Basically if you are going to keep them alive forever in a cell, there should be a system in place to gain something for all the money being wasted.

the norwegian model works well to rehabilitate prisoners i hear

elaborate please! my wife is of Norwegian blood and I am mostly Swedish......so I harbor a healthy scepticism for all things Norwegian


I keep reading these posts and the cost of keeping the prisoners alive as a deciding factor, yet how can we let money decide life and death?
the same with medical trials we can offer them the chance to partake in experiments. but to force a prisoner to undergo any kind of medical experimentation would put us in line with the Nazis. We can't lower the value of a man's life lower than a man at base level. In other words we cannot look at a man no matter what he has done as less than a man he may be a hideous murderous monster of a man...but he is still a man. Not a lab rat.

When we allow our emotions turn us into the monsters that we mean to destroy then who is the victor? We become murderers with the death penalty we allow the man who did the crime to drag us down to his level..and become the takers of life as well.

This post was edited by Valhalls_Sun on Jan 8 2015 09:16am

Well what I was referring to wouldn't be malevolent in nature as opposed to what you described.

Stage 1 clinical trials are usually done on volunteers where the researchers are looking at negative effects that were not intended. Currently the slowest aspect in the progression of certain drugs. I do recognize that with this specific step the demographic you are testing on needs to be accounted for somehow. Ideally you would need a vast background of participants and if this was limited to prisoners only that arguably could be a demographic different than those in the general public.

This post was edited by Bazi on Jan 8 2015 09:07am

I'm not philosophically opposed to the death penalty but too many states are managing their responsibilities in this area too poorly for me to be able to really "support" it at this time.

check out some images here, the goal is rehabilitation so they try to gives these guys work/hobbies/chores and work on making them productive members of society upon release

they aren't treated like prisoners at all

http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083,00.html

personally i think it's too cozy but i'm not so malicious to the extent that i'd have people suffer if we can in fact rehabilitate them into responsible productive members of society

This post was edited by duffman316 on Jan 8 2015 09:18am

Null'd. Would vote other. I hold huge reservations about granting the power to kill citizens to the government. I don't oppose the death penalty outright, as I think severe sentencing in and of itself is perfectly fine when it is justified. However, we clearly can't apply it justly, or fairly. We can't even be sure we always get the right perpetrator. If we had a better system, I might not be inclined to oppose the death penalty, but as is? It must be abolished.

Getting a conviction with the death penalty on the table makes jurors more hesitant. People don't want to be responsible for executing someone unless they absolutely have to. This alone illustrates the problem with the death penalty. Either all cases are treated as though the death penalty were on the table so we can be better at proving crimes. Or, certain crimes have gone unpunished because a jury felt immoral in convicting someone.

It's ridiculous our current system has such a discrepancy in convictions based on the punishment. It's not like we should consider removing blockades in our court system...innocent until proven guilty and all that.

Then, there's the additional side effects of the appeal process. Because juries don't want to wrongly execute someone, trials involving the death penalty get dragged out far longer than they should.

We haven't even covered how minorities end up getting the death penalty for the same crimes committed by the majority.

The state isn't an all-knowing entity. If it were, we wouldn't have this discussion come up. If someone is so dangerous or their crimes so heinous, we should place them in 20+ hour solitary confinement in a supermax prison. If we're morally opposed to isolating someone, I don't know how we can justify taking someone's life.

Something that's bothered me is the whole sentencing process, I realize that there is a min-max for the severity of the crime etc.. but it seems like it makes the crime a gamble to the crook ie; "if I steal this car I may get 10yrs. or I might get 25yrs". and no one really thinks they'll get caught do they? So is the rationalized idea always the lowest number of years?

Wouldn't it be better to have a stock number of years period. like 20 years for GF. auto. and 18 if you plead guilty. something like that right out in the open.? maybe that takes too much power away from the DA.?

stealing a car is a simplified example. what happens if a person punches then spits on someone? battery, assault, aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, etc. etc.

the aspects of the crime decide the punishment based on precedent as the judge sees fit. This is because it is IMPOSSIBLE to define each aspect of possible criminality and further assign a punishment.

The same problem comes up in policework, people often ask "why cant there just be police guidelines for every situation?" Sit down with a notebook and start to write each situation a police officer could encounter and then how they should deal with it. Youll be writting for the next 300 years and still miss out on possible situations.