Except ours does. But I see what you were trying to do there.
should teenager like 16 or 17 get the death penality?
- Thread starter drychlick
- Start date
Except ours does. But I see what you were trying to do there.
I think there are degrees of civility and it's judged by more than one category. Every nation has shortcomings. In the US, the fact that we have the death penalty and use it regularly (although thankfully delayed to help increase the chance of due process) is a negative, but other things balance out. Other nations have other problems.
i think of you do the crime you do the time! even if you only 16 or 17! if the crime is so bad that A da said he or she should die for his crimes it ok by me! keep the other dirt bag from going any ideas that if it you not 18! you will not get the death penalty! ! ps It take years before they are put to death so the court can allway over turn it
I agree with you here up until the end. There are a lot of people in society today, kids & adults, who are prosecuted for bullshit "crimes" in our overly hysterical PC society.
However, I believe that a kid who murders someone for thrills should be put to death. I think there is a difference between kids doing stupid things and kids who perpetrate acts of such shocking brutality & anti-social behavior that they are poisoned beyond all redemption. A child who throws a banana is engaging in harmless horseplay. A child who gets into a car accident is a participant in a horrible tragedy for all involved. They have made mistakes that they need to learn from.
But there are children out there who intentionally attack, brutalize, murder, & ruin lives. There was that incident recently where those 15 year old kids doused another 15 year old with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire. This was not a mistake or harmless horseplay. These "children" were perpetrating a crime of such sickening brutality that most adults couldn't conceive of. What's the next step for them? Perhaps they might grow & change in prison. But it seems rare that prison ever has a positive effect on its inmates. They emerge more brutal than they were when they went in. I'm afraid that, in their short lives, they have already taken more from society and their victim than they can ever repay, even if they become friggin' Mother Teresa when they get out. And if they are never released from prison, what's the point of keeping them alive at all.
If the death penalty isn't a deterrent, maybe that's just because it's not public enough. Life in prison or dignified execution behind closed doors may be too abstract for murdering children to comprehend. But I suspect that, if they can see kids their own age hanging from the gallows on Youtube, they might actually think twice before committing the next sociopathic act of violence against another child.
How about because we don't have the right to be arbiters of life and death, that to saying 'killing is wrong' then punish them by... killing is hypocritical and barbaric, that prison isn't just a disposal bin for people we don't want anymore.
Nonsense, hangings used to be public in Britain, still didn't work as a deterrent. Harsher punishment doesn't work as a deterrent for a fairly simple reason: criminals don't intent to get caught.
Just because it's rare doesn't mean they shouldn't be given the chance.
But I guess you've jumped to the conclusion that successful rehabilitation is rare because of the non-reporting on the 1000s of non-crimes that have been committed by people released from jail.
I guess what it comes down to for me is that, when someone so young can commit a crime so brutal, I don't believe rehabilitation is possible. Children are supposed to be innocents who are gradually corrupted by the world once they reach adulthood. But when a 15 year old is setting people on fire, I don't see rehabilitation in his future. There is evil there that cannot be expunged. I don't even know the victim, yet I still feel indescribable outrage. I believe society deserves a public outlet for that outrage. He has forfeited his life when he chose to take someone else's.
I think that, when someone sets another person on fire, they forfeit all their chances. What chance did the 15 year old victim ever have? What can this person possibly do, in prison or out of it, to ever atone for what they did?
I believe that prisoners have been rehabilitated. However, I don't believe that prisons are what rehabilitate them. The desire to change must come from within and many prisoners will not want to be rehabilitated.
An old childhood friend of mine spent a year in prison. It didn't rehabilitate him. If anything, it made him more suspicious & distrustful of the justice system. However, he will never committ a crime again because he doesn't want to go back to prison. I think prisons are good as deterrents and for removing dangerous people from society but I don't think they do anything to turn their inmates into better people.
If we kill them, we'll never know.
If we kill them, we'll never know.
And not because it's wrong?
Uhmm...mental illness?
It's not hypocritical if you only believe in killing bad people.
Then why punish criminals at all?
Oh...how about mental problems?
Slower development then normal?
Capability of judgement develops differently in every person...this is the reason why you can be tried as if you´re a minor until you´re 21 here. If a psychologist determines that your physic/psychic development is not yet that of an adult that is.
Balancing some vague, fluffy notions that they may make some as yet undefined contribution to society in the future against the possibility that they may murder someone else, I think the latter is far more likely.
I think rehabilitation only works if the person didn't recognize the wrongness or the potentially dire consequences of his actions in the first place. The problem with murder is that it is so clearly wrong. Who doesn't already know that? A murderer must either have no moral compass at all or he is capable of willfully performing acts that he knows are immoral. Either way, there is no further moral education that a person could receive to tell him that murder is wrong.
No, not really. He still doesn't believe he did anything wrong. He thinks it was stupid to do the things he did to put himself in that situation. But ultimately, prison did not in any way morally better him. It simply convinced him that doing stupid stuff was not worth the hassle of going to prison.
J
Jetfire
Guest
I say a caged death match the kid who survives walks out a free man!
Personally I think there are people beyond helping...IMHO.
Personally I think there are people beyond helping...IMHO.
It's not. There is a difference between murdering an innocent person for fun and the state executing a convicted murderer.
Also, we don't execute people to demonstrate that "killing is wrong." Like other posters & I have said, the wrongness of murder is so self-evident that no further statement is necessary. I think the message intended by executions is that there are some crimes that are unforgivable, some deeds so despicable that society cannot & will not tolerate the continued survival of the perpetrators, and that some crimes are so heinous that society's need to punish them supercedes your otherwise inalienable right to life.
"Bad" people are people who deserve to die. A more specific definition would be too subjective.
When it comes to the death penalty, I think we need to ask 3 questions:
#1.) Do some people deserve to die?
#2.) Are we qualified to determine which people deserve to die?
#3.) Are we justified in taking overt action to execute those people that we have determined deserve to die?
My answers:
#1.) Yes. Obviously.
#2.) No, but someone has to do it and no one else is available. Humans are such flawed creatures. There is much that we don't know. We are not God, and therefore will sometimes come to erroneous conclusions of fact, motives, and/or mitigating circumstances. We aren't even qualified to determine who should go to jail. However, since we need to govern our society, that requires us imperfect beings to make the most reasonable, accurate judgements that we can.
#3.) Again, it's one of those unsavory decisions that we must make in order to effectively govern our society.
What about an innocent person murdering someone for self-defense, or by accident, or being forced to by a third party?
My answers:
#1.)No
#2.)No
#3.)n/a
No, simply bad people don't deserve to die. Evil people do (Saddam Hussein, Hitler, et al). There is a difference.
A nine-year-old who steals candy from a store might be seen as a "bad kid," but the act hardly qualifies for the death penalty.
A nine-year-old who steals candy from a store might be seen as a "bad kid," but the act hardly qualifies for the death penalty.
