This issue is slowly but surely becoming an issue within mainstream political debate. The debate is often only, and rightfully, considered for the worst criminals in our society which consist of paedophiles, rapists and serial killers.
Recent cases have come to light with the Stephen Lawrence murderer’s being sent down for just 14 and 15 years each. Gary Dobson and David Norris were sentenced as juveniles because they were under the age of 18 when they committed the racially motivated and mindless murder 18 years ago. They were sentenced to ‘life’ of which 14 and 15 years is anything but life. The whole justice system is in chaos and the left wing liberals have created such a system.
What are the arguments for the death penalty then? ‘Psycho’ who shot the young Indian student dead for no reason what so ever shows a complete lack of respect for life, authority and almost anything at all. The taxpayer will now pay thousands of pounds a year for somebody who offers nothing to society and holds nothing dear in society. In the economic recession and with the virtually uselessness of ‘Psycho’ would it not be easier just to shoot him and others like him? The death penalty would act as a massive deterrent to those thinking of committing crimes in the future, even if it is just one or two criminals being deterred it will do its job. The wonderful interfering EU constantly tells us how we should run our own country and says that the death penalty is a violation of human rights. What human rights the criminals did have surely went out of the window when they committed the most serious of crimes. With advances in technology these days the chances of convicting the wrong person to death is very minimal indeed and the punishment should only be carried out when their is sufficient evidence in which to confirm the right verdict has been reached.
With all this it would seem then that bringing back the death penalty is a logical solution. What are the arguments against then? It would have to be the human right of ‘a right to life’ yet by destroying another life whether it be via rape, sexual assault or murder this right, as stated before, has to be seriously questioned. Having said this, does two wrongs make a right? By killing criminals as a liberal state which should shine the light of democracy around the world as we have done so brilliantly in the past it is surely hypocritical of us and will reduce us to their level. Mistakes in the law do happen and what was once conclusive proof somebody was guilty is always open to interpretation from the forensic teams, the police, the jury and the judge.
In conclusion, I think the prison system needs extraordinary changes for the better of society. Prison is too easy! If it was such a horrendous ordeal why would people re-offend knowing they are going right back into the place where they hate? Is this a lack of education? No! Ill-educated people get jobs, live normal lives and those with bad childhoods lead exemplary lives! There should never be an excuse for rape, paedophilia or murder. If paedophilia is a disease then castrate those with the sexual desires towards children to stop them from having these urges. With over one in ten criminals in England and Wales being foreign, it is time to send them back to their own countries to be dealt with in their own sovereign way. With around 86,000 people in prisons this would account for over 8,600 foreign criminals in our prisons, each costing £45,000 each! Life should mean life for cold and calculated crimes. Parliament needs to toughen up and act upon the tough action they always portray when running for election. It all seems pretty simple but their are reforms which can be carried which will make the prison system both cheaper and more effective. A life sentence which actually means life will act as a massive deterrent and resorting to the death penalty doesn’t seem the way forward (for now at least)!
Definately need the death penalty. Not sure about the deterant, but it’s pointless keeping people around without care for human life. We’re just putting them in prison with people who may learn their lesson and not re-offend. The cost is also outrageous, death is a better solution especially in relations to the cases brought up in the article.
Posted by Alexis | January 5, 2012, 10:25 amI was raised in times of “common sense” Something so SIMPLE…you did the crime you did the time..actually, to me its a MORAL ISSUE. If you are not educated or taught right from wrong, then you’re ignorant of it. If you can steal, kill, and destroy without getting caught, those who have no conscience won’t stop until there’s a PENALTY. Futhermore..if it really cost two million to kill someone on death row ( pure stupidity) then maybe crooked politicians would just rather vigilantes did their job for them…or else wait until the depraved visit your home personally and you are forced to take them out yourself or watch your family being molested, raped, tormented and killed..I say..so be it..I was robbed for the first time in my life several months ago..then men were back on the street in a few days..they had held a gun to a pizza man’s head..it changed my life forever..their family told me to my face that these men had been robbing all their lives and robbed again as soon as they made bail. When two of then men in the area took my trash sack out of my hands and walked on either side asking me questions to find out if I was protected, I went straight and bought a GUN..will I use it..you bet your sweet bippy!! ( By the way, one of the policeman who saw the gun the first day I bought it said” I know those men you refer to, put the bullets in the gun now.” ( He told me twice) I am aware they must be all the way in my house..I haven’t slept a decent night since I was robbed, my life will never be the same.
Posted by Adisen Dilmen | May 8, 2012, 10:00 pmYes, it is time to bring back the death penalty.
Those who oppose the death penalty suffer a failure of imagination. Or, they may be able to imagine the grief caused by murder but they cannot empathise fully with it. They are always several degrees removed from the trauma and comfortable there.
The parents of murder victim Joanna Yeates called for the re-instatement of the death penalty after their daughter was murdered.
I have no ideas what their views on capital punishment were prior to their grief. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were against it.
But it must be true many opponents would change their minds if they were victim of such a horrific crime. Yet, as it doesn’t happen to most of us, many of us have the luxury of parading our bleeding heart for the criminal or espousing fashionable libertarian tripe and dystopian nightmares about the abusive state terminating lives.
Liberal and libertarian views, because of the circumscription of their members’ imaginations, prevent justice – deterrent justice, at that – from being done.
Posted by James Garry | January 5, 2012, 1:11 pmThe people who still oppose the death penalty are those who still believe that it provides no deterrance. This is a strange argument I feel. This philosophy therefore allows for people who willingly commit the worst of crimes, in the knowledge they could be put to death, to be simply be let off because they werent deterred from doing it in the first place? Absurd. Deterrance for me is too retrospective to be used as an argument against reinstating the death penalty.
Secondly, these people have no regard for the ideal of society, theirs is a purely self-preserving exsistance. Equally those who defend these people do so in a totally self-righteous way, as the point you made James, these people can have no empathy for the victims and their families.
I am adamant that if the death penalty were brought back today in 2012 it would do far more good than bad. I think a lot of people have watched the Green Mile a few too many times.
Posted by Miles Waistle | January 5, 2012, 3:06 pm“With advances in technology these days the chances of convicting the wrong person to death is very minimal indeed and the punishment should only be carried out when their is sufficient evidence in which to confirm the right verdict has been reached.”
I think you should study Law and Forensics..you appear to speak of something you know nothing about!
There is always doubt, nothing is 100% not even DNA. (secondary and terchery transfer) Surely killing one innocent person is enough NOT to bring back the death penalty.
The answer is better education, better living condition, better prospects, better parenting skills(should be taught in all schools from primary upwards)Putting children first, (they are our future) more out of school activities, encourage propblem solving, team building etc Violence only breeds violence. A nation is judge by how it treats the vunerable.
Posted by Donna Mickleburgh | January 12, 2012, 9:29 pm“Violence only breeds violence. A nation is judge by how it treats the vunerable.”
Capital punishment acts as a deterrence, so the implied equivalence about violence breeding violence is untrue. Yes, executing someone is an act of violence but it is,at the same time, a dispassionate act against someone who kills the innocent to satisfy his own lust.
By executing a murderer, we send out a warning to would-be murderers that they risk losing their lives if they commit the same vile acts of lust. By doing this, we save would-be murder victims from being murder.
This is much more valuable act than the act of exercising our sentiments and sociological theories about murderers.
Posted by James Garry | January 12, 2012, 10:56 pmI apologise for coming so late to this debate but I feel it is incumbent upon me to speak up for those of us who recognise capital punishment for what it is – retrograde and barbaric. I refer Toasters to my previous published comments on the subject:
http://politicsontoast.com/2011/08/07/get-our-editor-a-death-penalty-supporter-card-and-hold-him-to-it117/
I’ll start by saying a little about Mr Peers’ articles and then I’ll address the comments above.
Firstly, I flatly refute that this issue is “slowly but surely becoming an issue within mainstream political debate”. Guido Fawkes’ fatuous ‘e-petition’ notwithstanding, discussion about restoring the death penalty remains firmly the preserve of cranks and nutters (no offence) and is far from mainstream political debate in this country. Secondly, I would point out the contradiction in refering to the death penalty applying to “paedophiles, rapists and serial killers” and then holding up the sentences of the Stephen Lawrence murderers and someone called ‘Psycho’ who shot an Indian student – none of whom fit into the above categories (I’m not familiar with this ‘Psycho’ case but it doesn’t sound like a serial killing).
I find boiling the argument down to the cost to the taxpayer of keeping people in prison, frankly, abhorent (NB: Alexis). Human life should never be subject to a ‘cost benefit analysis’. By that logic, we’d end up euthanising the long-term ill or those sectioned in mental health facilities. I would also point to the section of my previous article where I deal with the subject of cost, using the example of the US State of Texas, where each execution costs millions of dollars. I flatly refute that the death penalty has any deterrent effect whatsoever! There is a glut of data indicating capital punishment has little deterrent effect. Some studies even show a positive correlation between capital punishment and murder rates (ie, where they have the death penalty, murder rates are actually higher). Psychologists also tell us that murderers give little thought to the consequences of their actions. Most homicides are spur-of-the-moment, spontaneous, emotionally impulsive acts. It therefore stands to reason that killers are unlikely to have given much thought to the possible punishment they might receive before killing.
This is one areas, at least, where I am in agreement with the EU. Indeed, the abolition of the death penalty in Britain is not an EU measure. We abolished the death penalty in this country in 1965 in line with civilised momentum. Look at the long list of countries that have abolished capital punishment and then look at a list of those countries that retain it. It speaks for itself.
The notion that advances in technology have made chances of “convicting the wrong person…minimal” is completely without foundation. The law remains as fallible as ever. Miss Mickleburgh is spot on in her comments on this.
I have always agreed that life should mean life and that sentencing guidelines should be reformed to reflect this. But life is, fundamentally, sacred and I for one do not believe anyone has the right to take it and that includes the State. I’m glad that, in the final analysis, you seem to accept this.
Now, as I don’t want to go on and on, I just want to address some of the comments made on this article. Firstly, to Mr Garry, I will say this; I object to this notion that “those who oppose the death penalty suffer a failure of imagination”. While I accept that I cannot imagine the grief caused by murder (in fairness, neither can you), I strongly refute that I “cannot empathise fully with it”. The misconception here is that this grief should inform the judicial process! The grief a family feels at the death of a loved one is precisely why we don’t let relatives setence killers. This is why we have an independent impartial judiciary. Because we recognise that the instinct of anyone suffering this kind of loss would, quite understandably, wish for retribution against the perpetrator but that this is ‘revenge’ and NOT ‘justice’.
I would also counter Mr Waistle’s contention that I have “no regard for the ideal of society” and that mine “is a purely self-preserving exsistance”. It is precisely BECAUSE I have regard for the ideal of society that I oppose State-sanctioned murder. Because I respect the sanctity of human life. That sanctity must be indivisible or it is not sacred at all and any State that permits the premeditated killing of its own citizens has no right to call itself a civilised society.
Posted by A.P. Schrader | January 13, 2012, 8:41 pmYour your revenge/ justice concept is flawed and highly subjective. And you are the crank (take offence). I hope you are never faced with some of the animals wandering around stealing air; who don’t give a damn about your liberal guff, because when you beg for your life they will not sit and listen to your morally redundant tree hugging rhetoric, they will end you. And a caring society does feel empathy for the victims family and should feel much less for the transgressor.
Posted by Alexis | January 14, 2012, 8:44 amIt is not flawed at all. You can take revenge or you can have justice. You cannot have both. The two are mutally exclusive.
If I am ever faced by my own mortality in the way you allude, I very much doubt the first thought flashing through my mind would be ‘I wish I’d supported restoration of the death penalty’.
I feel empathy for any victims of crime but that does not alter the fact that strapping someone into a chair and electrocuting them or pumping them full of chemicals or stringing them up by the neck is morally repugnant and an act of horrific barbarism. It is not the act of a civilised society and this is why most civilised nations have long since abolished the practice.
I find it astonishing that people who try to claim abhorrence at the ‘savagery’ of murderers, paedophiles and rapists are the same peoole who prescribe retributive justice of the most savage kind. “We should string ‘em up, castrate ‘em, ‘ang, draw and quarter ‘em…” They profess to abhor violence and barbarism yet they speak only in vengefully violent and barbaric terms. Apart from anything else, it’s fundamentally hypocritical.
Posted by A.P. Schrader | January 14, 2012, 10:39 amYour concept of revenge being mutually exclusive to justice is at best naive, clearly punishment is tied up with revenge.
As for the so called moral high ground you appear to wish to take. Many of the people who commit the crimes worthy of life in prison are deeply troubled individuals, I fail to see the compassion in keeping people locked up their entire lives, this is infact a highly punitive measure. The death penalty is a far more compassionate way to deal with these people. Not only for themselves but the prisoners who have to cohabit with them inside who will have less chance to be attacked or conversely drawn into prisoner punishments against the lifer. Ian Huntley has been attacked and lives in constant fear, he has also sued the government for compensation.
Factoring cost into any issue of government is essential I therefore reject your argument opposing said discussion.
And further the hypocrisy lays in your argument oh compassionate one. If you can’t see the barbarism of life in prison then your blindness is infinite.
Posted by Alexis | January 14, 2012, 1:19 pmNo, punishment and revenge are not the same thing at all. What ignorant twaddle. Punishment carries with it the hope of rehabilitation. Punishment is ‘correctional’. Revenge is about self-gratification through vengeance and ‘getting even’. Only in the mind of the one seeking revenge does vengeance equal justice.
Your contention that life imprisonment is less “compassionate” than capital punishment illustrates the degree to which you misunderstand my motivations. One might argue that, for killers like Ian Huntley, ‘death is too good for them’. My opposition to capital punishment has nothing to do with wishing to give murderers an easy ride.
Posted by A.P. Schrader | January 14, 2012, 4:14 pmHow disappointing to see Mr Schrader employing the strategy of the Left and branding those who he disagrees with as mentally ill. Not only mentally ill but also educationally substandard, for proponents of the death penlaty believe in ‘anging and flogging ‘em.
I ask Mr Schrader if he thinks it is impossible for someone to support capital punishment and to be mentally well? I don’t think anyone can reasonably say that all supporters of the death penalty are mentally ill, so the corollary is that Mr Schrader’s jibe is unreasonable.
Mr Schrader asserts that the death penalty is not a mainstream political debate in this country. If that is so, we should ask why isn’t it? Because the “mainstream” political concerns are the ones chosen by politicians and the media. The political and media classes have long since dismissed the concerns of the public. Immigration has, for decades, been a great concern to the British people, but all major political parties and the media have been unwilling to publicise, debate about, or acknowledge this concern about immigration.
Our gelded political classes stay on safe ground and confine themselves to the economy. Politicians are mostly careerists who think that maintaining the status quo is the best means of advancing their careers. No wonder they don’t want to be divisive and discuss divisive matters.
That said, even though Mr Schrader and I disagree strongly over the death penalty, I do agree with him over some of the finer details.
I agree with Mr Schrader that a moral argument cannot be reduced to a financial one. This is something I have always maintained. As he rightly says “Human life should never be subject to a ‘cost benefit analysis’”. What a shame he doesn’t apply the same logic to human sanity, seeing as one of his arguments for the legalisation of a drug that sends some of its users mad (i.e., cannabis) is that it is pointless to deny ourselves its tax revenues.
Opponents of the death penalty often cite the US system as an argument against it. Mr Schrader talks about the death penalty being expensive in Texas and – by way of enjambment – says that he flatly refuses that the death penalty has any deterrent effect whatsoever. Well, if he wants to look exclusively and oversimplistically at the American system, he may draw this conclusion.
However, if he were to look closer to home, he would perhaps be troubled by the statistics that (i) in the five years that the death penalty was suspended in this country (1965-1970) there was a 125% increase in crimes that would have attracted the death penalty and (ii) the rate of unlawful killings in the UK has significantly risen since the abolition of the death penalty.
Not one of my opponents yet has been able to explain the 125% increase in crime that would have attracted the death penalty in the five short years it was suspended. Most of my opponents have chosen to ignore this statistic. (I should give a special mention to Darren ‘Daz’ Pearce who did take on my challenge over this statistic on Anna Raccoon’s website, but he is the only person to date to do so).
As for the US, the success of the death penalty varies from state-to-state. In states that issue the death penalty on a consistent and swift basis, then homicide rates are reduced. In states where prisoners end up on death row indefinitely and may or may not be executed for their crime, then the death penalty is far less successful. Success is hampered by the US system of interminable appeals as well. This did not cause a problem in relation to the death penalty in Britain, where the appeals system was more swift and more consisten.
I also agree with Mr Schrader when he writers: “The notion that advances in technology have made chances of “convicting the wrong person…minimal” is completely without foundation. The law remains as fallible as ever. Miss Mickleburgh is spot on in her comments on this.”
The law is most certainly no more efficient since advances in forensic science. The argument that the wrong person is less likely to be hanged now because of forensic science is not one that should be advanced by the pro capital punishment lobby. The argument is unhelpful to our cause. That said, the chances of hanging the wrong person have always been slight.
“Indeed, the abolition of the death penalty in Britain is not an EU measure. We abolished the death penalty in this country in 1965 in line with civilised momentum.”
Technically we suspended the death penalty in 1965, though to all intents and purposes it was abolished for most crimes. I think that we still, nominally, maintained a death penalty for treason until fairly recently. (This is a fleeting reply and I don’t have time to check dates. Sorry). As for civilised momentum being responsible for the death penalty’s abolition: I rather thought it was the campaigning of Sydney Silverman that lead to its abolition and its abolition was done behind closed doors and never mandated by the people (a bit like our involvement with the European Union).
Mr Schrader invites us to contrast the countries that have a death penalty and those that don’t. Of course, Iran, North Korea, China and the like operate the death penalty. But so does the USA, Japan and India. Most of the democratic world – seeing as most of it is centred in Europe – does not have the option (thanks to the EU) of considering reintroducing the death penalty, so its hardly a simple case of civilisation versus anti-civlisation.
Mr Schrader challenged me over my assertion that opponents of the death penalty suffer from a failure of imagination. He disagrees with me here, that’s fine. But he goes on to say that grief shouldn’t inform the judicial process. Neither do I. I have always said that the death penalty should exclusively be about deterrence and never about retribution. What I said was that if we empathise with the grief that the families of murder victims will go through, then we would want the death penalty *as a deterrence* against innocent people having to suffer the loss of a loved one.
So, for the record, I have never said that grief should inform the judicial process. And I don’t believe that the death penalty should involve retribution (i.e., that we should execute killers on behalf of grieving relatives).
I believe in the death penalty only as a deterrence.
I also agree with Mr Schrader that revenge and justice cannot be treated synonymously.
I think that executing murderers is the most humane thing to do (because it is an act of justice). If I were to exact revenge on a murderer I would want them tortured in perpetuity. That is barbaric. Conversely, having the state execute dispassionately a murderer does not appeal to the basest instincts of savagery – and such an act of justice shouldn’t be confused by my opponents with revenge.
Mr Schrader’s peroration is the predictable line about killing a killer amounting to hypocrisy. No, not really, it isn’t. A murder victim is given no choice about being murdered. They are not given the choice: If you refrain from doing X then you will not be murdered. A person killed by the state has a clear choice: Refrain from murdering and you will not be executed.
Hardly onions and onions, is it? Hardly hypocrisy.
Posted by James Garry | January 14, 2012, 1:51 pmI’m afraid it is a habit of yours, Mr Garry, to accuse people in debates like this of suggesting accusations of ‘mental illness’ has been implied by your opponents. I have done no such thing! Nor did I accuse anyone of being “educationally substandard”. This is a highly mendacious opening gambit on your part. The use of “‘ang ‘em n’ flog ‘em” is a well-known caricature of the Sun-readers and Colonel Blimps that have largely made up the pro-death lobby. To suggest that this implies accusations of mental illness or lack of education is just grotesque.
I will dodge, if I may, the attempt to conflate this debate with immigration, legalisation of cannabis and our EU membership. I am glad we agree that the financial aspect of this argument is morally bankrupt, that advances in forensic science have not made the law infallible and that revenge and justice are not the same thing.
I am also glad to see so much emphasis placed on the alleged deterrent affect of capital punishment, as this allows us to wrap up the debate quite swiftly. Because, while I continue to believe the deterrent effect of capital punishment is highly debatable, I can categorically state that, even if I believed that it was an effective deterrent, I would still be implaccably opposed to the death penalty. Nobody has rights over life and death except God and it is not for the State to presume authority to kill its own citizens. The State has a responsibility to protect its citizens and that is why for dangerous criminals life should *mean* life. But it is not for the State to take a persons life.
If we say we abhor murder and then prescribe state-sanction murder as the penalty, I call that hypocritical.
Posted by A.P. Schrader | January 14, 2012, 4:41 pmIf you are not accusing proponents of the death penalty of being mad, then perhaps I have misunderstood this:
“discussion about restoring the death penalty remains firmly the preserve of cranks and nutters (no offence)…”
Perhaps there is another way of reading this sentence which hasn’t occurred to me.
As for the “‘ang ‘em and flog ‘em” caricature: Yes, I realise it’s a caricature, but one employed, in this instance, in favour of your position and to the detriment of mine.
The dropping of the Hs in this caricature does imply that the view-holder is of a disadvantageous social background and has not had a good education. The fact that these people in the caricature are subscribers of the Sun newspaper confirms that the implication is one of under-education.
It may be a habit of mine to point out implications of mental illness, but that’s only because people habitually imply mental illness (if only in more jocular terms such as “nutter”) about their opponents.
Posted by James Garry | January 14, 2012, 5:06 pmI’m sorry, James, but this really is too much. Pretending the term “nutter” implies serious mental illness is just pathetic.
You do know that dropping Hs is just how some people speak! Or are you suggesting that all cockneys come from a “disadvantageous social background”. Again, this is a very silly direction to take the discussion.
It is possible to be something of a bore in this matter.
Posted by A.P. Schrader | January 14, 2012, 5:35 pm