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Originally Posted by Justsomeguy
It does not make sense to NOT support the death penalty but to support life in prison.
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Why not?
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Essentially, they do the same thing and mean the same thing.
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No they don't. One ends up killing someone. Another incarcerates them.
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However, one costs more and still poses reasonable threat to society.
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Actually, the death penalty costs more than life in prison. Numerous studies have proven this. If you want references just let me know.
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The point of jail is to take people out of society. However, the idea is that their behavior can be corrected. It has to support the notion that people can change and within time, the person's may effectively be placed back into society.
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Not really, at least not in the US. In the 1970's, US prison policy effectively changed from one of rehabilitiation to one of simple punishment.
For starters, I recommend you read the paper
The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy by Craig Haney (of the University of California, Santa Cruz) and Philip Zimbardo (of Stanford University). You can find it at the journals section of the American Psychological Association (direct link:
http://www.apa.org/journals/amp/amp53709.pdf)
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Under certain circumstances, the law and the majority think that a person's crime and/or behavior is so horrible that it the person can never be rehabilitated. The answer, then, is to eliminate the person from society. The death penalty is the only response that really does this.
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Well, patently it is not.
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The moral argument to support life in prison is weak as well. It's naive.
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How so?
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It's uses arguments such as "people should not be killed," or for murder for example, "if killing is bad, how can the government justify killing people in return?"
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Yes, it does use such arguments. And many others. What's your point? If you disagree with those arguments, then fine; but I'm still confused as to what you're trying to argue.
Mr Mephisto