Should Britain bring back the death penalty?

We haven't had one of these fun discussions in a good while so I thought I might as well start one, especially with new developments surrounding child killers and the sort in recent news BBC

Oh yeah, and The Sun say that 99% want it brought back.

So, thoughts?

 

I doubt The Sun's poll is right.
I'm sure they did a poll once and the majority of the nation didn't want it.

The Sun only polled about 100,000 people, that's not a majority.


I'm not in favour of it, simply because if the wrong person is sentenced and then cleared, you can't just dig them up and give them a pardon.

The death penalty is not a detterant, crime didn't decrease when it was active.
If someone who commits a crime doesn't think they'll get caught, they aren't bothered what the punishment is.

Killing someone does not make you any better then them. Many criminals want to die, killing them means they win. Look how many try to commit suicide in prison, death is escape from their guilt.


Prison would work as a good deterrant if it was a proper punishment. Instead, I pay my taxes for someone to sit around and watch TV all day.
They took away human rights, they should not have any. I move for 18+ hours solitary confinement per day.

 

Death penalty is pointless. a) It makes us as bad as them, b) it's what they'd want anyway, c) you'd still pay just as much tax for them to sit on Death row for 20 years before actually dying, d) psychological damage of prison is more terrifying than a quick death.

 

I think Britain should bring it back. Why should taxpayers pay to keep criminals such as the recent ones in jail for the rest of their lives? Also, with the prison overcrowding, who is to say they will stay there for life? At least if they pay the ultimate price for their crimes you know they aren't out walking the streets.

I'd be in favor of it for premeditated murder, child killings, cop killings, and terrorist actions. I wouldn't be in favor of it being a blanket sentence for all killings, however. I think the crime has to be heinous enough to warrant it. For example, some John Doe who gives his grandmother a drug overdose that she requests to put her out of pain from cancer shouldn't get the death penalty. (I don't think I'd even put him in prison.)

 

My mum works in a prison and yes I think it should be brought back, with some addenda.

 

Yes.


But the burden of proof should be much higher than what's required for a conviction. So much so that it would very rarely be used.

Well you can't poll everybody. That would be a census.
Obviously not many people will bother 'phoning to say no though. If I remember right, the figure that's come out from more reliable polls is around 70% in favour.


I don't really care if it's a deterrent or not (though the chance that it might be, while almost certainly not causing more murders, is a point for it) - it's appropriate punishment.
I absolutely don't buy 'we'd be no better than them'. In that case, prison sentences make us no better than kidnappers. The comparison doesn't work.

You get the best of both worlds then. The prison sentence as well as the execution.
Whether or not it's what they want is irrelevant. Why should their wishes have any influence whatsoever? Plus, they're not trying to kill themselves before they get caught, so they don't want it too much.

 

A big resounding NO from me.

Whilst at times it seems like a good idea the Death Penalty system is at worst open to abuse and at best flawed.

IE. In the US a boy of 16 with a mental age of 5 killed his sister by sitting on her while playing and not realising he was suffocating her. He was found guilty in a court of law and executed.

This state is the same state that allows Charles Manson to come before a parole board every 5 years.

This is most definitely not he only kind of case in existence so, as you can see it's glaringly obvious that the system is not a sure fire way to deal with criminals. Infact, there have been people who have lived out their natural lives on Death Row waiting to be executed all the while still costing the same (if not more) to keep them.

It's no deterrent either, crime rates in the US are not any different to places without corporal punishment so just what exactly is the point?

An eye for an eye eventually leaves the whole world blind.

I can understand the sheer despair of victims families and even surviving victims but bringing back the Death Penalty would not bring back their loves ones or make what happened go away.

In truth I don't know what the answer is but it's certainly not the Death Penalty route in my opinion.

Edit: Also, remember Stephen Kisco? A man jailed for life for killing that little girl? He would have been executed for that and he didn't do it. Thankfully the real killer is now in jail but you can see how scary this kind of knee-jerk reaction is!

 

And the method of execution is still questionable.

Is it right to subject someone to pain 'because they deserve it?'
This is not Guantanamo Bay, normal decent society does not torture people.

If we start using electric chairs or gas chambers we're no better then the nations we criticise for mistreating it's own people.
If it was wrong for Hitler to gas Jews, it is wrong for us to do it to criminals.

Even hanging has problems - Rope too short they don't die instantly, rope too long they rip their heads off.

 

While I can see the temptation, I find it much more appealing for child molesters and murderers to end up resembling goatse by their time of release. Plus it's the easy way out.

 

"If it was wrong for Hitler to gas Jews, it is wrong for us to do it to criminals."

It's wrong for me to lock my wife in a room for 20 years, so is it also wrong to do that to criminals?

 

You mean you can't lock women in rooms?! What about the kitchen?

 

No - for a start its morally wrong. Then there is the fact that it is more expensive to keep a suspect on death row then in prison, (Case in point America) due to the ammount of time the death row suspects are on appeal - currently up to 9 years. There is also the fact that the last 2 people who were given the death penalty in Britain were both found to be not guilty.

This isn't the ancient times, we don't follow the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" principle.

 

Imprisonment is harsh, but it is meant to be a punishment that doesn't cause pain (of a physical kind anyway) and doesn't kill. It is wrong to have someone imprisoned without good reason.

The prison system in this country doesn't work, but it can be changed.
This "eye for and eye" stuff is what has made our country partly in the state it is in now.

Kids carry knives to protect them from other people with knives. Gangs go around stabbing and shooting each other, then opposing gangs get revenge by doing it back to them.

Does it solve anything? No, and many normal law abiding people have been killed because of it.

 

"It is wrong to have someone imprisoned without good reason."

Others would say "It is wrong to kill someone without good reason." Your arguments for imprisonment so far can be used equally to justify the death penalty.

 

It's also an argument that on some level be it biochemical, genetic or Psychiatric that these people who commit such crimes are 'Mentally' ill.

After having an interest and studying Forensic Psychology and it's myriad ins and outs for several years there are hundreds and hundreds of avenues that you can go down to explain away alot of the traits these killers have.

There's white papers coming out every single day with theories and facts and experiments that point to any number of different reasons and it's nowhere near as cut and dry as the general public conceive things to be.

Therefore going down the picky devils advocate route is it OK to imprison mentally ill people?

 

A big resounding yes from me. You do not deserve to live in this world if you are going to take the life of another person imo.

 

Well, I think that is a totally different debate to the prison vs death element. You are asking whether a mentally ill person should be punished in the same way as someone who isn't. What the actual punishment is is irrelevant in that case.

For the record, I am neither for nor against the death penalty. Some things make me feel "yes", others make me feel "no". I'm just trying to spur on the discussion

 

I think the whole yes / no thing is because it comes down to a very fine (almost invisible) line that people with a conscience are doubtful to step over.

This is slightly off topic but there was a documentary a few years ago were big, rough, tough guys who were 'all mouth' lets say and went on about how they could 'shoot someone, easy' were actually put to the test and monitored psychologically. I can't remember the actual circumstances of what the test involved but they soon found out that they had no stomach whatsoever for actually carrying out what they had felt before they could do with no conscience and no worries.

It's the same with the Death Penalty and I mean this with absolutely no disrespect to anyone but 99.9% have absolutely no idea what they are talking about or what it involves.

There are times when I think certain people should be executed but deep down there's no way I would want that on my conscience.

If you ask me I think the people involved should have to flip the switch and see how many actually believe in their hearts of hearts in execution. It's all nice, clean and convenient to have someone else do it all and be removed from the emotions of executing someone but I bet there's be next to no executions if the people involved hollering for executions had to do the executing.

 

But in the same way that 99.9% may not know what it's like or entails, there's 99.9% of people who don't know what it's like to have a love one murdered. I expect those people would find it a lot easier to flip the switch than joe public.

 

Whether or not people who are for it could do it themselves doesn't really matter. I've never heard of there being a problem coming up with people to carry out the execution when we did have it, or in countries that still do.

You can have a conscience and still be for it.

 

No, because you can't recify a mistake, and mistakes will always be a part of life.

 

This is true and until then (god forbid) perhaps we aren't the ones qualified to make any kind of decision or judgement.

Personally I think they should rot in prison but I do not think they should be housed in the current prison system with it's cushyness and do-gooders complaining that Mr X the granny murderer is suffering because he hasn't has his morning cup of tea.

I think the problem is that there is too much leniency afforded to the criminals because Judge whoever doesn't want the doo-gooders on his back complaining that they are being hard on these people.

It's a whole big mess and getting messier and gray-er all the time.

 

Do you deserve to die if you are innocent?
Because mistakes will happen.


In response to the "mentally ill" debate, yes most people who commit obscene acts have a screw lose, but they still need imprisoning, they are a danger to society.
They are not mentally ill to the extent they don't know who they are or can't cope alone, they just have a desire to cause harm to people.

Obviously some crimes are done by people who have serious mental difficulty, so they need specialist facilities.


There are institutes for the criminally insane.

 

What about shady cases such as this?

 

A yes from me, but only after I saw the 'How to kill a human being' program on BBC2 awhile back.

Michael Portillo actually found a way to kill people painlessly. A certain type of gas (Forget the name) knocks you out just like at the dentists, but then after a few mins your body shuts down like it was in a coma and dies.

Now this gives you a)Death for the criminal b)Non-painful way.

So both advocaters and people who say it is wrong for inflicting harm and pain reasons get a decent comprimise.


Plus my other reasons would be as stated before. Life hardly ever means life, and even if it does we are still paying for it.

Id say carry out sentence, have a few days (3 or 4) to sort out the convicted's personal estate, e.t.c. Then have them sit in a room. Pump the gas in. They go all high and giddy, fall asleep. Pass away.

Simple.



P.S I have to state that Mr Portillo gave this suggestion to an american supporter of the death penalty, and he refused it, saying that the criminals should have a painfull death, they deserve it. Which I do not agree with.

Some people want the death penalty just to see people burn.