General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: why i can't oppose the death penalty in all cases [View all]starroute
(12,977 posts)In the first version of my previous post, I started discussing about areas where penalties for crimes do work as a deterrent -- and then deleted that part because it was getting way too long.
But the short version is that most law-breaking that is engaged in for profit or even personal satisfaction involves a crude cost-benefit calculation. You're a poor slum kid with no marketable skills so you weigh the potential benefits of dealing drugs against the possibility of getting caught. Or you have a hot new car and you really want to take it up to 120 on the open highway so you try to figure out the odds of getting a cop on your tail. Or you might even be a mob boss who wants to take out the competition, but only if you feel confident of getting away with it.
But running amok in an Afghan village and shooting up a lot of people just doesn't seem to be that sort of crime. There's no calculation involved, no chance of profit, and a near-certainty of getting caught.
And I think you and I agree on both these cases.
So the question becomes what you do with the guy who runs amok. You can't let him get away with it -- but no punishment seems proportional to the crime. You can't kill him 18 times over. You can't kill his spouse or children in front of his eyes. And even if you could, the effect on him wouldn't the the same as the effect of what he did on someone who was peacefully living their life and then suddenly had it destroyed.
So that throws it back on the larger social message you want to deliver. And for me, the death sentence is so problematic that we don't want to send a message that it's okay in some cases. We should be sending a message that what this guy did was abhorrent, but that the state should never have the power to take a human life.