@66

If I think about this a bit more, one of the reasons I associate the Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot from the start with mere bloody revenge instead of pragmatism might be that you simply do not need to execute them. Their organized mass killings need more than a racist/cynical/plain insane leader, they require a whole organization, and as soon as this breaks down (prerequisite for a trial), there is little reason to believe that they will continue killing. For a more actual example, I cannot imagine a scenario where Radovan Karadzic would keep on murdering, which does not involve the breakdown of the current world order.

@67

The argument seemed so good it had to have a catch. I admit that it requires too much cynical thinking.

@68

I understand that you are against the death penalty. And though it may have seemed otherwise, I do not try to assign you a different position, I merely challenge some of your arguments.

Regarding age rendering people harmless: This argument originates from me replacing “dangerous murder” by “murder” without telling you. So I withdraw it, it is not valid, and you are right.

Regarding capital punishment vs. life long sentence, I side with Al, though. We probably agree that there can exist some people that have shown themselves such a danger to their environment that a simple “body count” suggests they should be removed forever.

However, if we still respect their (now limited) rights as human beings, then the definition what the more humane treatment is should be left … almost defined by their wishes. This is not meant to be an emotional argument, and it might need some refinement, but deciding a matter of such importance for other people feels plain wrong.

At a larger level, we come back to the point made above regarding human sacrifice: Most people in the US, for instance, will get very involved in a wide range of issues, and won’t stand for certain things happening, and will get very well organized and well funded over certain issues (like the right to bear arms, for instance) but don’t give a flying fuck about the fact that there are people doing time who should not be, and now and then executed when they should not be.

I for one am looking forward to future posts on our American justice system.

Look, if you are going to try to argue with me, then fucking read what I wrote. I am against the death penalty, even in cases where we have a pretty damned good idea that the fucker was guilty, because such cases are exceedingly rare. Accepting it as valid in those cases, requires that we set some criteria for reasonable certainty of guilt – something that I do not believe would be safe.

As far as the rationale behind death being more humane than life in prison, I cannot explain this adequately in blog comments. It is complicated. It is more complicated than even a few pages could explain. I could write a long paper, or even a book trying to explain it and it would still not change your mind about the morality of executing certain types of criminals.

Given that I am dead nuts against the death penalty, for about every reason except the underlying morality of it, I am not going to spend that amount of time and effort making an argument for it.

Ulf –

Again, some commentators (not you AFAIR) have a strange stance in that they acknowledge this and suggest to kill the prisoners as the more “humane” treatment, this is pretty hilarious, come to think of it. Anyway, then I do not really understand: if prison is worse than killing someone, why is killing someone the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for the really bad guys?

I acknowledge that life in prison, is less humane than death. Going to prison, knowing you are going to get out at some point, can be more humane than death. It is the understanding that one will never leave the cage that is inhumane. To make sure I have been clear, I feel this way, even assuming that prisons actually move away from the intolerable barbarism that is the dominant paradigm in the U.S.

And because your comment implies some confusion on this point (apologies if it was unintended), I would just like to clarify for the bajillionth time, that I am dead against the death penalty. The morality of executing criminals for certain crimes just isn’t one of the reasons I oppose it.

The advantage of prison over death penalty is that you can evaluate someone later (if he became a better person). Also if someone has become harmless (e.g., by turning 70) and everyone important agrees, you can release him.

People who are sentenced to life without possibility of parole, are sentences that because there is no way they can be trusted in society again. Someone who has, for example, chosen to kill thirty people at random, is an unacceptable risk to society. It doesn’t matter how much this person might appear to have become a “better person.” Given the nature of the crimes that put him (or her) in prison, that is a risk that simply cannot be taken. It is entirely possible for a sociopath to pretend they are – this is why it is generally a shock when such people are caught. They often spend their entire life pretending.*

As for age rendering them harmless…Sorry, but I don’t accept that. For one thing, my dad is 76 and would be perfectly capable of (physically) of murder. Unless someone is on the verge of death, they are still a risk. The process of trying to determine whether or not they are an acceptable risk or not, is quite frankly more expense than I am willing to provide. Don’t get me wrong – I believe in humane palliative care for even the very worse criminals. But I do not accept that this means that any expense should be taken to release them, so they can die outside that cage.

Re; the whole human sacrifice discussion…

I really don’t see it. Unless you are going to define any and all taking of human life as human sacrifice, this makes no sense.

* I do want to be clear that the vast majority of sociopaths never commit crimes, never hurt other creatures for their pleasure. Studies have indicated that there are far more sociopaths out there than was ever assumed and that the vast majority of sociopaths are only different than anyone else, in that they do not experience guilt.

That’s not really the point. I think it is generally thought of this way: The ultimate punishment for which there is no appeal demands absolute certainty of guilt. We can demonstrate that over the course of time a non trivial number of individuals are killed by the state who were innocent. That point is not invalidated by the fact, which is also true, that there are innocent people in prison.

At a larger level, we come back to the point made above regarding human sacrifice: Most people in the US, for instance, will get very involved in a wide range of issues, and won’t stand for certain things happening, and will get very well organized and well funded over certain issues (like the right to bear arms, for instance) but don’t give a flying fuck about the fact that there are people doing time who should not be, and now and then executed when they should not be.

That is because there is a presumption that there is a certain kind of person who is criminal-like even if they are not really criminals. (And here we more than touch on issues of race and class.) Human sacrifice is not about the individual who is sacrificed, usually, but about larger social and cultural categories.

The question implies a satisfaction with the current prison system, which is far from accurate in my case at least. An optimum solution would involve reconfiguring prisons from hellholes to actual rehabilitation facilities — and then allowing the successfully rehabilitated prisoners to rejoin society (without a permanent stigma that prevents them from finding any employment other than further criminal enterprise). Alas, we currently seem to have no idea at all how to go about actually rehabilitating anyone, so the optimum solution remains philosophical, rather than possible, at this time.

Then again, I’m not one of the “punishment fits the crime” people; rather, I try to be a pragmatist. My motives for executing Hitler would be the same as for executing anyone else: strictly to eliminate any possibly further threat from that person, in as absolute and as humane a manner as is currently practicible.

You can argue for prison in general because it provides punishment and neutralizes bad people.

The advantage of prison over death penalty is that you can evaluate someone later (if he became a better person). Also if someone has become harmless (e.g., by turning 70) and everyone important agrees, you can release him. I simply lack the zeal of condemning someone for eternity, but this might not be the case for every commentators here.

Although I am not really answering to your post, let me clarify my thoughts from the last post, and add a couple of additional points. And no offense intended again despite some rough words.

First, I find the argument that almost everyone here uses, “I am against death penalty as long as it affects innocents” plain weak. For your information: if there was no death penalty, these innocents would rot away in prison (actually more of them; as I understand the legal system, death row inmates have more useful publicity and possibilities to appeal (?) ). Especially for those posters that consider being locked up in prison worse than killing the prisoner outright, anything but a clear “yes” to death penalty seems a strange position.

Now, my main point is that death penalty has simply no virtues to it. Since I dislike chopping other people’s heads off, I therefore tend to favor ordinary imprisonment

The idea that several people put forward was that “some crimes a so bad, the criminal should die”? Why exactly? The two arguments I immediately find against it are that

(a) why stop at killing someone, you can have much more pleasure torturing him? (and you did not really answer this except with considering this as “unwestern”)

(b) why kill him at all? Someone mentioned reciprocity. This runs into an obvious problem as soon as someone kills _two_ (or more) people.

Why not just consider that some crimes are so bad that _no_ punishment can cancel them? Then instead of striving for “capital” punishment a major one could certainly be enough?

The other point is that sending someone to jail is actually a pretty harsh punishment, especially if he stays there for the next 20, 30, … years. The advantage is that you can give a pretty good reason for sending someone to prison: the chance of becoming better (would be nice, at least), a second chance (for the not-totally -evil guys), having punishment (you need _some_ punishment anyway, otherwise people are not happy; this includes me), and protecting the outside world (prison and killing is not really that different here).

Again, some commentators (not you AFAIR) have a strange stance in that they acknowledge this and suggest to kill the prisoners as the more “humane” treatment, this is pretty hilarious, come to think of it. Anyway, then I do not really understand: if prison is worse than killing someone, why is killing someone the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for the really bad guys?

Public executions have a long history that stretches back pretty far (though the definition of what is public has some wiggle room). There are surges in the numbers at certain points (especially during politically unstable times), though the methods were fairly similar since the fall of the Qing and the reformations of the last decade. The bullet fee is a distinctly maoist era ritual, which was employed as a psychological reinforcement to keep people (the close relatives) from actively voicing their opinions. The story from Wu Hongda mentions this from the 1983 executions, and so it may have still been done at that time.

The story from Davidson Black’s experiences was from the civil war era, and so executions were very common in that time, as it was easy to frame almost anything as being part of some kind of a political act. And depending on who was controlling the area at the time, you might be executed for not giving respect to the KMT one week or the CCP the next week.

It is often couched that criticism of something that happens via official government policy is not a criticism of “the people” rather that it is a criticism of “the government”. I think this is valid to a certain extent, but it begs the question of what portion of the population supports the policy. The writings of individuals (such as Wu Hongda, and many other chinese expats and a few current citizens) may give evidence that the support would not be universal, but it is certainly not uncommon for your every day average person in China to be very ok with executions. This is likely a highly variable matter and people from one province will likely have very different feelings from another province. However, if you call the Chinese predilection for executions barbaric, then it is not simply a denunciation of the current rulers, it is indeed an indictment of the culture itself.

On another note, I was able to access science blogs from several cities in China in May, so at the moment it does not seem to be blocked.

I suppose that’s where we differ. My yardstick for what’s “right” is to reduce the net amount of aggregate suffering; from the statement quoted, yours seems to be to maintain the total number of human lives. (Unless I’m misunderstanding? If so, apologies, and please correct me.)

If we apply the standard in each case to other example, we may get different results on all kinds of issues. For example, is birth control permissible? My critereon not only says “yes,” but that in some cases it’s highly recommended. Does yours say “no”? If not, why not?

I am interested in differing standards of what constitutes “moral” and where they lead, especially when they’re phrased so emphatically.