000 then i have no problem making that choice.

But why? If the aim is to protect society, why wouldn't simply locking someone up forever work? Why must we kill them?

Someone wasn't a fan of Hobbs!

So we can lock up the people who AREN'T as bad forever, and not run out of prison room / funding!

Seriously. Think about how much it costs to provide adequate living for someone for their entire life. Now think about how much a bullet and a gun costs (gun is a one time purchase, bullet is repeating). The thing practically pays for itself!

Ok 1. you don't use guns and bullets to kill people and 2. it wouldn't pay for itself.

I don't really support either way but it just seems awfully strange that people think the best way to improve society is by killing criminals...why not go to the root of the problem, why do we HAVE criminals?

Ya dumbass, you use ponies and magic missles, god onion what a retard!

Exactly. 100% exactly.

And no; I hate the entire concept of predestination.

Our execution system is fairly flawed, and rather expensive. I read somewhere that the lethal injection costs somewhere along the lines of $100,000 to have performed.. but multiple sites online say that the drugs for it run only a little over $86. Wonder just how much those doctors make an hour.. and speaking of doctors, they will lethally inject a criminal, going against their hippocratic oath, yet they are not allowed or will not treat a consenting and terminally ill patient in the same manner.

Here is a breakdown of the drugs used:

And the procedure:

The sedatives used can, and sometimes do leave a patient awake and sometimes aware through a medical procedure, but in a mostly paralyzed state. Would be pretty awful to be strapped down, sedated, and somehow remain awake while your lungs and heart stop functioning. A fairly gruesome thought really. I had to witness a rather botched euthanasia of a pet, by an incompetent vet, and it was pretty terrible. I can imagine similar things probably happen with lethal injections too.

That's why bullet to head = win. You can't fail that way.

Um, no doctor will participate in a lethal injection. Prison staff are the ones who administer the drugs. This is one of the reasons there are so many botched executions.

From a purely financial point of view, due to all the automatic appeals a death sentence becomes far more expensive than life imprisonment.

All this is beside the point, however. First explain why a society should kill it's criminals instead of locking them away forever. Pro-death penalty arguments are meaningless without this.

A, this will sound callous, it saves me money.
B, if someone raped another person willingly with the intention of raping them then why should we keep them alive he knowingly caused harm to someone who did nothing to him. i agree with onion a bullet to the head.
C, locking someone away forever has no logical point to it, they will live but only a life you provide them which in prison is meager,boring, and quite isolated. you are taking them from freinds family and society. unfortunatly our society is to full of itself being the only surviving democracy and all that shite that the wont see it through.
D, some, not all, prisoners would rather have the death penalty and not the drug induced one which takes how long to be in effect? with a bullet it would be clean quick and efficent it would by no means self pay for itself but it would be alot better then the drug induced death penalty.

Response?

By pay for itself, I meant in comparison to the other death penalty options out there. IE, a cheap 9mm costs no more than $200, bullets each would probably cost less than a buck. You could execute hundreds of people for the same cost of a lethal injection that has a chance of being botched.

Thanks for explaining, Hitler.

thats not called for death. there is a very large difference

And what if innocent people are killed? Is your thirst for juvenile vengeance really so strong that you don't care?

Do you not feel responsible at all for criminals? Do you not accept that it's our fault as a whole criminals exist at all? And you want to just kill them?

I'm sorry, but Deathcharms is right. It's the first step toward Hitler's final solution.

im offering a solution im not looking for vengence. i understand u dont want innocents to die neither do I. But it happens. but what about the innocents killed by the murderers. innocents die either way but my way a few may be saved. I am not saying we should execute everyone by anymeans. just rapists and the sort. and you cant compare this to Hitler he killed millions because of race and religion not because of crimes commited.

What do you propose then to lessen crime. Draw up a connection for me that links killing extremely violent criminals to higher crime rates, and I will consider your opinion. We're both dancing around a cloudy common issue, however, and (like usual) don't seem to be on the same page.

Oh and I'm offended that you're saying that executing violent criminals is one more step toward Hitler's final solution. Unless you somehow draw up a connection stating that killing criminals is genocide, because they are just different then us, then I don't see the connection. Oh and if you DO do that, then my opinion of you will drop to somewhere around the level of an insane person. Of course, you would never assume that the execution of criminals is wrong because of a difference of beliefs. I hope .

Neither of you will answer my questions:

Why kill them instead of locking them up in prison forever?

Why do you not feel any social responsibility for the fact that crime exists at all?

I'm sorry, but the only justification anyone has ever given me for the death penalty is to fulfill some retarded, childish sense of revenge. For the past fifty years studies have proven without a doubt that nations and states with the death penalty do not deter crime any better (and in virtually every case, actually worse) than states without.

So. I ask again. Why should we execute prisoners instead of simply locking them up forever.

If your answer is cost then I won't respect you. If your answer is revenge, I'll think you childish. If your answer is to deter crime, I'll suggest your thought process and research are defective.

My reasoning is 2 things: Cost (I know you won't respect me, but it IS the case and it IS a problem) and an overflowing prison system (this is the primary reason, due to druggies taking up the majority).

I do NOT think that the death penalty deters crime. People who know they will get a quick way out if they're caught often don't consider the consequences. In a perfect world, where the only criminals who were locked up were there for violent crime, I would be fine with no death penalty. However, that is not the case, as we have drug dealers and a myriad of other criminal offenses that send people to jail.

Honestly, I think that some sort of physical pain / emotional humiliation would deter these lesser crimes a lot more than prison. Plus, this would allow us to do whatever the punishment was, and move on, without packing them in like sardines. Obviously, it wouldn't be extremely harsh, but it would be enough that criminals would think twice, and not too harsh that an unacceptably high portion of the public considered it "cruel and unusual" (unacceptably high here is over 10-15%; that means, 85-90% of people would have to agree with it and find it didn't break the 8th amendment). Since emotional pain can be much greater than physical pain, some sort of public humiliation would work. It would, in the long run, be FAR less cruel then some of the things that go on in jail (sodomy comes to mind).

That plan outlined above would help keep the prison population down, petty crime down, and would save the bars for people who are truly sick-minded and should be locked away from society.

The problem here is that we are talking about the human element, a very unstable and unpredictable notion. Someone who is evil one day might not be evil another, even if in their past were great wrongs. Does that mean that they should be put down? I wouldnt like to be at risk because of that person, but at the same time can you be certain that they really did it, and were not screwed by the system somehow and innocent?

I dont like either options of the death penalty or life in prison. The death penalty has merit in that it will permanently stop a violent criminal from ever being violent again, escaping and hurting civilians, killing other inmates or guards. I dont believe its a deterrent however to that sort of behavior as a general rule. It might stop a few, but we will never really know. Alternatively, life in prison offers them a chance to hurt other people. In most cases those people (of the highest offending nature) will never contribute or be allowed to contribute to society in any positive way again.

Prison overcrowding is a problem or so you would be led to believe, but the majority of our prisons are filled with pseudo criminals, desperate people who needed some help, but couldnt get, or didnt know where to get it. Most of these people spend way too much time in prisons and jails for petty crimes, and are released without help, to fall back into the same routines. At the same time rehabilitation programs tend to have a very limited success rate in 'fixing' these people too, so where do ya put em that will keep em from hurting themselves or others?

Part of the problem is in education, and the other in the war on drugs. The law does not keep drugs out of the hands of people who want them, (it tries, but trying really isnt good enough here) while people who want them often end up screwing up their lives in the eyes of the law because of the countermeasure in place to stop the spread and use of drugs. I think thats where most of the overcrowding comes from, drug related crime. The war on drugs seems quite pointless to me.

You can argue that people are throwing their lives away by using drugs. I would agree. Getting caught isnt much better usually. People are not like dogs, they often do not realize that their own behavior has put them into their current situation, so when they are out of it, even if it was terrible, they do it fall back in again and again. Sticking em in jail or prison for a year isnt going to cure em or help em in most cases.

But like all dynamic situations, if drugs were suddenly legal, there would crop up a whole new set of problems, would require constant workplace screening so people were not coming to work under the influence and screwing up jobs, things like that. Hell, the most lethal of all the drugs, alcohol, is legal, and it kills vastly more people than all of the others. Unless perhaps you include drug related violence, but thats just a guess.

The real question is: What is the solution? And is it possible to develop a solution without exposing the rest of society to the harsh effects it might have?

Death Penalty as a deterrent is bullshit. People know full well it is practiced in many states. Its not like the death penalty is a new thing...

And I was referring to you as Hitler not because kill criminals is genocide. You made a statement that said why not be more effective at killing someone than humane. Also Hitler lined the Jews up and had his crew mow them down kind of like what you suggested. Vicious criminals or not they are still human beings.

i have stated my reasons i have offered to explain them you refuse to or simply cant see it my way so im done talking about this dranok.

Killing someone with a bullet to the head would, for all intents and purposes, be more humane than the lethal injection. Would you rather sit strapped to a table, and have multiple lethal drugs pumped through your veins by a kneejerk who doesn't know what he's doing, or would you rather get a quick shot to the head, where the only thing you will likely feel or hear is the gunshot, with such a small chance of survival you wouldn't see a case in decades, and if you did, the person would be so messed up they wouldn't know what is happening to them, and would most likely be in a painless coma.

Blood is messy.. and someone would have to pull the trigger and possibly be emotionally disturbed afterwords for having done so. Thats why in 3-man firing squads, one gun would fire a blank, so that no one could be certain who delivered the lethal shot, and who didnt shoot at all. However, many of those were intentionally botched to cause undue suffering and such. They even tried mechanizing the process, that still didnt go over so well. Death is funny like that, its not very safe, clean, convenient, nor foolproof.