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Our criminal system should be about rehabilitation first, incarceration second, and punishment should be mentioned nowhere at all.

I understand morals - they did bad, we forgive them and try to make things better, yada yada yada. But I think that after the trial and all, punishment goes next. We (the government) don't owe anything to that person to not only forgive them completely after a while, but help them out however they want. We're wasting money on a murderer in hopes that maybe they might become a good person.

Oops, he was guilty before, but he was crazy then, we sent him to a mental institute and now he's a lawyer.

I was guilty before, and I pretended to by crazy, so they sent me to a mental institute and now I'm a lawyer. I got away with it!

the death penalty is inhumane, and against everything I believe in, since i am a christian I do not believe in taking a persons life no matter what they had done. There is no time at which someone should be permited to take another human's life...

Then where would people learn from their mistakes? Serve time for a crime? Be punished?
The criminal system you are thinking of is like a hippie judicial system.

No, the criminal system I am thinking is the judicial system that works. Rehabilitation has worked far better than mere incarceration.


We also don't owe anything to the family of the accused. It costs money to hold grudges. Rehabilitation costs less money than incarceration.

Because the government made it so.

Incarnation
–noun 1. an incarnate being or form.
2. a living being embodying a deity or spirit.
3. assumption of human form or nature.

I don't see how incarnation is a way of "helping" criminals
A jail is a place to punish people who commited a crime

Well, like I said, if criminals do not lose their rights when they commit a crime, you can't justify even locking them up. But you seem to think that locking them up is okay. This indicates that you believe not being locked up is a right it is possible to lose even by stealing, say, $1000, while not being killed is some kind of special right that it is not possible lose even by killing, say, 1000 people.

Now let's have a closer look at this. If we count time in jail as being, say, 50% wasted compared to normal time (saying it is completely wasted doesn't make much sense, so call it half instead), and if people live to an average of 80 years old, then putting a 20-year-old in jail for the rest of his life is wasting 30 of his years. Executing a 50-year-old is also wasting exactly 30 years. The person being punished is losing time either way, it's just that in jail it's more drawn out. This indicates that you think a year wasted by not being alive is fundamentally different (and infinitely more important) than a year lost by being in jail for long enough that you lose one year. This doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Huh? The issue is the other way around, they should pay for the person they love to not be executed. Of course, if the criminal himself decides that he wants to be executed, his decision would probably overrule that of his family.

So long as you can guarantee 100% that he will stay in jail for the rest of his life, yes. But in the real world we can't manage that statistic, and there is a very real possibility for a murderer to get out and then go kill more innocent people.

What about escaping? Or amnesty?

Animals do have rights, to an extent, just not as much as people do. People are much more intelligent than animals, and are sentient which almost all animals aren't.

I could be wrong, but it seems you might be trying to avoid the question. I'm simply asking, was it or was it not okay for the incas to kill those slaves?

First, we have to determine that rights do in fact exist. This isn't too hard; if rights didn't exist, it would be morally wrong for any person to ever do anything at all (this includes things like breathing, standing on the ground, remaining alive, etc), because they don't have the right to do it.

Now we have to find that rights are based on being a conscious entity rather than on what everyone else says. The first problem we run into with rights afforded to one by the rest of society is one of definitions. What constitutes 'society'? Your country? Your city? Your extended family? Yourself only? In order for it to be not okay for us to kill innocent people but okay for, say, some cannibalistic civilization to kill innocent people, 'society' must mean something smaller than all other intelligent beings, in fact it must be smaller than all other humans on Earth. Where do we draw the line, and, more importantly, why do we draw it there rather than somewhere else?

The next problem is, how come people who are exactly the same can have different rights? Let's say that hypothetically two people are born, one into the ancient inca civilization and one into the present-day United States. Barring the enormous improbabilities involved, we'll assume that these two people are exactly the same. So, how can we say that one deserves to be sacrificed while the other does not? What has the one in the inca civilization done to deserve being sacrificed?

As far as I can tell, it very quickly becomes apparent that innate rights make a lot more sense than rights afforded to one by the rest of society.

But what if we aren't? Besides, there are many criminals who are essentially impossible to rehabilitate with current technology.

It does if either one, the chances of them getting out and reoffending are more than 0%, or two, the costs of keeping them in jail are higher than the costs of sentencing them to death.

I said incarceration, not incarnation.


Yes, yes you can. You do not have the right to murder them, but you have the right to remove them from the people they could hurt. One is punishment and the other one is protection for others. Murder is simply going too far.


I meant to say "should not be put to death." Should you really punish the family of the criminal for their loved one's actions?


Well then, insure that they will not go out then taking the inhumane way out.


The odds of a criminal escaping are so slim that that argument cannot be logically made. Amnesty is often for a good reason and there is generally no need to fear that person committing a crime again.


So basically, since humans are intelligent and are sentient, then they have basic human rights. Well then, should Bonabos not have human rights? They're fairly intelligent and are definately sentient. So let's not allow them to be locked up in cages and hold them to the same standards humans are. In nature, there are no natural rights that humans have. If you went into the wilderness, you would not have the right to anything more than animals do. You would have to fight to get rights for yourself.


Murder isn't right. It doesn't matter what society it is, but murder is always one of the most undesirable solutions to a problem. However, in their culture, ritualistic sacrifices were accepted, so, yes, in that society it was acceptable to them to kill the slaves. The issue you are discussing does not regard human rights; rather, it regards morality, which is not as tied to human rights as you seem to believe.


The ability to breathe isn't a right, it's an ability. You seem to be confusing the two.


Society is the environment that has an impact on your. So, let's say, if you live in the Incan civilization, that is your environment and it determines your rights. If you live in the United States, your environment there determines your rights. If you live in a lab, the people there determine your rights.


The same way animals can. Humans are merely animals.


The person in the Incan civilization does not deserve to be sacrificed, he or she merely lacks the rights that the person in the more modern civilization has.


So what all-powerful being put the rights into us at birth? Or how did they evolve to become part of our being?


We should rehabilitate all that we can. If we can't rehabilitate them, even if we try, then they should continue to be incarcerated.


Well, you said yourself that the second one was untrue, so I'll ignore that point. With the first one, it is unjust to say that since WE can't contain them because of OUR inability to adequately keep them in jail, we must punish THEM. Since when are we punishing people because of our inability?

I think it all depends how serious the crime was.
If you shoot an innocent person, your most likely to go to prison.

Can't think of many crimes that would be "serious" enough for death penalty.

I didn't read the whole topic, any examples?

I believe in the Death Penalty. It coast more to feed, cloth, and house then to just kill them. I think that the life sentence is stiped. They just seat in jail and do nothing for what they have done. If it is a life sentence then it should just be the death penalty. Where I live in Maine we don't have the death penalty but like states like Texas they are trying to make it so that when you get the death penalty you don't seat in jail for 10 to 20 years waiting you go in like 5 years.

Tell me what you would say if you were the one in jail. Would you say "I WANNA GET THE DEATH SENTENCE BECAUSE I DONT WHAT YOU GUYS WASTING MONEY ON CRAPPY FOOD AND OLD CLOTHES AND ROOM! KILL ME FAST!" Why would you even care? I'm sure you dont even pay taxes yet.

Do I even have to comment on this?


No it doesn't.


Except, you know, being bored for 20+ years. They will have to be in jail longer than you have been alive. That seems like quite a punishment to me.


I don't see how you reached this conclusion.

But like I said, if there's even a remote possiblity of them causing further damage, killing them is also protecting other people.

Again, this argument would lead to not being able to justify even locking the criminals up.

But it doesn't matter how secure the prison is, any prison known to human civilization so far is possible to escape from.

Or what if it's for a bad reason? Such as the government gets taken over by religious fanatics who decide to release all criminals who swear on the Bible that they won't commit any more crimes? Or anarchists who simply decide to release everybody? Given these and other possibilities along these lines (most of them not as severe), executing a criminal is sort of like insurance against the future.

They do have rights, just they're not as important as human rights are. And in turn their rights are more important than the rights of a bird or an ant are. It would seem that the importance of rights goes down sharply at certain points such as sentience and consciousness, but also degrades slowly as intelligent decreases. Similarly, from an entirely objective point of view, some super-intelligent alien would be morally justified in killing us for fun, just as we roast ants under a magnifying glass for fun (perhaps luckily for us, we see the Universe from a subjective point of view and are therefore morally justified in defending ourselves as best we can).

Yes, you would. Wild animals and the weather and so on might not recognize them, but they still exist.

This is the distinction between 'right' and 'freedom'. A right is something you are morally entitled to. A freedom is something you are morally entitled to and get.

Well, good thing there's a difference between murder and execution then, huh?

No, I don't mean in their culture, I mean overall. I don't care if they considered it okay to kill the slaves, I want to know if you consider it okay that they killed the slaves (presumably because their society thought it was okay).

??? How are rights and morality not related?

No, I'm not. I'm not saying the people couldn't go on breathing, I'm saying it would be morally wrong. Obviously there are many things people can do (such as killing other innocent people) but which are still morally wrong.

Well, a primitive cannibalistic society in the south Pacific would still have an effect on you. Maybe not as much as your next-door neighbor, but it would still have an effect.

??? That doesn't come even close to answering the question. Now you just have to prove that animals who are exactly the same can have different rights.

Neither. We have them through being intelligent, sentient, conscious beings. A right is not some sort of metaphysical object attached to you, it is a logical construct. You might just as well ask what all-powerful being made 1+1 equal 2, or how 1+1 evolved to equal 2; the same principle is involved.

Well, sure. Whatever does the most good for everybody. It's just that there are some people who can't be rehabilitated. We can't tell this for sure, of course, but we can tell with some degree of accuracy whether or not it would be worthwhile to try.

That is correct, for the moment it is not true. However it has no bearing on the actual morality involved, only on the immediate practical concerns.

This doesn't make sense. By the same logic, if a murderer comes into your house with a shotgun, and you can't possibly stop him from killing you, that somehow makes it immoral to injure him in self-defense before he kills you. I don't see the logic in this.

...except that, for the time being, it actually doesn't. omg read thread plz

Of course not. That's one effect of seeing the Universe from a subjective point of view.

So if we figure out that you have a mental illness that causes you to be mentally unstable, we should kill you before you have the chance to kill someone else.


Not really, as there is a gigantic difference between fueling a need for revenge and protecting the populace from the person. The family can visit the criminal if he is locked up, but they can't if he is dead.


We can make them so secure that no one can escape from them. It seems as though you should be endorsing the creation of more secure prisons instead of supporting the death penalty.


Just like executing you because you're mentally inclined to kill someone is insurance against you committing a crime in the future.


So, objectively we have no rights. It sounds as though you're agreeing with me.


What are these rights exactly?


Here's the definition of execute: to murder; assassinate. Doesn't sound like a difference to me.


No, as I'm pretty sure I said before, I do not support murder.


Yes, yes it would. However, the effect that it would have on your rights would be below minimal as that civilization does not have control of the government of the United States. I fail to see your point.


I have the right to commit adultery. It is not moral.


In your earlier post you were referring to the ability to breathe as a right. It isn't a right, it is an ability.


So you admit that we are not born with them. We are not born intelligent or sentient beings. In fact, you can find out at what age your child achieves sentience. Your child is not intelligent either, as he or she will easily put themselves in situations no intelligent person would.


We make new developments in the realm of psychology every day. In the future we may be able to effectively rehabilitate anyone and everyone.


Then why did you bring it up?


While you do bring up a persuasive argument, there is a minor flaw in your argument. If someone is attempting to cause you immediate physical harm, you have the right to prevent yourself from receiving immediate physical harm. As the people that are out of jail are not currently doing anything to hurt you, you have no right to resist the physical harm that does not exist.

Sure, sometimes I am a hypocrite and think that this person or that person needs to die. However, when I go beyond my emotions, I see that there are always alternative ways to deal with the situations. The way that causes the least amount of logical suffering tends to be the best.

No, because the total benefit of not killing me outweighs the total benefit of killing me.

Face it, they would still be under a lot of emotional stress.

Example?

That is correct. Technically, if I have committed to the decision to kill some innocent people, and you know that, you are justified in killing me or locking me up. However, so far we don't have the ability to tell whether someone has decided to kill some innocent people.

No, no, no. It's just that objectively our rights aren't as important as the rights of other beings with superior intelligence. We're justified in killing ants for fun, and (provided they're sufficiently more intelligent than us) they're justified in killing us for fun, however sad and pointless either of those might be.

I just gave you the definition. Are you looking for a list of items fitting that definition or what?

Sounds like a broken definition to me. They may be similar, but they are not exactly the same and the difference is very important.

In other words, you are contradicting your previous statement because you actually do think that there is a basic right to life which is independent of the will of rest of society. Either that or I've missed something here.

Okay...so is your definition now that the person must live inside the same country? Considering how different some countries in the world are, I think this is quite an arbitrary qualifier.

I don't see anything essentially immoral about it.

That is correct. I was just pointing out that, if it wasn't a right, it would be morally wrong to do it.

What prevents it from being both?

Well, we can always hope. But in the meantime we can't, and with the life expectancy of people in jail I still think that if the costs of executing people could be lowered it should probably be done.

Because it was part of the logical statement. If I had said the other condition was the only one there was, my statement would have been false.

So are we going to wait until the murderer is physically threatening somebody before taking action? If they can escape from prison, then they automatically get the right to remain free? o.O

How so? You very well might kill someone. That's dangerous.


Alcatraz, but underground.


But we can guess, and as you are genetically predisposed to kill people, we should kill you to prevent you from doing it.


That doesn't really deal with innate human rights.


I seemed to have missed your definition. Please state it again.


I just copied the definition for you off of www.dictionary.com. The difference between murder and execution is all a matter of point of view.


No, I think that no one should be killed. However, that is a moral judgment as opposed to what I view as innate human rights.


No, it isn't. I merely said that your human rights are defined by your environment. In the environment that you gave, the cannibalistic society had nearly no impact on the people of a nation that has nothing to do with it. I was merely stating that that society would not have an impact on the United States government.


I have the right to steal items from a store. It is not moral.


The definition of an ability and the definition of a right.


So you're going to condemn people to death because you can't help them even though you may be able to help them in the future?


Your statement would have been just as logically sound if you hadn't included the untrue statement.


No, people do not have the right to defend themselves using physical violence until they are being physically threatened. If they escape from prison, they still can be locked up in jail. They just shouldn't be executed.

No. There is a small chance of me killing someone, and a large chance of me recovering and contributing to society. With a criminal, the chance of them escaping and killing someone is perhaps slightly larger, and more importantly the chance of them being fully rehabilitated and contributing to society is quite bad.

I don't know much about Alcatraz' specifications, but my guess is anyone with enough outside help could probably still get out of there alive. Besides, you have to keep in mind the costs of running the prison. When we're talking about the economics of capital punishment, it's a bad idea to assume that all prisons are automatically already built.

Well, so far we don't know of any way to genetically single out the murderers from the non-murderers, and it's probably literally impossible to more than something like a 5% accuracy rate. Once someone has actually killed someone else, that's when we know they're dangerous.

It answered your question. What did you want me to say?

Rights are what you are morally entitled to. I think they would probably be based on an objective point of view, although they do have many implications for subjective morality.

Well, what is the word for morally killing someone, then? Or are you going to tell me they haven't thought one up yet? Seems pretty useless to me to have two or three words meaning 'immorally killing someone' but no word for 'morally killing someone'.

So again you're saying that rights and morality are not interconnected? I still don't see how this makes sense or what it helps us decide.

o.O You're still referencing national borders...

How do you figure that?

Okay, so nothing can be both an ability and a right. That means that nothing that is a right is also an ability, in other words no one can actually do what they have a right to do and as soon as they can they no longer have a right to do it.

What. On. Earth.

If it's not worth it on the whole, yes.

Well...I went back and looked at my statement, and it wasn't quite the way I thought I had said it. So yeah, I suppose technically it would have still been true. Sorry. :\

I love your quoting war, hehe.

And yeah, I am for death penalty.

Why? Because you dont even know who they are?

The three motives why people kill are:
Compulsion
Passion
Profit

The death penalty is a deturrent to the profit motive. However, jail time has the same exact effect and costs less. Reason why it costs less is because of the american judicial system. The only thing the death penalty has over jail time, is the theory that killing them will help the families cope with the whole ordeal.

The Supreme Court justices have argued that while the death penalty doesn't stop capital crime altogether, it does serve as a deterrent (like you mentioned) to potential criminals.

How true is this? Who knows, but apparently enough justices think so to cite it in their case decisions.

Any answers yet? Chrono?


Let's not forget that when people are in jail, the guards and people who work there also make money, which they have to pay tax which goes to the government. In death penalty, even though the people who kills the convict gets some money, they will get scarred from the thought that they actually killed someone.

But they've also dehumanized the entire aspect of excecution.

It's a lot different killing a man in a struggle, than it is instering a needle.

It's the same with war.

It's a whole lot different bayonetting a man to death, than pressing a button that launches a missile and flattens a town hundreds of miles away.

But you still killed them, no? Needle or not, it is still killing someone "legally".