Bring Back Death Penalty

[andymadmak]

nickbee said:

andymadmak said:

Well i am only going to consider the UK. I don't accept the oft made comparisons with the USA and such like. And if I consider only the UK, and the clear evidence available, then your point is 100% wrong I am afraid

On the contrary, comparing Britain to America is the only useful parallel you can draw. 2012 Britain bears greater similarities to 2012 America than it does to 1964 Britain - society has changed so much since then that a comparison is largely pointless. And these is no doubting the fact the in the USA murder rates are lower in states that do not have capital punishment.

But I'd be genuinely interested to hear what this clear evidence you have is.

Go search the Home Office website and archives. Its all there I have posted the stuff many times over the past ten years when these DP debates appear ( very regularly). You can postulate all you like about the USA and UK culturally, but the reality is they are very different. They were different in the 60s and they are different today. The UK has (as an example) never had a strong gun owning culture. I could go on but the train is getting bumpier and youre sure to trot out Rock and Roll and Nylon underpants soon.

Edited by andymadmak on Thursday 4th October 13:27

[TheHeretic]

andymadmak said:

Oh do sod off. Everything you have written about me there is based on your own assumptions. We have never met so don't try speaking for me. Innocent people are already dying you numbskull. I want fewer to die - as they did before the DP was abolished. Go read some Home Office data if you dont believe me

Sod off? Yes, based on my own assumptions. I severely doubt that if you were sat in an electric chair, moments before the lever is pulled, you would be thinking you were right to support the death penalty, and innocents being killed as a consequence.

Look, if you are going to post stuff, expect it to be responded to. If you are adult enough, you can do it without resorting to insults.

[eldar]

TheHeretic said:

So, happy for innocent folks to be killed, as long as you get a smaller tax bill? How altruistic!

We already do that in any ways. NHS treatments unavailable, correcting dangerous roads and numerous safety systems. They are all subject to a cost vs benefits case.

[Twincam16]

TheHeretic said:

So, happy for innocent folks to be killed, as long as you get a smaller tax bill? How altruistic!

Thing is, that's what nearly every debate on the NPE forums boils down to. I dread to think what the ideal NPE-regular state would resemble. Starving masses, a relatively small number of rich people driving around in armoured vehicles, no public services at all and the country piled high with corpses, be they of murderers or people who couldn't afford health insurance.

There'd be a revolution in minutes.

[TheHeretic]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

It is not the guilty ones that concern me.

[TheHeretic]

eldar said:

TheHeretic said:

So, happy for innocent folks to be killed, as long as you get a smaller tax bill? How altruistic!

We already do that in any ways. NHS treatments unavailable, correcting dangerous roads and numerous safety systems. They are all subject to a cost vs benefits case.

Ah, but the government isn't just executing people who drive down a crappy road, etc. This is Pre-meditated execution. The purposeful killing of someone. People die crossing the road, therefore the death penalty is OK? Does not compute.

[andymadmak]

Twincam16 said:

Murder rate has been dropping steadily for the last 30 years:

http://www.channel4.com/news/uk-murder-rate-falls-...

So if there was a case for the death penalty, it held greater resonance in 1982 than it does today.

Also dropped in the USA, so I am not sure what your point is. In any event, it still does not alter the fact that after 60 years of staility the murder rate doubled in a very short time- straigjt after the abolition of the death penalty. By my reckoning, based on say 60 million people, thats approx 400 extra innocents dying each year so that the liberal elite can feel groovy

[nickbee]

Damn you people and your fast typing!



Hope the above link works. The 'doubling' statistic is misleading as you're going from a trough to a peak. We can all select convenient figures. In the nine years between 64 and 73, murders went up by 50. In the nine years between 73 and 82, murdes went up by another 50. If the abolition of the death rate caused the first jump, what caused the second? If you even out the line, there's a general upward trend, which is more likely to be reflective of societal change. Hence we have to look to the USA for a valid comparison.

ETA: The 2002 spike is all due to Harold Shipman.

Edited by nickbee on Thursday 4th October 13:36

[MocMocaMoc]

It's comforting to read so many people (in the initial pages, at least) opposed.

I was expecting the vast majority to be calling for its return!

Death is not 'justice', it's revenge. The whole concept is as retarded as it is barbaric and, while I can't be ar*ed to argue, anyone calling for it needs to have a long, serious word with themselves.

[NailedOn]

pacman1 said:

nunattax said:

FOOL, BIRMINGHAM SIX ,GUILDFORD FOUR------RING ANY BELLS

Colin Stagg.

Beware the police.
They have been known to make mistakes and they have been known to be corrupt.
They are very bad at admitting to their errors.
Our lives depend on them in many ways but adding the death penalty to the risks of police wrong-doing is not a smart move.

[Twincam16]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

It's also a fair point that the death penalty isn't much of a punishment for some people like that. They kill because they have nothing to live for either.

Murderers don't just harm their victims, they harm the victims friends, families and neighbourhoods, and the fear and hurt that causes can't be over in the flick of a switch or the drop of a trapdoor. Keeping someone alive in prison is a form of torture that in many ways is more accurate and fitting for a crime like murder. To die a quick and painless death is, to some, honourable if the alternative is a life of misery.

Also, what about serial killers like Peter Tobin. He was jailed for one murder many years before they found out about all the others stretching back to the Sixties. Had he been killed for the first murder they found out about, he wouldn't have been able to confess to all the others and the police would still be looking for other people - innocent people - and locking them up and possibly having them killed too.

Often we only find out about a whole string of crimes when someone's been banged up for just one. A vital function of long-term imprisonment is equivalent to archiving evidence - police can interview a prisoner at any time to find out about crimes they might know about or be involved in. If you kill someone, you take away a vital aspect of crime fighting.

All these people calling for Ian Brady to be executed - that's precisely what he wants, which is a fair argument not to do so. It's also worth pointing out that he's the only one who knows where Keith Bennett is buried. In fact the investigating officers only found several of those bodies by getting Hindley and Brady to help with their enquiries. Kill him and there's absolutely no chance of finding the bodies or any more evidence.

[Eric Mc]

Lots of things affect murder rates.

Other factors started channging society in the mid 1960s that could have had an influence besides the abolition of the death penalty - the rise of a large drug culture, for instance. The increase in females engaging in social drinking is another change that happened around that time. The breakdown of the nuclear family and the growth of less rigid social groupings all changed society in that period. The demise of personal probity and the disappearance of "shame" as a barrier to certain types of behaviour also had a profound effect on how people live their lives.

All these factors will have affected how we behave.

[otolith]

If we are making lists of people we are sure are guilty (and hence can execute), all the convicted murderers who don't make the list need to be immediately released and compensated for their false imprisonment.

[pokethepope]

The way I see it is based on two simple factors; cost and punishment.

It will cost more to execute people than stick them in a cell for the rest of their life
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactShee...

As mentioned above, a lot of prisoners will see execution as an easy way out, therefore life in prison is more of a punishment.

Ergo, no death penalty please.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

I don't think murderers kill people because they think "what's the worst that can happen, 15 yrs inside?" No one would want to do 15 yrs in jail.

They don't think they will be caught. So the punishment will have no bearing on the amount of murders.

Also, with the death penalty, if a gunman has killed someone in a bank raid, and is now trapped in the bank with hostages, he's done for anyway. So there's no incentive to give himself. He may as well come out shooting or start killing the hostages until he gets his helicopter out of there.

[Digga]

A large proportion of murders are comitted in the heat of the moment - spouses, relatives, business partners - and often totally spontaneous - no element of pre-meditation. For these sorts of crimes, especially where there is, after the fact, a good degree of remorse, it is hard to argue a case for the death penalty and prison will be a genuine punishment.

However, there are those such as Scumbag Stapleton (let's not dignify him by using the 'Psycho@ pre-fix he self-styled) who, we can only assume, went out with cold intent to randomly kill, for gratification, reputation and to actaully achielve the life of a convict. Being caught is not neccessarily an aspiration, but being a convict is certainly a badge of honour and absolutely no deterrent.

[Kermit power]

nunattax said:

danjama said:

With todays technological equipment and lengthy investigations, using forensics etc, I see no reason why it should not be brought back, if we are absolutely sure of a persons guilt. And there is very little chance of false conviction in this day and age.

Absolutely I would want it brought back.

FOOL, BIRMINGHAM SIX ,GUILDFORD FOUR------RING ANY BELLS

Gosh. You're a happy, balanced and non-confrontational addition to our forums, aren't you!

If you take the time to actually read danjama's post, you'll see it starts "with today's technological equipment". Nobody in their right mind could possibly consider that 1975, with its lack of forensics compensated for by good old police fit-ups, could in any way shape or form be considered "today". There's absolutely no call for your shouty ranting.

As it happens, I voted "no" because despite the massive improvement in forensic techniques and police oversight since the Seventies, I'm still not convinced that we can ever be completely sure enough of someone's guilt. There are, for example, much more recent cases of people who would've probably received the death sentence for killing babies in their care, right up until further medical research showed that the deaths could've been as a result of freak natural causes rather than any actions by the accused.

Even for cases where there really can't be the remotest possibility of any doubt - someone killing in front of thousands of witnesses and being caught in the act, for example - I wouldn't support the death penalty. My view here, though, has done a complete U-turn since I've had children. I would rather be sentenced to death myself for one of my children's crimes than see them executed, and what civilised society could inflict that on an innocent parent, regardless of the crimes of their children?

I think what triggers the debate, though, is the utterly pathetic punishments handed out to people now. I absolutely believe in the notion of an eye for an eye in so far as if you deprive someone of the rest of their life, you should be deprived of the rest of yours. Whilst I wouldn't accept the irreversibility of a death sentence, I would happily see anyone found guilty of murder or rape sentenced to life with no possibility of parole with no TVs, Playstations or other facilities to provide an easy life.

That way, in the unlikely event that someone is found innocent 20 years down the road as a result of new developments, at least we can cover them in compensation cash for 2 decades spent staring at the walls thinking about their supposed crime.

[eldar]

TheHeretic said:

Ah, but the government isn't just executing people who drive down a crappy road, etc. This is Pre-meditated execution. The purposeful killing of someone. People die crossing the road, therefore the death penalty is OK? Does not compute.

Financial calculation, just the same. Cost of life imprisonment vs execution.

[TheHeretic]

eldar said:

Financial calculation, just the same. Cost of life imprisonment vs execution.

No. Not the same. Not doing some roadworks is not the same as wilfully executing someone, and the notion that it is makes me think that society is indeed heading to the dogs. People are still responsible for their own behaviour on the roads. They have a say in what happens to them. An innocent person on death row does not. They are innocent, despite the 'evidence' that may show them as such. An accident is not the same as wilful execution by the state, paid for by taxpayers money, and held up by a flawed justice system.

Lets just hope you are not sat in that electric chair, hey?

[Kermit power]

AJS- said:

Digga said:

Again, I'd bring the Anuj Bidve killing as a case in point. The killer did it, no question and showed no remorse - in fact showed contempt, laughing during sentencing. really, what's the point of keeping this sort of individual?

Would he have behaved the same knowing that he would face death if convicted though? Knowing such behaviour would be practically suicide. As things currently stand he got a 30 year sentence, no joke but part of his gangster identity, almost a lifestyle choice by the sounds of it.

Murder rates in the US are higher in most of the states wit the death penalty than they are in those without the death penalty. Whatever else that says, it would suggest that the death penalty is no deterrent to murder.