Capital Punishment..Right or Wrong ??

[joea]

I would like to know your religious views on this, if you are a religious person...or your own views as a non religious person. Does society have the right to take a life...Capital Punishment ?

 

[KatNotKathy]

Horribly horribly wrong.

 

[bobhikes]

Horribly horribly wrong.

If a person kills someone, Serves 20 years is released and Kills again. Now he gets a life sentence. He kills an inmate while serving his life term.

It is still wrong.

 

[England my lionheart]

IMO if you commit pre meditated murder then you should at the very least end your days in Prison and that goes for Paedophiles too.

 

[Aquitaine]

IMO if you commit pre meditated murder then you should at the very least end your days in Prison and that goes for Paedophiles too.

I pretty much agree.

I used to be a hardcore supporter of the death penalty but nowadays I'd be happy with them serving LIFE and not a British "Life sentence". So long as the prison is a gritty and horrible place to live and the food sucks and they have to labour for 14 hours a day etc etc.

I'd also extend this treatment to any/all sex-offenders.

However, if say in an emergency the prisoners are hogging resources needed for the Citizens then I'd have no trouble in just letting them be killed off - they won't be missed.

 

[.lava]

IMO if you commit pre meditated murder then you should at the very least end your days in Prison and that goes for Paedophiles too.

i agree with this. some people should be kept away from society for good

.

 

[joea]

I would like to know your religious views on this, if you are a religious person...or your own views as a non religious person. Does society have the right to take a life...Capital Punishment ?

I suppose what I'm trying say is...are you comfortable with the death penalty in relation to your own spiritual teachings..?

 

[Aquitaine]

I suppose what I'm trying say is...are you comfortable with the death penalty in relation to your own spiritual teachings..?

I'm not religious but I'd guess there's atleast two different viewpoints on it:

1) That it is our responsiblity to uphold "God's law" which, let's face it, tends to lean more towards stuff like that.

Or....

2) That it is not our place as servants to God to judge others and give them perminent punishments based off our inferior judgement (compared to God's).

But again, since I'm not a Thiest I dunno if they hold even one of those viewpoints

 

[Kathryn]

As a Christian, I am uncomfortable with the death penalty AS IT IS APPLIED IN THE US.

I probably would be as it is applied in most other countries as well - it's just that I don't know how they apply it so I'm not informed enough on that to give an opinion.

I believe that the death penalty is only truly justified if it is unavoidable in order to keep society in general safe from that person.

The best alternative is hard core life in prison - WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE.

However, here in Texas - we don't offer that alternative. If we did, we would probably overturn the death penalty -because for most people I know, it's not revenge they want, it's protection.

I don't trust our system enough to trust them with the responsibility of putting only guilty people to death - or being fair and consistent in their application of the death penalty.

I also don't trust our system enough to believe that a person put away for life will NEVER get out.

So it's a pickle.

 

[KatNotKathy]

Our entire justice system needs a major overhaul. It's completely barbaric and privatization has made things worse. We need to learn that punitive justice really doesn't make anybody safer. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation rather than just locking people up and trying to forget about them until they re-enter society with a big bag of criminal lessons and a social stigma that leaves them to resort to crime.

Even life without parole is a bad idea because it assumes that people never change and can't be made back into functioning members of society. Prisoners should be in prison until they are found to no longer be a threat to society and no longer. The issue is that right now we don't even try to reform prisoners, so when they leave they're often even more likely to re-offend than they would have been.

 

[bobhikes]

Our entire justice system needs a major overhaul. It's completely barbaric and privatization has made things worse. We need to learn that punitive justice really doesn't make anybody safer. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation rather than just locking people up and trying to forget about them until they re-enter society with a big bag of criminal lessons and a social stigma that leaves them to resort to crime.

Even life without parole is a bad idea because it assumes that people never change and can't be made back into functioning members of society. Prisoners should be in prison until they are found to no longer be a threat to society and no longer. The issue is that right now we don't even try to reform prisoners, so when they leave they're often even more likely to re-offend than they would have been.

No matter what you do with the justice system unless you brain wash people. Certain people will still Kill and Rape. They will beat your system and go out and commit more harmful crimes. Not everyone can be a functioning member of society no matter what we do.

 

[Aquitaine]

Our entire justice system needs a major overhaul. It's completely barbaric and privatization has made things worse. We need to learn that punitive justice really doesn't make anybody safer. Prisons should focus on rehabilitation rather than just locking people up and trying to forget about them until they re-enter society with a big bag of criminal lessons and a social stigma that leaves them to resort to crime.

Even life without parole is a bad idea because it assumes that people never change and can't be made back into functioning members of society. Prisoners should be in prison until they are found to no longer be a threat to society and no longer. The issue is that right now we don't even try to reform prisoners, so when they leave they're often even more likely to re-offend than they would have been.

I can agree with more need to rehabiliate the more minor offenders, but with the more serious ones like the rapists and cold-blooded killers, I simply see no justification to even attempt to rehabilitate them.

It wouldn't matter though, 'cause they won't exactly be seeing the light of day again, atleast not under an ideal justic system. Unfortunately however, in the UK atleast we're going too soft on serious offenders are murderers and rapists are leaving jail after a very small amount of years.

I personally think protecting the public is waaaay more important than a killer's right to a second chance. His positive contributions to society will be in the form of not being able to get anywhere near the said society ever again and being confined to a dingy cell.

 

[KatNotKathy]

I agree that some people can't be rehabilitated. Those people will remain locked up until they're no longer a threat, which in their case happens to be after the end of their lives. This is no excuse to give the same punishment to people that really can succeed in reintegrating to society.

 

[Kathryn]

Even life without parole is a bad idea because it assumes that people never change and can't be made back into functioning members of society. Prisoners should be in prison until they are found to no longer be a threat to society and no longer. The issue is that right now we don't even try to reform prisoners, so when they leave they're often even more likely to re-offend than they would have been.

Every repeat offender who broke the law AGAIN when he was released on parole, went before a parole board who determined, in all their wisdom, that he was not a threat to society anymore.

 

[Aquitaine]

I agree that some people can't be rehabilitated. Those people will remain locked up until they're no longer a threat, which in their case happens to be after the end of their lives. This is no excuse to give the same punishment to people that really can succeed in reintegrating to society.

Ah yes but the hard part is determining who of them is safe for reintegration. Personally, I think that regardless of one's personality of behavoural change during a prison sentence, anyone who kills out of cold-bloody or who commits a sexual assault or peadophilia by default cannot and should not be rehabilitated. It would be a waste of time, effort and money and it would also be an insult to the victims that a person who has caused so much irreversable damage would be given a second chance like that.

That's just my 2 cents anyways.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

I find it difficult to buy the argument that attempts at rehabilitation for some people is a "waste of time", if the alternative is killing them. And how many people in favor of capital punishment would ever be willing to do the killing themselves? Killing is a messy job too and there is a very high likelihood that ANY form of execution, including lethal injection, causes tremendous suffering on the victim due to botches and sheer ignorance. Killing is killing is killing...

 

[TheKnight]

I would like to know your religious views on this, if you are a religious person...or your own views as a non religious person. Does society have the right to take a life...Capital Punishment ?

Yes. If done correctly, society has not only a right, but an obligation to enforce the law via capital punishment if necessary. Should capital punishment be as easy or common as it is in the United States today? Most definitely not.

I suppose what I'm trying say is...are you comfortable with the death penalty in relation to your own spiritual teachings..?

Yes. Judaism has a system for capital punishment. It makes capital punishment almost impossible, but it still has the possibility for capital punishment if all the appropriate conditions are met.

I pretty much agree.

I used to be a hardcore supporter of the death penalty but nowadays I'd be happy with them serving LIFE and not a British "Life sentence". So long as the prison is a gritty and horrible place to live and the food sucks and they have to labour for 14 hours a day etc etc.

I'd also extend this treatment to any/all sex-offenders.

However, if say in an emergency the prisoners are hogging resources needed for the Citizens then I'd have no trouble in just letting them be killed off - they won't be missed.

You prefer that we torture living breathing human beings rather than killing them?

 

[Amill]

If a person gets killed while he's committing murder we don't shed a tear for him, so I hardly feel bad for that person dying on a later date. I personally don't see jail or executions as punishment, but rehabilitation and a necessity. The only reason I am against capital punishment is because of the chance that we may kill an innocent person, and if it costs more than letting the person rot in jail.

 

[Madhuri]

I don't really have a religious take on this. Ending one life just leads to reincarnation but killing someone will make their journey of progression longer and that isn't very nice.
I think that the best we could do is try to rehabilitate people through therapy, education or whatever is most helpful to that person. Death is rarely the answer and throwing osmone in prison is not an answer either. In fact, it oftne makes the person worse and then he usually gets released back into society!

I do personally prefer the idea that some very horrible people die but I also see the problem of being put to death when you are innocent. This is the main personal reason why I do not agree with capital punishment. Too many innocent people are convicted.

 

[Father Heathen]

I oppose the death penalty on the grounds that falsely convicted people could be put to death by mistake. With a life sentence they can at least release innocent people once the the mistake is proven. You can't undo an execution. Also, corpses can't learn regret and remorse. Personally I would rather be dead than spend the rest of my life in prison, so the later would be a worse punishment. I will say that my opposition to the death penalty is not because I think all human lives are sacred and equal or some pretentious fluff like that, because they're not.