Burned Alive

The fact you call prison suffering is beyond hilarious. 3 squares a day, cable tv, roof over head, free any kind of education pretty much, and most likely to be let out even if you murdered someone. That is the way it is in the USA, not sure about Canada but I'd bet it was pretty damn similar.

If Prison was a hole in the ground and they got tossed scrapes, I may rethink my position.

Sure saved this baby's life didn't it.

You are right, no matter if you kill once or a hundred times, you only die once.

I still stick with my statement for using cruel methods for cruel crimes.

The cruel/unusual punishments will still apply. Think of it this way, if you murdered somebody by burning them, the punishment wouldn't be to drown them, or electrocute them, or make them suffer slowly and painfully.

You know what I meant, you can't be that obtuse.

Then that's your prerogative.

My suggestion is that, a suggestion. If society doesn't agree with me, then so be it. It's not like I'm going to take that *** out in a middle of a field and burn her alive.

I started my law enforcement career working as an officer in a prison. Not all of them are the same.

You have a max security which you do get 3 hots and a cot and that's pretty much it. Forget about television or an education.

Mediums you have more freedoms, some educational programs (mostly GED and drug rehabilitation), television, more work where you get paid (12 cents an hour).

Minimum security you can walk away from. There's a lot of honor system there.

These also vary by state. Prison doesn't deter crime, it doesn't educate criminals or reform them into law abiding citizens, if it did the recidivism rate would be nonexistent. The only thing a prison does is keeps convicted criminals in one place, provides jobs for a community the prison is located in, and gets people higher up in the chain more money.

Isn't that the argument that the anti-capital punishment group likes to tout?

I still don't understand why severely violent crimes have a possibility for parole, or less than a lifetime sentence, I mean it should be prison or a mental hospital for life, only chance out is to win an appeal.

But let's just keep going with the half baked rehabilitation/punishment/racket scheme we have going right now, it seems to be working so well.

no.

Can't use a logical deterrent against a deranged person, it doesn't work like that.

If murders and rapist got hung in the street there would be far less crime.. See how that works?

{You can have this}

Aww thanks for the broken picture Jet how thoughtful of you.

Edit: Grammar Nazi sigh

I guess it would be because a baby or child has no chance at defending oneself. An adult at least has a chance at that. That's what makes it harder to hear about.

So you mean the state either has to employ psychopaths to work as professional torturers and killers, or they have to create such people? One of the big reasons why states that employ the death penalty focus on humane killing is for the sake of the people who have to do the deed.

... you sound envious. Every time I see some far-right whackjob bring up this nonsense, they sound envious. Perhaps it's no wonder so many of them assume all poor people want an effortless existence of parasitism: it's projection.

And harsh punishment doesn't stop crime, especially irrational crimes like this one. If killing criminals stopped crime, we'd have eradicated criminality before Julius Caesar was born. If rational punishments stopped irrational behavior, we'd all wake up to enjoy a fine breakfast of aerial bacon, too. Just once I'd like to see you make an argument that seemed like 10 seconds of basic thought went into it.

what the ***?
Do you know what "cruel and unusual" refers to?

Interestingly, there are two groups of criminals with shockingly low rates of recidivism. I have been unable to find data regarding one group, but the other group is subject to very intense and heavily monitored rehabilitation. Granted, it's a correlation rather than a definite cause-effect relationship, but it is interesting. I've seen other studies indicating that other classes of criminals, even when subject to intense rehabilitation, still retain depressingly high rates of recidivism, so it may just be that the nature of the crimes a person commits is a predictor of what will happen after they've been caught.

I doubt many could guess what the two groups that rarely re-offend are.

Its not surprising that you seem incapable of thinking outside your biased just like every other far-left person on this forum. For you to actually think its perfectly fine for a murder or rapist get better treatment inside a prison than less fortunate people outside of prison says a lot about your character. Saying I'm envious only goes to show how desperate you are to attack my opinion.

As for stopping harsh crime back before Julius Caesar was born. With the technology we have today its a lot harder for someone to get away with a crime then it was back then. To even hold the viewpoint you just stated shows your lack of basic thought.

Your argument: people in prisons have it better than poor people.
Therefore, we should make prisons worse.

If you consider being in prison nicer than being poor, maybe you should give some thought to not treating the poor worse than your criminals, and defining (and ensuring) a basic level of support/sustenance?

I don't know why I'm going to bother being civil, but here goes.
Your opinion is bad and ill-informed, that's why I countered it. You think that prisons are better than being poor. I can only assume, therefore, that you've never been poor. I'm also assuming you've never been to prison. I've personally never been to prison, but I've definitely been poor.

If you're in prison, you've got a roughly 75% chance per year of being attacked, either physically or sexually. I have a strong suspicion that number gets a lot closer to 100% as you move into higher tiers of prison security, too; that is, low and minimum security prisons have fewer violence problems. I'm not here to speculate why, but if you think that getting your teeth knocked in so you'll be easier to be raped in the mouth is better treatment than maybe going hungry, you're out of your mind. That doesn't even get into the laundry list of other problems one faces when confined in a prison, but I think that a near guaranteed chance of being assaulted is enough.

The perception that poor people are starving in the streets is one that we seem to culturally cling to. It just isn't true. I'm sure there are some cities with very little infrastructure to help the impoverished, but I'd be shocked if they're within US borders. Religious organizations are at the forefront of providing food (both hot food, as from a "soup kitchen," and cold food to be prepared at home) and other necessities. Government departments help fill in the gaps and frequently assist with bigger things like utility bills or finding housing.

But, seriously, walk up to anyone and ask if they'd rather struggle to survive on the outside or be locked up in an 8'x8' cell for half the day and spend the other half of the day interacting with people who will eventually try to beat their face in. Pretty much everyone except the permanently institutionalized will opt for the former. The plight of the institutionalized is a debate for another time.

And, as Milamber pointed out, making prison worse is the short-sighted and foolish, vicious, blooodthirsty way of fixing a (highly biased and objectively wrong) imbalance in treatment between the free poor and the shackled.

You appear to have not grasped what I said. As a species, we've been killing criminals for longer than recorded history. It has long been the usual punishment. If criminality could be controlled by killing those who commit crimes, we'd have bred the habit out of the species a long time ago. It has nothing to do with getting caught.

This is basic cause and effect. The effect, which has been in practice for thousands of years, does not diminish the probability of the cause. ESPECIALLY when we're talking about inherently irrational crimes, a point that I notice you avoided.



I really would love to see your answer to a question I posed a couple posts up, though, since you have such a strong view of who needs to be ground into the dirt.

The more closely monitored group sounds like sex offenders, because that's the only group that I know of that requires "very intense and heavily monitored rehabilitation". My other guess would be those convicted of murder and then released- the premise behind that guess would be that I would think that most people convicted of a single instance of murder are unlikely to reoffend once released.

Rehabilitation rarely occurs in an institutional setting. The recidivism rate among those sent to prison is high. Convicted criminals do tend to "age out", though, as stated by several studies (I can provide links if necessary).

That said, the idea of a justice system that incorporates "eye for an eye" is certainly appealing in some ways... but I doubt it would be a deterrent in the least.

Vigilante-style justice sounds good on the surface as well, but humans being humans, that wouldn't go well either.

In some ways, prison can be more harsh than even the death penalty for some crimes, especially those involving children. Most people in prison take a very dim view of those who are in for killing and/or otherwise causing harm to a child, and should they discover one in their midst, life can be very hard for them.

Corrections officers, in some cases, will even inform the general population of incoming child predators/murderers even though that's clearly against regulations.

Personally, I feel like they're only getting what they deserve, but that's just me.

All that said, anyone who sets their baby on fire probably deserves the same treatment. If you don't want your kid, use the *** Safe Haven laws and drop him/her off someplace safe. Jesus.

Correct on both counts. I just find that statistic fascinating since it's basically the opposite of the story we hear in the media.

The function of rehabilitation within our prison system is uncertain, as I pointed out. I suspect the bigger problem is re-integration. It strikes me as insincere to want to see people repent and seek forgiveness (good Christian values) but refuse to permit the latter. In most places with the economy the way it is right now, all it takes is one conviction for smoking pot and you can kiss your job prospects goodbye for the next 10+ years (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly).

As for the eye-for-an-eye thing, like I said earlier, who is called upon to invoke that? Humanely executing people is psychologically damaging (unless you're already damaged), but would you want to be the person who has to light another human being on fire? And if you would, do you imagine that's healthy and sane? People think that the admonition against "cruel and unusual punishment" and similar is only to protect the accused and convicted, but as gun rights supporters will point out, guns (usually) don't fire themselves, nor do gallows build themselves, and certainly gasoline doesn't pour itself on a complete whackjob 22-year-old woman.

Oh, where I live that one conviction for smoking pot will most certainly bar a person from gainful employment at anything more than McDonald's. Walmart, for instance, will absolutely not hire convicted felons regardless of offense.

I realize that people need to be accountable for their actions, but the system, in some cases, seems designed to hinder people who have an honest desire to turn their lives around and NOT commit crimes anymore. In most cases, a condition of probation or parole is to have gainful employment and not rely on social services for support unless absolutely necessary (in some states, you're BARRED from certain programs). Good luck finding a job or even two for you to have that stable address and phone number your supervising officer requires!

Yes, I can hear the arguments of "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". That's true enough. There should come a time, though, that one should be considered to have done the time.

Regarding just who would get the responsibility of eye-for-an-eye justice, some proponents suggest it should be the victim and/or their family member. That would increase trauma rather than reduce it, I'd think.

I wonder how those who actually perform executions feel about their work. I imagine it's not much different from any other person who may have to kill as part of their work- hard.

If prisons didn't exist there would be more crime because the ones we lock up would continue to commit said crimes, so that really isn't a valid argument that prisons deter crime.

I'm not all for capitol punishment. I have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to a woman burning her child to death and other such extreme cases, but when it boils down to it I can't in good conscious blindly state that we should hang all murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.

This is actually correct. Quite a bit of research has been done with regards to victims of crimes, ranging from petty theft to truly heinous acts, and the consensus is that vengeance just makes things worse. The majority of victims basically want simply to know that whatever happened won't happen again. In the heat the moment it's easy to have bloodlust. When I've had a bicycle stolen, I fantasize about finding the *** responsible and loosening his teeth, so I can only imagine how a family finding out their daughter killed her newborn would react. Once the ash has settled, though, people want to move on and never have the wound re-opened.

PTSD is common, for the same reason it's common among servicemen operating in active combat zones.