John Wilkes Booth

actually, i think you make a good point as well

i think roxy is approaching this more from a perspective of justice rather than research. but both approaches have their merits and downsides.

edit - overall though i'd say the logical thing to do with a psychopath who committed a murder or whatever is have them do a thorough study of him and all that, and when the work on him is done then kill him.

also it sounds barbaric but i've always thought a simple way to execute people is just shoot them in the head. i don't see how that's any less humane than an injection or whatever and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

RoxyRollah

Yup. I am not saying my perspective is the correct one at all, it's just how I feel. I started this thread, because I wanted to know how everybody else felt about it, not have stats jammed down my throat. I didn't ask what the stats said, I asked how you guys feel.

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The Batlord

I'm certainly not opposed to killing them, as someone like Jeffrey Dahmer is just so aberrant that their continued existence is of no non-scientific benefit to anyone, while also being extremely dangerous to society in general. But I also don't know that you could ever know when you'd learned everything you could learn from him.

There's just so much to be learned, and so much that may or may not be possible to accomplish by further study (e.g. better diagnosis, actual rehabilitation, developing more effective crime fighting techniques to capture serial killers, learning what red flags to look for in children at risk of developing into psychopaths and how to treat them, etc) that to simply decide that you've learned everything that there is to learn about an individual would be premature.

I'm not opposed to executing the most dangerous serial killers, but the theoretical benefits to their study are such that I am in effect arguing against the death penalty for them.

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Chula Vista

Murder of Danielle van Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

He's probably one of the kinds of people I'm talking about, and isn't likely to serve any non-scientific benefit to society, so in theory I wouldn't be opposed to removing him as a threat in a permanent fashion. But if he could be studied, and if the information we might gain from him could lead to eventually -- in a decade, or a century, or whatever -- saving more lives by using him as "psychological guinea pig" than we would by simply executing him, then wouldn't it be in our best interests to keep him alive?

If you just want revenge, then put on a shirt with a white skull and become a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante, but if you want to save lives, then get over yourself and start coming at the issue from a logical standpoint. As it is you aren't serving justice, just your own self-indulgent desire for retribution, and I have no interest in or respect for that.

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Trollheart

What about those who reoffend after being released early? I read a lot of stories about murderers/rapists/paedos who do some of their time, get out early and go do the same damn thing again. How often does that have to happen before you get something like a "three strikes and you're dead" rule? Is that being too reactionary?

Don't forget: I come from the country where we could have had ten innocent people executed by the British for crimes they categorically did not commit were the death penalty still in force there. I'm never sure how I stand on this issue. It's too late to say sorry when someone is proven innocent if you've hanged, electrocuted or shot or injected them, but it's also equally too late to apologise to the person who becomes the next victim of the guy you could have executed instead of imprisoning him for "life", which often does not mean what it says.

Surely at the very least, early or any parole should be denied someone imprisoned for murder/rape?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I'm not for executing anyone whose psychology doesn't basically make them human in physical form only (i.e. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish, etc.) Life in prison I'm all for. Depending on the case, two or three strikes and you get life is fine by me.

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Chula Vista

You don't agree he should be awaiting a death sentence for what he did to that child?

No.

Tell that to strikes one and two.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”