kiteinthesky
Smash Ace
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2013
- Messages
- 902
This is something I've been thinking about the past few days, and I thought it would stir up some interesting discussion here, so I ask you to examine my point of view and try to refute it if possible. For sake of clarity, I am discussing the situation in the U.S.
I believe the death penalty is a morally acceptable way to deal with people who have been convicted, not for the reasons that are typically stated, but because it is more humane than being thrown in prison.
When anti-death-penalty advocates argue that convicts should be thrown in prison for life instead of executed, they do not acknowledge or recognize the reality of what it is they're asking for. Prisons in the U.S. are hellish, horrid places.
Brutal prison **** is widely known about but rarely if ever taken seriously. Prisoners' stories on the subject are often hard to hear because they're so horrifying. In 2011-2012, 4% of state and federal prison inmates reported being *****. Among prisoners, 2% were ***** by fellow inmates, 2.4% were ***** by staff, and .4% reported incidents by both. [Stats from the Bureau of Justice Statistics] Given the nature of that sort of thing, it's likely those numbers are actually much higher because of under-reporting.
Prisoners are also used for slave labor -- prisoners are forced to work for sweatshop wages doing anything and everything. They even build stuff for the military. Corporations will outsource jobs that could otherwise have been done by regular workers for regular wages to these prisons, forcing American workers to compete with not only third-world workers but our own prisoners. Companies that do this include Starbucks, Walmart, AT&T, Chevron, and Bank of America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWxpQ87C4t4
Torture in American prisons is a thing. A terrible, terrible thing. Solitary confinement is a common practice in American prisons and human rights groups including the U.N. have rightly labeled it torture. Solitary confinement is when you are locked completely alone in a cell, with nothing, for 23 hours a day. Guards won't even communicate with you; you get food through a slit in the door if you're lucky. The isolation breaks people mentally and makes them go insane.
(I actually have a bunch more links about this sort of thing but they're all NSFW-NSFL graphic descriptions of the kinds of torture, slavery, ****, etc. I'm talking about, including actual video, so until I get an OK from a mod I'm going to stick with these few news articles and stats I have. Abandon all hope ye who Google this ****.)
You get the point; American prisons are brutal, torturous hellholes. Morally, I can't fathom how forcing people to live like that is supposedly better than simply being executed, because killing is always wrong, the way anti-death-penalty advocates argue. Death, as arguably inhumane as people would argue lethal injection is, at least only involves a couple of hours of suffering at most and then you're dead, and cannot suffer anymore. To sentence someone to life in an American prison is to bring upon that person horrifying and mind-numbing suffering that would last decades. Even if you eventually got out of prison, you'd still have to live with the psychological and physical damage of having been *****, tortured and enslaved for most of your life, where no one will hire you and you even have the right to vote stripped from you because you're a felon. Which forces you to commit more crime, which sends you back into prison to continue the cycle all over again. How is that, in any way, better than death? How could it possibly be any better? Given all I have showed you about the reality of the situation, how can those of you who are against the death penalty truly and honestly say that this is better than death? How?
One could argue that it's better to push for prison reform than to support execution because of this sort of thing, but we have to accept that this is the U.S. we're talking about. Prison reform is highly unlikely to ever happen here in our lifetimes because inhumane treatment of prisoners like this has popular support and because corporations who essentially control the country at this point profit so much from the prison labor. We have to base our moral stances on the present situation and the influence of the past; we cannot base our stances on the death penalty based on some hypothetical future reform that one would want because that's no better than mindless speculating, and doesn't address the situation we're in now. So we are forced to make a brutal choice: either support the death penalty as it is now or support life imprisonment with all of its horrors. And I believe that the death penalty offers greater hope for an end to one's suffering than life imprisonment does, because eventually being killed means you won't suffer anymore, and will ultimately lessen your suffering because you won't live nearly as long as you would if you were in prison for life or released.
I admit that this argument is a subjective moral judgment on my part, though the anti-death-penalty argument that death is the worst thing you can bring upon a person and therefore life imprisonment is always morally better than execution is as well, and I feel I can back up my moral stance better than the anti-death-penalty advocates can theirs. Can any of you refute this? Also vote in the poll and tell us what your choice would be if you had to pick.
I believe the death penalty is a morally acceptable way to deal with people who have been convicted, not for the reasons that are typically stated, but because it is more humane than being thrown in prison.
When anti-death-penalty advocates argue that convicts should be thrown in prison for life instead of executed, they do not acknowledge or recognize the reality of what it is they're asking for. Prisons in the U.S. are hellish, horrid places.
Brutal prison **** is widely known about but rarely if ever taken seriously. Prisoners' stories on the subject are often hard to hear because they're so horrifying. In 2011-2012, 4% of state and federal prison inmates reported being *****. Among prisoners, 2% were ***** by fellow inmates, 2.4% were ***** by staff, and .4% reported incidents by both. [Stats from the Bureau of Justice Statistics] Given the nature of that sort of thing, it's likely those numbers are actually much higher because of under-reporting.
Prisoners are also used for slave labor -- prisoners are forced to work for sweatshop wages doing anything and everything. They even build stuff for the military. Corporations will outsource jobs that could otherwise have been done by regular workers for regular wages to these prisons, forcing American workers to compete with not only third-world workers but our own prisoners. Companies that do this include Starbucks, Walmart, AT&T, Chevron, and Bank of America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWxpQ87C4t4
Torture in American prisons is a thing. A terrible, terrible thing. Solitary confinement is a common practice in American prisons and human rights groups including the U.N. have rightly labeled it torture. Solitary confinement is when you are locked completely alone in a cell, with nothing, for 23 hours a day. Guards won't even communicate with you; you get food through a slit in the door if you're lucky. The isolation breaks people mentally and makes them go insane.
(I actually have a bunch more links about this sort of thing but they're all NSFW-NSFL graphic descriptions of the kinds of torture, slavery, ****, etc. I'm talking about, including actual video, so until I get an OK from a mod I'm going to stick with these few news articles and stats I have. Abandon all hope ye who Google this ****.)
You get the point; American prisons are brutal, torturous hellholes. Morally, I can't fathom how forcing people to live like that is supposedly better than simply being executed, because killing is always wrong, the way anti-death-penalty advocates argue. Death, as arguably inhumane as people would argue lethal injection is, at least only involves a couple of hours of suffering at most and then you're dead, and cannot suffer anymore. To sentence someone to life in an American prison is to bring upon that person horrifying and mind-numbing suffering that would last decades. Even if you eventually got out of prison, you'd still have to live with the psychological and physical damage of having been *****, tortured and enslaved for most of your life, where no one will hire you and you even have the right to vote stripped from you because you're a felon. Which forces you to commit more crime, which sends you back into prison to continue the cycle all over again. How is that, in any way, better than death? How could it possibly be any better? Given all I have showed you about the reality of the situation, how can those of you who are against the death penalty truly and honestly say that this is better than death? How?
One could argue that it's better to push for prison reform than to support execution because of this sort of thing, but we have to accept that this is the U.S. we're talking about. Prison reform is highly unlikely to ever happen here in our lifetimes because inhumane treatment of prisoners like this has popular support and because corporations who essentially control the country at this point profit so much from the prison labor. We have to base our moral stances on the present situation and the influence of the past; we cannot base our stances on the death penalty based on some hypothetical future reform that one would want because that's no better than mindless speculating, and doesn't address the situation we're in now. So we are forced to make a brutal choice: either support the death penalty as it is now or support life imprisonment with all of its horrors. And I believe that the death penalty offers greater hope for an end to one's suffering than life imprisonment does, because eventually being killed means you won't suffer anymore, and will ultimately lessen your suffering because you won't live nearly as long as you would if you were in prison for life or released.
I admit that this argument is a subjective moral judgment on my part, though the anti-death-penalty argument that death is the worst thing you can bring upon a person and therefore life imprisonment is always morally better than execution is as well, and I feel I can back up my moral stance better than the anti-death-penalty advocates can theirs. Can any of you refute this? Also vote in the poll and tell us what your choice would be if you had to pick.