Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 21, 2006 1:07:50 GMT -5
criminals
Prisoners seek rapid demise to avoid serving time in jail
Last Friday South Carolina executed a convicted child killer.
William Downs did not just get what the government (and many people) thought he deserved, he got what he wanted. Not only had he asked to die, but he had dropped his appeals so he could be executed more quickly. So, essentially, we put him out of his misery.
Downs surely did not receive the death penalty simply because he requested it, but it is hard to ignore the fact that he got what he literally asked for.
It is not unreasonable to think that many prisoners living long, miserable lives in prison might view death as an escape. One can imagine that the suicide rates in prisons would be much higher if prisoners had less supervision and the means with which to take their own lives.
Paying one's debt to society should not be as simple as taking a needle to the arm and falling asleep. The government can and does make money off of criminal labor, so why kill off someone we can put to work? Prisoners work for little and they often deserve less.
Cheap, yet profitable labor at the expense of a child killer does not seem unreasonable to me.
Labor aside, people who have committed horrendous crimes should, at the very least, drown in self-loathing for many hopeless years in prison. Time in prison does not only punish, but also allows time for reflection and redemption.
Both on and off death row, many prisoners try to reach out to young people who are at high-risk for committing crimes. A well-known example of such a prisoner is Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in December of last year for the 1979 murders of four people in California. Williams was the co-founder of the Los Angeles Crips and spent many of his years on death row co-writing children's books that discouraged gang involvement.
Obviously, the purpose of prison is most importantly to keep prisoners off the streets, away from innocent people. However, there is no point in throwing lives away when there is the potential to use them to better our country - through labor or positive influence.
The practice of capital punishment is obsolete. The government is playing God every time a prisoner is executed. Innocent people have been put to death. There are even documented cases in which crimes were committed because the offender was hoping to receive the death penalty. Those cases don't offer much support to the deterrent theory, obviously.
Basic logic should tell us that a criminal asking for the death penalty is really asking for a way out of serving time. A child killer like Downs should not have gotten off so easily. He should not have died for his crime, he should have paid for it.
(source: The Daily Gamethingy)
Prisoners seek rapid demise to avoid serving time in jail
Last Friday South Carolina executed a convicted child killer.
William Downs did not just get what the government (and many people) thought he deserved, he got what he wanted. Not only had he asked to die, but he had dropped his appeals so he could be executed more quickly. So, essentially, we put him out of his misery.
Downs surely did not receive the death penalty simply because he requested it, but it is hard to ignore the fact that he got what he literally asked for.
It is not unreasonable to think that many prisoners living long, miserable lives in prison might view death as an escape. One can imagine that the suicide rates in prisons would be much higher if prisoners had less supervision and the means with which to take their own lives.
Paying one's debt to society should not be as simple as taking a needle to the arm and falling asleep. The government can and does make money off of criminal labor, so why kill off someone we can put to work? Prisoners work for little and they often deserve less.
Cheap, yet profitable labor at the expense of a child killer does not seem unreasonable to me.
Labor aside, people who have committed horrendous crimes should, at the very least, drown in self-loathing for many hopeless years in prison. Time in prison does not only punish, but also allows time for reflection and redemption.
Both on and off death row, many prisoners try to reach out to young people who are at high-risk for committing crimes. A well-known example of such a prisoner is Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in December of last year for the 1979 murders of four people in California. Williams was the co-founder of the Los Angeles Crips and spent many of his years on death row co-writing children's books that discouraged gang involvement.
Obviously, the purpose of prison is most importantly to keep prisoners off the streets, away from innocent people. However, there is no point in throwing lives away when there is the potential to use them to better our country - through labor or positive influence.
The practice of capital punishment is obsolete. The government is playing God every time a prisoner is executed. Innocent people have been put to death. There are even documented cases in which crimes were committed because the offender was hoping to receive the death penalty. Those cases don't offer much support to the deterrent theory, obviously.
Basic logic should tell us that a criminal asking for the death penalty is really asking for a way out of serving time. A child killer like Downs should not have gotten off so easily. He should not have died for his crime, he should have paid for it.
(source: The Daily Gamethingy)