2 Votes
RE: Actually, yes.
Personally, I’m against the death penalty specifically because it is too easy to convict the wrong person.
I think another reason why I personally would be against death penalty is that it does not fulfill one of the criteria that it posses.
So here I go, a punishment does two things:
1. Correction
2. Deterrence
Capital “Punishment” fulfills number 2 but not number 1. The criminal isn’t reformed, nor is the criminal corrected. The criminal is simply killed out of our convenience because we don’t want to waste more resources. If these two things are what punishment provides for us, we do we still keep Capital “punishment” if it only serves half the purpose?
On the topic of Pro-life, it is the decision of the mother to decide whether the baby goes or not. I think there should be more restrictions on abortion policies, certainly to prevent the encouragement of young adults having unprotected sex thinking pregnancy is no longer an issue. A fetus, from my non-religious point of view, is nothing about a blob of potential. Now, before it gains conscience, it is just an animal. Actually, exactly like an animal. The process of growing is what I think of as mini-evolution. This tremendous change of brain structure is only so apparent in human. From just crying and staring at shiny colors, to creating new quantum equations for science in quest of origin, this is further proof of a boundary one must reach in order to become human. Now that said, some people will grow to be criminals, but they have potentials. As long as they are alive, they have a chance to reform, under the right encouragement.
RE: Actually, yes. by EyeOfSage
correction
is nothing about a blob of potential.
should be:
is nothing but a blob of potential.
RE: Actually, yes. by scottb
Capital “Punishment” fulfills number 2 but not number 1.
That depends on what the point of “correction” is. You can view it as some sort of externally imposed “improvement” program (as you seem to do), or you can view it as simply another facet of “deterrence”.
I don’t really think that the government, or society as a whole, have any right to do the former—who gets to decide the direction of “improvement”?
The real goal is deterrence. The “correction” view of judicial punishment is simply recognizing that, all things being equal, if we let the offender return to society, the circumstances that caused his first offense are likely to continue and to lead him to a second. The “correction” is not to make the offender a “better person”, but rather to reduce the chance he’ll re-offend.
Or, to put it another way, “deterrence” is about preventing other potential offenders from offending, while “correction” is about preventing this one from offending again.
Capital punishment is clearly effective at doing that—outside of horror films, the victims of capital punishment never commit another crime.
Personally, I oppose capital punishment, but I have a hard time articulating exactly why.
The fact of the matter is that it’s just not done in civilized countries anymore. From Wikipedia, here’s the list of countries that executed someone last year:
Is that really the company we want to keep?