If you have a point make it. My point is that being public in the past did not result in people wanting to get rid of the death penalty here. Hangings and Guillotinings seem to make great spectacles and picnic opportunities.
Why reference time periods in which public attitudes were very different than they are today? Based on the information in this article ("
Americans Favor The Death Penalty, But Few Want The Executed To Suffer"), it is hard to imagine a public hanging or guillotining attracting much positive attention.
I Ask Jon if he has some kind of substantive argument other than his feelings
Not tonight
Exactly.
Poor form.
Nevertheless, here is some information linking the use of the death penalty to increased murder (I also used to have a book, full of good stuff, but I will have to settle with these couple of things for now.):
1.
Message 7
2.
quote:
"Death Penalty An Ineffective Deterrent" in The Tech:
Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are among the leaders nationwide in executions -- and lead the nation in murders per 100,000 people. Mississippi is under investigation for dozens of jail house lynchings the past few years. If you look through the list in the Uniform Crime Report of cities with populations over 10 thousand, you rarely see a city in Mississippi or Texas without at least one murder. The large majority of cities in Massachusetts have no murders.
This suggests that the death penalty promotes murder instead of deterring it. Death penalty opponents often cite a study of New York City indicating that on the average two more murders occurred during the month following an execution there than otherwise. The murder rate in Canada dropped after the death penalty was abolished there.
Now, you can say that correlation does not prove causation, or even claim that areas using the death penalty do so out of necessity on account of their high murder rates.
One thing is certain: there is definitely a correlation between the "wild west" mentality and the use of capital punishment.
What I suppose is not entirely certain is whether capital punishment
creates that "wild west" mentality, or whether it is a "wild west" mentality that is responsible for capital punishment's continued employment and popularity.
But does it really matter? Either way you write the story, the continued use of capital punishment is most definitely a marker of the illness of the society that employs it (whether that illness is a cause or a reaction). Any society would benefit from the elimination of the death penalty for no other reason than as a sign to the world that it is not sick, or at least not
as sick as places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, or the U.S.
Jon
Edited by Jon, : Clarity... and other important stuff.
Edited by Jon, : Even more clarity...
Love your enemies!
™ Version 4.2
