Agree with China?

[waheed]

and on a personal note i dont really believe in debating how badly ppl needs to get punished for doing crime. for criminals, its simple. they shouldnt have done crime in the first place. and when they do commit them and get caught, then its really not up to them to decide whats the right punishment for them and whats too much. as for the ppl debating FOR them, why even bother? they knew the consequences, and they should know something is wrong before they do it. if they do it anyway and get caught, then punish them... why helping them?

the REAL thing ppl should be debating about is what happens to innocent ppl that gets falsely accused. and in that case, instead of coming up with a softer sentence so they dont die for nothing, ppl should be focusing on how to improve the law system and fix loop holes and decrease the chance of this happening

[Yehuda]

AFKain This is a bit hypocritical I must say, your policy on people that kill innocents is that they have lost their right to live and yet you have no problems with society killing innocents?

BTW when you're citing statistics like you just did it is good to show where you're getting your numbers from, that way we can know they're not coming from FOX :)

When I was a patron and regular poster years ago, one could not link to urls until one had a certain number of posts-I assumed I had too few. My stats are dated, but the source was the US department pf justice, bureau of justice statistics, which is now online...I should have checked.

The argument is being made that somehow not executing convicted murderers is saving innocent life, no society will ever have a perfect system where only the guilty are convicted, the choice is what saves the most innocent life. Also, there's a bigger chance of being convicted when there's no DP (1-2% from criminal justice course textbook, I've forgotten the title and exact percentage) and a smaller chance of the conviction being overturned if it's a non-DP case, add to that that prison is often a sentence to rape and death by aids one is not saving more innocent life even of those wrongfully convicted by a non-DP policy.

[Magn]

>if china's system is as weak as lets say canada's<

Keep my country out of the debate.

What you call "weakness", I call accountability to its citizen and putting their welfare as the highest priority.

We're sure doing a darn sight better than a lot of countries (including china, the US AND the UK) as far as homocide rate per capita goes.

[Magn]

And as far as deterants go, its debatable.

Spending the rest of your life behind bars is not a very palatable alternative and certainly one that people would go out of their way to avoid.

Really, the real gamble that killers make is that they won't get caught and frankly, its a fair gamble to make if they are smart, because assuming they commit murder in a very calculated manner and are not to unlucky, they stand a very good chance of getting away with it.

Real life is not like CSI.

[Ryo]

If anything, the argument about the costs of death row compared to life in prison without parole only shows that there needs to be some kind of budget reform in the area. If it raises no ones eyebrow that it costs less to keep someone alive for 60 years than it does to kill them in five seconds, then some math and logic skills need to be tuned.

I mean, heck, get some beer and some muscle relaxers, $20, max. :)

[Magnus]

Or just inject air into their veins, which, if i recall, causes heart attacks.

[freemehul]

ah but it is the needle that is expensive, not the air ;)

[freemehul]

and government probably requires that the needles have to be clean, new (i.e. unused) every time

so if you want to cut costs, kill some bureaucrats first ;)

[Osiris]

Yehuda... OK... your arguments are very twisted.

First of all, my first statement was not hypocritical. I said I do not believe in capital punishment, but do not feel particularly bad that it is happening in this instance. I would not support it if I had the option to add my voice where it mattered, but this one is not a big issue for me.

Secondly, the USA is in no way more democratic than the UK. In official systems they are similar, but there is far more going on under the table in the USA, and a lot more people in the US government (or at least the old one) have reasons to make policies to benefit themselves, due to their large investments in or possession of companies and commodities. Members of the British government don't seem to have so much of a vested interest in commerical elements of the law.

As for China's methods, I have never seen any mention of shooting through the heart. I have read about it, although not in great detail. And, no offence, but if you think hanging or the electric chair is even CLOSE to as humane as being shot through the brain... you're a bit...dumb. In fact Nebraska has ruled that use of the electric chair is "cruel and unusual punishment".

[civic]

lol it causes an embolism being injected with air