Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Phage
The penalties for breaking laws have two purposes. The first is a punishment for the crime that is intended to prevent the infraction being committed again. The second purpose is for the punishment to be a deterrent that will hopefully prevent the law being broken in the first place.
Life imprisonment may provide the same punishment value (they will never murder again, or at least that is the goal) but it does not provide the same deterrent value as the death penalty. I will admit that it is possible for someone to be convicted falsely but that is why we have the "beyond a reasonable doubt" method. Pulling punches because of the inherent uncertainty in life is a road to nonsense; after all it is quite possible that someone who is found not guilty might in fact be guilty, so should we take that into account and punish them a little?
|
i have to disagree with you. penalties for breaking the law are to punish the perpatrators. that some people will be deterred from breaking the law becuase of the reprecussions is a side effect, not a purpose of the law. based on the number of repeat offenders that there seem to be, the law doesn't seem to have much of a deterrent effect.
life imprisonment isn't the same punishment value as the death penalty. while both may end up with the persons life ending in prison, one of them is the govt. sactioned execution of the other, where the person knows when the end is coming, the other is a natural death where the person has to wake up day after day for the rest of their lives knowing that it will be the same way every day. i think living until your 75 knowing that you wasted your entire life is much much worse than being executed at 30. but that's just an opinion, ymmv.
moving on though, studies seem to show that the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent for crime. check out some of the studies done here...
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...id=167#STUDIES
now i couldn't tell if they're actually slanted pro- or con-death penalty just by skimming it. but it's got information worth considering.