The Death Penalty

[delphinus]

I support the death penalty, and Ive got a few reasons why. First off I dont like that our tax dollars go towards taking care of fellons on life sentances, especally when our schools and roads could use the money alot more. Secondly Earth is headed towards an enevitable overpopulation crisis, so why do we keep all these criminalls around. I could probably come up with a few more reasons, but I think those two are good enough.

 

Excellent! i see again that are going nowhere with this topic. I'm pretty sure i 've already read this poor reason 15 or 20 times in this thread. (nothing personal) Can't you guys come out with something more original? Oh, and by the way, i don't want to repeat myself, but the Useless=removable question is very similiar to the one that caused the mass exterminations in certain dictatorships in 900. Just to keep you guys informed before you post this excuse again.

 

crazydave, the starving ethiopians aren't starving because of their poor organization or something, and neither because we feed the prisoners in jail. they are starving because of the hypercapitalism that consumes everything and pollutes everything and plunders this planet, so i think that this doesn't fit very well in this discussion.

 

At the same time i would dare you to look in some man or woman's eyes and say him that his life could be ended without problems. Are you up to it? I sincerely hope not.

[DecalMirror]

Honestly, if it costs more to kill someone than it does to feed, clothe, and shelter someone for over forty years, I smell a rat. That would have to be one of the worst cases of government overspending ever. Hundreds(if not thousands) of stray animals are euthinised everyday, and I have never heard of an animal shelter complaining about the cost.

One man's contribute for an execution of one prisoner is in short term much bigger than watching over the prisoners. Towards one condemned costs might(I don't say they ARE) be much bigger as there many guards and other staff going through the procedures that are needed to execute one prisoner, while the same effort equals few days work guarding many normal prisoners. My point is to show that it is very hard to guess and compare the actual costs per prisoner.

 

No offence taken. Criminals with life sentences will never get out of prison, and pretty much all of them dont give a dam about anything. They contribute nothing to society. Right now there are millions of people in third world countries who have done nothing wrong, and yet many of them wold kill to have the same treatment as an American prisioner(no pun intended). So my question is: Can you realy look one of those starving Etheopians in the eyes and tell him he is less important than a man who brutally murdered his whole family.

I don't understand your point here. The overpopulation is mostly a problem in third world countries due to their culture and the lack of medical skills/funding. Roughly, the solution to stop the overgrowing of the world's population is to aid them in these areas. The way to resolve the problem is absolutely not killing in any of its forms. Besides, do you really think that killing a few people(quite a few people are actually condemned to death of all criminals) would resolve it? Or does it even support your ethical views versus peaceful monetary and medical aid?

 

Your question is a bit odd as I said the condemned are just as much people as we are and that included those hungry Ethiopians.

 

Sorry, it gone a bit off topic.

[crazydave]

One man's contribute for an execution of one prisoner is in short term much bigger than watching over the prisoners. Towards one condemned costs might(I don't say they ARE) be much bigger as there many guards and other staff going through the procedures that are needed to execute one prisoner, while the same effort equals few days work guarding many normal prisoners. My point is to show that it is very hard to guess and compare the actual costs per prisoner.

Ok,lets crunch some numbers. Assuming that a prision has at least 10 people working 24 hours a day, that means 240 man hours go in to a prision every day. Multiply that by 365 days gives you 87,600 man hours a year. Multiply that by 20 years, and you get 1,752,000 man hours over a 20 year span. Now lets assume the prision has 1000 prisioners, you get 1,752 man hours for a single prisioner staying 20 years. So in order for it to be more effecnt, they would need to use more than 1,752 man hours in a single day, witch is 72 people working 24 hours a day. If they work 8 hour shifts, there would need to be 216 people envolved in 1 mans exicution. So witch is more effecent?

[DecalMirror]

crazydave

 

Ok, you got your point through and won.. I was too lazy and tired to make any real calculations at that time, so I thought the difference would be much smaller.

[Thanodai]

Actually, we had this very same debate in my public speaking class in high school. Two students were assigned to different sides of an issue. In my case, I was the lucky one to get capital punishment, pro. I researched the hell out of it, and mind you, this was back in 98/99 when I was a senior so I'm sure the figures have changed since then. But I noticed something very interesting. No matter which side of an argument you took, it's always easy to use numbers to swing things your way. In my case I was looking at two sets of numbers. On one hand, I was looking at the annual housing cost per prisoner vs how much it cost for a convict on death row to appeal his case in the US. Then on my side of the argument, I had AVERAGES. Averages are a debater's best friend.

 

I was lucky enough to have found those and use those in my speech along with a case about some racist bastards in Texas who dragged a black man behind their truck and was subsequently decapitated by a drainage culvert (some of you may remember this story). But that made my argument and I essentially won the "debate"

 

In actuality, if you look at the cost of housing a prisoner for 40 years for a life sentence vs the cost of a prisoner on death row appealing his case (at an average length of seven years) after all the court costs and lawyers fees, it is actually cheaper to house a convict for 40 years, at least vs the US justice system.

 

Though I am for the death penalty, for reasons that I cannot debate, as the topic is banned, I will say this. Arguing with money for the death penalty will get you no where, because both sides can swing the numbers their way. Thank you. That is all.

 

-T-