The Death Penalty

So, what do we think then..

Bring it back or not?

Regarding terrorism.......wouldn't the death penalty be the ultimate martyrdom achievement.....giving them worldwide publicity..... and wouldn't they be cueing up for their turn next......glorifying their act to the extremist element of Islam.

Best to lock them up and throw the key away and let them glory in that.

Wrongful conviction? hard to say sorry, here's some money in compensation to a dead person.

Bring it back, for child molesters, guarantee they wont do it again.

No thanks.

However heinous the crime, time after time throughout our judicial history, people have been wrongly incarcerated and or put to their death. Sadly, if the latter, there's feck all that can be done.

Just my two penneth worth.


Cup of tea?

I'm not against it per se, I could happily put a bullet in the head of the real scumbags but it's the ineptitude of the legal system that puts me off it as some of the above have mentioned.

Agree with the above.  The justice system should be about protection and rehabilitation, not revenge.  There's nothing wrong with whole life sentences, but as Pat says no conviction is safe enough to risk killing an innocent person. And if a higher burden of proof is required for 'death-row' convictions, it automatically renders every other conviction more unsafe.

I think the justice system works pretty well in this country. Pretty much every kind of violent crime is down, and has been falling precipitously for years. There will always be exceptions - which are amplified far more than they used to be in this age of rolling news - but I don't think there's too much fundamentally wrong at the moment. Prison reform should be the priority in my opinion.

In extreme cases where there is no doubt of guilt I'm all for it and for the likes of the cnut below I'd throw in a bit of torture just for good measure

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Cornish Chris wrote:

Agree with the above.  The justice system should be about protection and rehabilitation, not revenge.  There's nothing wrong with whole life sentences, but as Pat says no conviction is safe enough to risk killing an innocent person. And if a higher burden of proof is required for 'death-row' convictions, it automatically renders every other conviction more unsafe.

I think the justice system works pretty well in this country. Pretty much every kind of violent crime is down, and has been falling precipitously for years. There will always be exceptions - which are amplified far more than they used to be in this age of rolling news - but I don't think there's too much fundamentally wrong at the moment. Prison reform should be the priority in my opinion.

This, this and this.

No, harder sentences and punishments for convicts of serious crimes yes.

What about for Exeter City supporters.

Prisons are more and more becoming warehouses for victims of the system. Too many people in for non payment of fines, drugs offences (I've got a mate who's a substance abuse officer at a prison and they say there are loads of legal highs inside as well as the usual suspects) and stealing because they are skint. Several of the big city prisons are run more by the gangs inside than the screws and anybody unfortunate enough to find themselves there are going to turn into a nutcase or be broken by the experience. More money needed to be spent on reducing the causes of crime, eg. poverty, lack of jobs, low wages, poor education in a postcode lottery and not a lot of chance of raising yourself above the median line in you are unlucky enough to be born poor. Last night on Spotlight they were featuring the homeless of Exeter, something like 20 regular rough sleepers that they know of have mental health problems and another lot with drug dependency problems, they can't find beds for them and if they did there are no funds available to even start to treat them for their problems. FOOKIN sad in this day and age, Ferrari and super yacht sales going through the roof whilst our less fortunate in society die in the streets like they did in victorian Britain.

Angry wrote:

No, harder sentences and punishments for convicts of serious crimes yes.

Agree, the worse your crime, the worse your time should be IMO. For less serious crimes the focus should be on rehabilitation and education with the punishment being the loss of your liberty. Those convicted of middle of the road crimes should be deserving of similar treatment but with a loss of perks(TV's, computers, maybe less leisure time etc,etc). For those guilty of the most serious crimes prison should be a horrible place, harsh discipline, no luxuries and very few 'human rights', just plenty of time alone in a cold, damp cell to think about the pain you have caused others. 30 years would mean 30 years unless you behave in an absolutely impeccable manner, in which case you would be rewarded with early release after 29 years, 11 months.

I have spent nearly 15 years trying to understand how James Bulger's killers only got 8 years for what they did.

IMO given the horrific way James was murdered they should still be behind bars not living a free life under new names somewhere in England with what they did being kept a secret from everyone.

pepsipete wrote:

What about for Exeter City supporters.

Exceptions can be made.

Angry wrote:

I have spent nearly 15 years trying to understand how James Bulger's killers only got 8 years for what they did.

IMO given the horrific way James was murdered they should still be behind bars not living a free life under new names somewhere in England with what they did being kept a secret from everyone.

Because they were pre-pubescent children.

Cornish Chris wrote:

Angry wrote:

I have spent nearly 15 years trying to understand how James Bulger's killers only got 8 years for what they did.

IMO given the horrific way James was murdered they should still be behind bars not living a free life under new names somewhere in England with what they did being kept a secret from everyone.

Because they were pre-pubescent children.

They knew what they were doing so the fact they were children shouldnt have been used to let them out at 18 with no actual punishment for what they did.

Let's hear it for stricter punishments!

They won't do THAT again will 'um.

Thankfully, me and my family have never been a victim of any murderous rapist or such like, so I'd go along with the general consensus that taking a life is a risk as far as wrongful conviction goes.

However, if any of my family were to become the victim of some murderous rapist, I know that my view would most certainly change.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy to say ( as Joe Public) that Capital punishment shouldn't be brought back in when the crime has never affected you, personally.

Angry wrote:

Cornish Chris wrote:

Angry wrote:

I have spent nearly 15 years trying to understand how James Bulger's killers only got 8 years for what they did.

IMO given the horrific way James was murdered they should still be behind bars not living a free life under new names somewhere in England with what they did being kept a secret from everyone.

Because they were pre-pubescent children.

They knew what they were doing so the fact they were children shouldnt have been used to let them out at 18 with no actual punishment for what they did.

They're pretty f*cked up grown men now. One of them is a pedophile who's been convicted several times and the other went off the radar a little more didn't he? Both of them ruined their own lives at the age of 10 though, I mean, they'll never live, they'll never see the world and they'll have to live in this world of solitude with changing names for the rest of their lives.

You wonder whether they'd be better off locked up full time

As for the death penalty, I'm very much against it.

As mentioned, if you're a terrorist and they arrest you and sentence you to death, then you die a martyr. There's no doubt about it, you become an inspiration for others. If you lock someone up and deny them their rights to things like freedom of speech and stop the airtime then their message doesn't get out. They aren't treated as heroes and for the rest of their miserable lives they're forced to sit in a cell. For me, that's a better punishment than death.

Even if we move away from terrorism I still disagree with the premise. Imagine you commit some atrocious acts and you've just killed dozens of people in an unprovoked attack. Now, you're not afraid to kill other people so why would you be afraid of killing yourself? You probably wouldn't. If you're sentenced to death then you get a quick and supposedly painless release from life. What sort of punishment is that? If it was me I'd rather be put down then forced to live the next 60 years of my life in one room. Imagine how mad that would drive you? You'd probably go insane after a while. Death is a much easier escape from that.

To be honest, the same applies for crimes not as severe as that, such as pedophilia (which is obviously a horrifying crime). Harsher sentences are more appropriate, but that is more a state of mind. I don't think there's many people in the world who decide they want to be like that. Many are scared because they have this out of control urge which they fail to control - not saying that makes it acceptable at all but with proper rehabilitation then you can help people in that situation.

Definitely against it.

Josh Pope wrote:

Angry wrote:

Cornish Chris wrote:

Angry wrote:

I have spent nearly 15 years trying to understand how James Bulger's killers only got 8 years for what they did.

IMO given the horrific way James was murdered they should still be behind bars not living a free life under new names somewhere in England with what they did being kept a secret from everyone.

Because they were pre-pubescent children.

They knew what they were doing so the fact they were children shouldnt have been used to let them out at 18 with no actual punishment for what they did.

They're pretty f*cked up grown men now. One of them is a pedophile who's been convicted several times and the other went off the radar a little more didn't he? Both of them ruined their own lives at the age of 10 though, I mean, they'll never live, they'll never see the world and they'll have to live in this world of solitude with changing names for the rest of their lives.

You wonder whether they'd be better off locked up full time

Even when John Venables did his time for having child porn on his pc he still got a new id and that crime is still covered up aswell. Venables did leave the country regularly too.

Certainly no votes for prisoners.....they have forfeited that right whilst in prison.

Yes and let's take all the freeloaders off the roll as well shall we? Why shouldn't prisoners vote? They are a portion of society and if you tell them they don't belong to society what chance do they have for reform? And I thought you were a Christian man?

As is often the case, I'm with Iggy on pretty much all of this. The death penalty is legalised murder, so just another example of one rule for us but another rule for everybody else.

When I was in the States, we went to Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary; they've got a little museum which includes an electric chair and a kind of honour role (a bit like the ones you get in schools with lists of all the headteachers or something) of everybody who's been executed there. Interestingly, though, the governor at the time - might still be in charge of the place, I dunno - wrote about his opposition to the death penalty: as a religious man, he said it denied people the opportunity for redemption.

I think we've got a problem in this country, though, because we don't have a single, shared idea of why we imprison people - are we trying to rehabilitate them, to protect the rest of us from them, or is it just about retribution? Officially, I think it's meant to be primarily about rehabilitation - in which case, the threat of not allowing prisoners to have books sent to them was wrong, although thankfully that decision's been changed.

Having worked with ex-offenders, and having been to a prison a couple of times, I'd also take issue with the notion that it's somehow a life of luxury nowadays. But that's just another form of divide and rule, I reckon - yet another example of a myth about 'them' doing better than 'us'.

Oh - and of course prisoners should be allowed to vote. They're being punished by being shut away, but most of them will come out again, at which point we expect them to reintegrate into society and not reoffend. Denying them basic stuff like the right to vote is just creating further divisions and making that reintegration less likely.