Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

@danielelton I like your 'Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated' blog http://t.co/rJkpJU6

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

RT @leftfootfwd: Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton #NewsClub

“it is only a matter of time until someone is innocent is killed”

Er, someone innocent is *murdered*. Let’s be accurate here as to what wrongful execution is…

From the article on Andrew Evans at Innocent:

“Under today’s criminal evidence rules, Mr Evans’s confessions would be inadmissible.”

Sooo… actually he wouldn’t be executed in today’s legal system, because there would be insufficient evidence.

We do not regard the long-term deprivation of liberty to be fundamentally unjust simply because the state wrongfully locks people away for interminably long periods of time. Yet by the logic used above, we should.

I actually agree with the sentiment that the Death Penalty is wrong – but aren’t you missing the point? What right does the political class have to deny a clear majority view in the electorate? Democracy doesn’t produce a moral or particularly efficient state (though efficiency is perhaps less desirable anyway – the most efficient have tended to be fairly immoral), but it should produce a state in accord with the wishes of the people.

If the left in England cannot persuade people of the integrity of its ideology, and instead must resort to using its monopoly of politics to maintaining it – even in the face of outright majority disapproval – then it is no longer democratic, in fact it is teetering towards a political oligarchy. A benign one, perhaps, but nevertheless a thoroughly anti-democratic one.

RT @leftfootfwd: Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton #NewsClub

"@Hens4Freedom: RT @leftfootfwd: Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://t.co/RlLClhk : writes @Old_Holborn

The sad part is we see to many over turned because the Police are either under pressure to find a killer anyone will do, to just plain bad police, and to police who will fit up a person.

To shit lawyers who are basically not interested because the person cannot afford a better lawyer no money

No we should never again hang people it’s barbaric anyway.

If nothing else, debate is healthy so I do hope that the petition passes the signatures threshold. A significant number of people would support the return of the death penalty hence the very least our representatives should do is discuss it.

The argument that one innocent person being executed militates against the reintroduction of capital punishment is persuasive. However, I would also like to see a list of murderers and paedophiles who reoffend. I suspect it would be far longer.

Therefore, if there is to be no comeback for the death penalty, I would certainly favour genuine life imprisonment rather than the charade we have now. Proper life imprisonment offers civil society the same protection and nearly as much retribution as capital punishment; it’s the least these heinous offences warrant.

Releasing paedophiles and murderers after relatively short sentences is a vile insult to victims and puts the rest of us in grave danger.

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

If there is a single reader of this article that believes that the torturers and murderers of Baby Peter shouldn’t have faced the hangman’s noose is seriously lacking in humanity and cares nothing for the weakest in our society.

That’s why a huge majority of the public support capital punishment. The majority opinion is right.

Leon Wolfson, who by his own admission has survived numerous attempts on his life from shootings and bombings and ambushes, would have been relieved the perpetuators would have been unable to put other’s live’s at risk.

And acted as a deterrent to prevent other people suffering.

I find the position Wolfy takes surprising in view of nearly losing his life so many times at the hands of vile people…

From @LeftFootFwd Five good reasons why the death penalty should NOT be restored http://t.co/MYfZdPQ

There’s no good evidence that the death penalty deters, or more widely that having stiffer sentences reduces the crime rate. If you compare England and the US (which have toughish regimes) with Canada and Scotland (which don’t), the curve in rising and falling crime looks pretty similar. Reducing the number of police officers isn’t, however, a very good idea…

It’s morally obscene to have the death penalty on utilitarian grounds. Judging any person’s future so absolutely is supremely arrogant. And it’s not going to happen anyway unless we leave the EU.

I’d say these are all pretty good reasons to treat this proposal as wrong, and indeed as offensive. Davies and Patel are both absolute fools anyway. And Staines is a pompous muck raking parasite.

RT @leftfootfwd: Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated http://t.co/XtCCBZ2 #deathpenalty #statemurder #facism

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

I’m very surprised that Angela Cannings wasn’t mentioned. Convicted in 2002 of the ‘murder’ of two of her four children who’d died from sudden infant death syndrome, because an ‘expert’ opined that ‘more than 2 cot deaths must be murder’. If we’d had hanging, then by the time evidence emerged two years later, that cot deaths had been endemic on the Irish side of Angela’s family, it would have been too late. At least life imprisonment ‘fails safe’.

There IS no Libertarian argument in the State executing citizens. To allow the State to do so, is to accept that the State has more rights over your life than you do. It doesn’t.

I think this is all a red herring.

There is literally no chance of the death penalty being reintroduced, and no need to pay attention to people calling for it to be.

Meanwhile Guido is gaining plenty of page views on his site. The DM school of journalism.

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

Tom White – There is very good evidence that punishment deters crime in all forms.

A burglar behind bars cannot steal people’s property. A rapist cannot rape anyone from a jail cell. Prison works.

Between 2007 and 2009 criminals on probation were responsible for 121 murders, 44 cases of manslaughter, 103 rapes and 80 kidnappings.

The total was over 1000 violent crimes, every single one by a convicted and released violent offender.

Not a single one of those violent crimes against the person could have taken place if the perpetrators had either been executed or spending the whole of their lives in jail. I’ll take either.

You may consider that judging anyone’s future is “supremely arrogant” but I argue that is exactly what these horrible criminals have done and their victims were certainly innocent of anything.

Take for example Rickie Preddie, the convicted killer of Damilola Taylor. He’s been released and is already back behind bars: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/08/early-release-dangerous-offenders

If he had been swinging from a rope, which public opinion overwhelmingly supports, then that little lad would still be alive.

Tell me why the rights of someone like Rickie Preddie are more valuable to you than the rights of Damilola Taylor because this bleeding heart liberal stuff has done nothing to make people safer and certainly not the 1000 real cases I mentioned previously…

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

My only caveat is that one needs to be SURE of the criminal’s guilt.

I’m still waiting for the WMD to be found in Iraq and if they can lie and deceive people at a Prime Minister level and with the police’s current dealings with the newspapers one would need certainty not reliant on circumstantial evidence…

There will always be dinosaurs who want to head back into some kind of eye for an eye knee jerk world. If we want to minimise violent crime let’s look at OECD countries with the lowest levels and see how they do it. Not sure what to do about other types of horrendous acts but please let’s not kid ourselves that killing people will stop more of the same recurring – does it in the USA? I suggest we may need to sacrifice some of those business interests on the dodgy internet sites?!

The death penalty has already been reintroduced, via the Lisbon treaty. It allows for its application in special circumstances, which Syria would find quite useful at the moment.
5 found guilty who were really innocent compares to how many who were guilty and were released to re-offend? I doubt the public’s view of fitting punishment has much in common with our politicians, so, if nothing else, the call for capital punishment’s restoration should bring that to the fore. I will be very surprised if it is ever debated in parliament.

The real mistake here is to confuse guilt/innocence with sentencing. It is for the judge to decide the sentence, and he would do so conscious that sometimes, as in the case of Anders Behring Brevik, there is no doubt about the guilt of the killer. The question for him (as I would frame it) would be whether the killer demonstrated massive disdain and contempt for the victims in the manner of their killing. Cold-blooded killers damage the fabric of society, and society needs to know that they cannot prevail in any way. As a child needs to see the end of a murder mystery when they have seen the beginning, so society needs to see the futility of evil. Should a judge be in any doubt, he should be liable for any injustice in civil courts. A failure would ruin him and I think this would concentrate the mind to avoid injustice occurring. The thing with the death penalty is that sometimes there is just nothing else commensurate with the scale of the crime. Every breath the murderer takes is an exultative exhalation of his rights to live over those of his victims.

Well said Anon E Mouse. Also it is worth pointing out that NONE of the cases quoted in this blogpost would have led to an execution had what “Right-wing blogger” (??!!) Guido Fawkes’s is petitioning for been the actual Law.

Dave Citizen, a fine idea; certainly by homicide rates it would be something like the following: Morocco (Strict Islamic Law…death penalty?), Singapore (strict authorirarian (heavy fines for littering etc?), Monaco (everyone’s a multimillionaire?)

Not so easy.

@ahoneysettwatts I know you feel strongly about the this – http://t.co/SAzjb1o

Dave Citizen – That is a daft argument fella.

Are you seriously saying that if the torturer and murderer of Baby P was taken quietly to a room where he was lethally injected and peacefully drifted off to sleep and didn’t wake up that is the same as the horrendous acts carried out on the aforementioned victim of his crime?

There are not the same at all. You may have perfectly reasonable grounds for not wanting the state to be allowed to execute it’s subjects but to compare the crime and the punishment in such a dishonest way is about as credible as saying Labour governments always leave the country in rack and ruin when they are booted out of office….

Span Ows – At last someone else who shares the opinion of the majority of people in this country…

. @dlknowles @TimMontgomerie Five (rather conservative) reasons oppose the death penalty on @leftfootfwd: http://t.co/szcVGZU

I suspect this has more to do with us leaving the EU then hanging people, most who state hanging should come back know dam well we have to leave the EU.

The Cardiff five are enough for me guilty in jail and they would have hung.

Bush would be enough for most sane people to say no thanks.

Dear Anon E. Mouse,

In comment 7 you wrote the following:
“There is very good evidence that punishment deters crime in all forms… Prison works.”
It is scientifically inaccurate to claim that punishment deters crime in *all* forms. There are many forms of punishment, some prisons being a prime example, that have in fact been shown to *increase* future criminality. For more on this, please see the following exchange with Peter Hitchens from this blog about a month ago: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/07/peter-hitchens-bring-back-19th-century-prisons/.

Your point, however, was not about deterrence — it was about incapacitation. Insofar as someone who is behind bars or is dead cannot commit crime in the community, then you are indeed correct. In fact, your words were as follows: “Not a single one of those violent crimes against the person could have taken place if the perpetrators had either been executed or spending the whole of their lives in jail. I’ll take either.”

So let me put the following to you: if your chief concern is for incapacitation, then why are you not advocating as vehemently in favour of life in prison, as opposed to killing offenders? It would seem to me that this accomplishes the same incapacitative goal, with the difference that people don’t die. It also happens to be cheaper, in case there’s a little utilitarian in you that needs placating further!

Thanks,

And one other question, again for Anon E Mouse:

In Comment 12 you made the point that the crime and the punishment, at least in the case of Baby P’s killers, is not morally equivalent.

Could you elaborate on the distinction between the two? This is not an attempt to be rhetorically provocative on my part; I’m trying to parse how the death of an offender affords moral superiority over the death of the original victim.

Johann Koehler – I wouldn’t read about the specific acts committed against that child because that kind of thing plays on my mind but just hearing about how he had his fingernails pulled out with pliers in front of his mother who did nothing to protect him was enough to sicken me.

To humanely inject someone which sends them to a sleep from where they will never wake up is simply not the same. I do not advocate an eye for an eye and indeed that is not what it is.

No one is discussing moral superiority or equivalence – (deterrence doesn’t depend on that) over the death of that victim but as a state we have to protect the weak from the stronger and clearly we are not doing that.

Let me put it another way. If the murderers who killed the 121 innocent people between 2006 and 2009 had been hanged or kept in jail until their natural death then 121 families wouldn’t have had their lives wrecked forever.

Of course I would ask why you believe it is right than the person who brutally tortured and killed that helpless child shouldn’t be incarcerated for his whole life or executed. Either will do thanks…

‘So let me put the following to you: if your chief concern is for incapacitation, then why are you not advocating as vehemently in favour of life in prison, as opposed to killing offenders? It would seem to me that this accomplishes the same incapacitative goal, with the difference that people don’t die. It also happens to be cheaper, in case there’s a little utilitarian in you that needs placating further!’

I argued in favour of proper life imprisonment at comment 3, Johann. I, like you, made the point that, in common with the death penalty, life imprisonment offers society the same protection from reoffending as capital punishment (short of possible escapes from prison). It doesn’t represent equivalent retribution, however, since the murderer in jail is still afforded rights he so cruelly denied his victims. Nonetheless, from the perspective of reoffending, life imprisonment has much in common with the death penalty.

I find it astonishing that an obvious compromise position has not been reached, or even discussed. Polls suggest that there is public support for capital punishment and support is even greater where the offences to be punished in such a way are particularly heinous (e.g. child murder). Yet I wonder if support would be so widespread if the public was satisfied that murderers would, rightly, forever be denied their liberty.

Lastly, are you sure that life imprisonment is cheaper than state execution? I can’t imagine that that’s true, particularly as it’s so often stated that it costs more to keep someone in prison than it would to educate them at Eton. I would have thought that, if this were to be decided purely on costs grounds, some chemicals and needles/lengths of ropes/guns would be cheaper than permanent incarceration.

Johann Koehler – Just noticed your previous post. Please don’t placate me – no one else does…

Also, Johann, with regard to the question you addressed to Anon E Mouse in comment 16, I would respond that there is a world of difference between the state executing a murderer after due process and the murderer, for example, stabbing his victim in cold blood.

The former is (or at least would be, after the necessary reforms) authorised by an act of government, that government having been elected by the general population in free elections. Thus, capital punishment would be as legitimate a state action as imprisonment, that currently being the most draconian punishment in the judiciary’s somewhat limited armoury.

The latter is the destruction of an innocent life on a whim. In a civilised society, no individual has the right to take another’s life; conversely, hanging a murderer in accordance with the law is perfectly compatible with civilised society.

If you do not see the difference then I am genuinely surprised.

My goodness, such quick responses!

First, the expense issue: death penalty cases take up much longer, and more resources, than any other type of case. Stands to reason. More time is given for the defense team to prepare a case, pre-trial motions take long to process, and the case usually won’t see a courtroom until well over a year after the charge is made. Then you need to pay for Experts once the case has begun (they’ll charge a pretty penny), juries take *much* longer to compose based on preconceived notions about the appropriateness of the death penalty, and the trials take much longer.
You’ll then have at least one appeal trial, and innumerable habeas briefs. Sure, all of this is money paid ‘up-front’, so it’s worth looking at how that compares to the expense of prison for the rest of someone’s life….

Given that we haven’t had the death penalty in the UK for quite while now, let’s refer to data from the States: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/northcarolina.pdf. In North Carolina, they found that a death penalty case costs about $2.16 million more per case than a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment.

Not convinced? That’s fine. It’s tenuous to draw too much of a link with the States anyway. But the point remains that the cost is not the needles, or the rope, or whatever instrument of death. It’s the wider apparatus that causes the expense.

Ed’s Talking Balls,

I noticed you argued in favour of life imprisonment. It seems like an eminently sensible alternative to the death penalty, if incapacitation is the priority. I, too, would be intrigued to know how people’s opinions would change given the proposed alternative: criminological research has made some advances distinguishing between “public opinion” (what are people’s immediate appetites for punitive practise) which tends to be much harsher than “public judgment” (what do people want, after they’ve been presented with the full set of evidence on a given phenomenon). My inclination is to think that the overwhelming support in this country for the death penalty would be significantly moderated.

To Anon E Mouse’s Comment 17,

Surely one requires moral superiority in order to justify the action? You yourself claim that this is the “right” thing to do, and I can’t imagine that the death of Baby P was the “right” thing to do. So surely moral superiority has something to do with it.

Which is, I think, where Ed’s Talking Balls’ Comment 20 comes from too. I see the *legal* superiority that differentiates the two cases, but my question was about wherein lies the *moral* superiority? If it’s the manner in which someone was killed, then that’s the answer. But the fact that it is done by the state is not an ontologically moral position. So I’m asking for the moral differentiation between state-sanctioned execution and criminal execution.

Johann Koehler – I don’t care about the perceived moral superiority or otherwise of the punishment just the fact that a message is sent that the criminals behaviour will not be accepted by a civilised society and we will act on behalf of the victims not the perpetrators.

You are simply talking semantics but I am talking about the 121 people who should simply not be dead and if we had a decent punishment they wouldn’t be. Or the 44 manslaughter victims. Or the 103 rapes.

In all those cases those specific crimes wouldn’t have happened if the death penalty or life imprisonment had been used; so as much as we all like a theory, the facts speak for themselves.

What I do fail to understand is why people care about the types of individuals that could commit those sorts of crimes more than they do about the victims who have certainly done nothing wrong…

Fantastic RT From @LeftFootFwd Five good reasons why the death penalty should NOT be restored http://t.co/8BL7i8x

Ok, so your primary concern is for the protection of the innocent, be they the victims of rape, manslaughter, murder, or otherwise. I appreciate that.
But this doesn’t explain why the death of the offender is preferable to life imprisonment, as Ed’s Talking Balls and I have advocated.

Johann Koehler – Because life in prison doesn’t work or every year there wouldn’t be “We need to learn lessons blah blah” as another innocent child suffers and dies.

Locking up Ian Huntly forever didn’t stop Baby P’s torture and murder years later.

Or locking up Ian Brady forever didn’t stop Victoria Climbié’s torture and murder years later.

So we certainly know what doesn’t work – why not try something else?

@ekklesiaComment @catholicherald @NewsFromAmnesty 5 good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://t.co/szcVGZU :

You’re now making the case for ‘general deterrence’ – the theory that capital punishment deters people who were considering committing a crime. There’s no evidence to support that theory. There would be even less traction for the theory in the context of people as unhinged as the killers of Baby P and Victoria Climbié (http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lqMZzZ7p3jIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA303&dq=deterrence+among+psychopaths&ots=mCW3X6Yuva&sig=vv1TegHZtqz8Mub5abVQdNML3uI). Your utilitarian position, namely that of the primacy of protecting the innocent, is simply not supported as strongly as you seem to think.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to seek to reform the sentence of life imprisonment to reflect ‘true’ life imprisonment (as is the case in plenty of countries) before you advocate in favour of state-sponsored killing?

Anon E Mouse: 1) you don’t appear to know what ‘deterrence’ means. If you’re interested in that debate, go and look at the figures. If we’re talking about incapacitation, then execution is obviously different from incarceration: I’m not happy if innocent people are killed by the state. Are you? 2) I don’t use the same moral judgments as criminals in judging people’s futures, and nor should our state. 3) I’m not terribly interested in what lots of people think if you shove a microphone in their faces. Lots of people can be wrong about something. A huge number of people on this planet think that God exists – I don’t see it myself.

I don’t see that any of this is ‘bleeding heart’ either. I haven’t declared any position on length of sentence for murderers. I’m just supremely uncomfortable with state murder, and I query the *deterrent* effects of long prison sentences.

You seem to think that the death penalty deters. Where’s your evidence?

Tom White – The “bleeding heart” wasn’t aimed at you specifically and no one would advocate murdering innocent people.

Agreed on point 2 but my response was against the comment from Dave Citizen…

Your belief or not in God (why not agnostic?) is your own but my comment is that the general public aren’t having the microphone shoved in their face in a referendum.

It seems we can have referendums on changes to the voting system, Scotland and the Welsh Assembly but not this or the Lisbon Treaty and we both know why.

Because this country would be out of Europe and would bring back hanging and the politicians know it. Which means they are not representative of us….

As to the deterrent effect you’ll have to give me until tomorrow – I have a train to catch fella….

Johann & Tom – I’m going to miss that train. Try this from an anti death penalty fella: http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/6/10/212452.shtml?s=ic

never mind the death penalty, get rid of the human rights act and expel the
foreign nationals that are cluttering up the prisons ,
you middle class chattering classes are totally out of touch with ordinary
people

@ekklesiaComment @catholicherald @NewsFromAmnesty 5 good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://t.co/szcVGZU :

@ekklesiaComment @catholicherald @NewsFromAmnesty 5 good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://t.co/szcVGZU :

@4 – Yes, what a surprise, you like the concept of murder and can’t stop talking about it. There are dozens of studies showing that it, if anything, raises the rate…and two (including as one the study which was “re-written”) there which contradict that. Moreover, studies for a gun-owning society are (unsurprisingly) quite different from one where there is not (although societies with guns AND compulsory military training, well…eh, this is a sideline)

And yes, prison works – at generating crime. Study after study shows this. But mere facts can’t deter you! Hang em high!

This is also a typical attack on the EU. Yes, I know you want us to be firewalled from the common market, smashing our economy, and leading to large numbers of UK nationals coming back jobless for that matter. I mean, it’s not as if you are not yelling “more, more” as the economy flatlines anyway, but the misery you want to inflict on every non-rich person in this country is entirely typical of the nasty party, and nicely debunks your bleating on the issue.

That a system generally works, and small numbers – and it IS small numbers – of antisocial and otherwise deranged personalities commit murders is something which is very hard to prevent. Indeed, you cheared as the best way (sure, it needed *revision*) to do this was switched off and deleted – contactpoint. Child Protection in this country is now in a dire state: The workers in it have been slashed, and instead of a computer database of contacts, they’re still writing letters and collecting paper files.

This displays your true interest, as ever. And it’s not for the kids. It’s for revenge, in blood. Uncivilised, feral and dangerous.

Leon Wolfson – Well excuse me. I’m here offering you support and the thanks I get is by you lying and smearing me. Charming Wolfster.

For the record, on this fine blog you have said you have been shot at and twice you have been nearly bombed and “ambushed” by a marauding BNP gang.

Can you deny that if the gunman, bombers or BNP criminals that attacked you for a SECOND time had been locked up at their first offence then you COULDN’T have been attacked if they were in a jail cell.

That’s why prison works.

It’s common sense Wolfy Boy if you stop and and think about it.

By the way my partner has been a Child Protection Social worker for over 25 years on the front line (despite having a Masters she refuses management) in this country and your description of that service is bulsh*t. They have had laptops and secure USB sticks for at least 5 years and that is in an extremely poor area…

No offence….

Because you are not supporting me in any way, you’re on a right-wing crusade which has nothing to do with me. And indeed, you have said nothing I remotely agree with, but thanks for trying to paint me as bloody handed as you.

And you have no concept of what ContactPoint was doing, I see, which is entirely typical of those throwing stones on the issue. Yes, of course the workers have laptops. But to get details of contacts between the child and various social workers, police and doctors, they’ve been forced back into writing letters and paper files. A slow method, which can and does miss some contacts, especially if the parents move.

This is PRECISELY what ContactPoint was supposed to address – by having a central record of every contact without needing to send letters, and if appropriately cut down to just the children at-risk (yes, it was over-broad, which is a good argument for revising it, not scrapping it with NO replacement) it would – and was, in fact – doing a much better job.

And yes, I’ve twice been attacked by the BNP, been near a bomb blast in London (the IRA’s last, I believe), another bomb blast in Jerusalem, and shot at over the border in Israel. Your point?

Of course you have to twist and turn and invent and come up with excuses like “oh if they were locked up”…what? Different thugs, in incidents years apart.

Your jail arguments are still incoherent as ever, given your utter inability to understand the difference between incapacitation and deterrence.

@ekklesiaComment @catholicherald @NewsFromAmnesty 5 good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://t.co/szcVGZU :

Leon Wolfson – I never mentioned ContactPoint – you did. You clearly do not realise that like DNA databases and other New Labour control freakery, ContactPoint was universally hated, never worked properly and was just another excuse to spend our money unwisely.

I certainly know what ContactPoint wasn’t doing Wolfser – it wasn’t doing what it should and it cost a fortune. Couple that with the civil liberties issues involved and only the vested interests and those with a socialist agenda wanted the thing.

Your remarks about “different incidents” regarding crime is pathetic frankly. My point is that if people engaged in that type of crime were locked up on their first offence they couldn’t do it again. You are being deliberately awkward because your point doesn’t pass muster.

That’s because prison works and your remarks show your selfish attitude towards others, exemplified by not acknowledging the deaths, manslaughters, kidnappings and rapes of the people I mentioned earlier. Every one by a released prisoner previously incarcerated for similar crimes.

Your blind desire for state control shows that whatever deterrence was in place was not suitable because it didn’t work – that’s the point Wolfy.

Capital punishment may work because what is currently in place clearly doesn’t. Most people who have swung from a rope would be pretty much incapacitated don’t you think?

DUH!

Tom White – Some research from an establishment in the US, Pepperdine University, showed that for every execution it resulted in 74 less deaths the next year:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/death-penalty-deters_b_72075.html

What evidence do you have that it doesn’t work?

Dear Anon E Mouse:

I had a look at the links you’ve provided. Many thanks.

After some research, I found that both the study by Adler and Summers (from the HuffPo piece) and the study by Mocan (from the Newsmax piece) have been examined and discredited by some of the big names, in highly reputable journals: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01168.x/full, and http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/335.short, respectively.

A much more rigorous test of the hypothesis can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2009.00596.x/abstract

This could easily descend into a back-and-forth of competing conclusions. Suffice it to say that the top criminologists working in the fields of capital punishment and deterrence, namely Frank Zimring, Jeff Fagan, John Donohue, Richard Berk, Dan Nagin, Michael Tonry, and countless others all recognise that there is no deterrent effect of capital punishment. People selling you a different story are simply doing bad science.

There are a half-dozen people publishing papers claiming that. And many many more publishing papers claiming otherwise, and moreover it’s extremely – and typically – bad practice to be claiming data from the US, and only the US, maps closely to other systems, especially given the higher homicide rates in America – there are significant differences in crime profiles between the EU and US, for instance.

Many papers calling the death penalty as a deterrence make no attempt to avoid the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. This is not-a-coincidence…and coverups in America continue in cases like Cameron Todd Willingham’s, so the blooded-handed state murder machine can roll on.

Leon Wolfson – Since we do not have the death penalty and the only other country similar to ours is the United States, who else would you suggest we get the data from? Iran?

You still haven’t addressed my point about the 121 murders and 44 manslaughters carried out by reoffenders who had been released from similar crimes.

Those individuals would still be alive if the RE-offenders hadn’t been released. Which is because prison works.

Please tell me where you can show that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent. I have shown that in this country alone 121 and 44 people would be still alive today with capital punishment in place (or lifelong incarceration).

Your comments on causation are wishy washy liberal nonsense and mean nothing. I have produced links to studies proving it does act as a deterrent and the families of the 165 dead people are directly evidenced here.

Well?

I haven’t addressed it because it’s not related to deterrence, of course, your claims are incoherent.

You have not “shown” a single thing – it’s notable that the North Eastern states of America, where the death penalty is rarest, have the lowest murder rates. And that is, of course dealing with the much higher homicide rate of America.

If, like you, I was willing to abandon the causative link, I’d be able to very easily “prove” that murder begets murder with that… but as I am actually intellectual honest I can’t, I’ll just say that you’re simply calling for death for the sake of death.

Never mind those pesky “evidence” things when people are railroaded into the death penalty, eh? And never mind that it would undermine the UK government when UK nationals are accused abroad, in regimes where evidence is strictly optional.

No, they have to go, for the sake of blood red hands.

Leon Wolfson – It is very much related to deterrence since the punishment that the RE-offenders were given for similar crimes did not DETER them from committing similar crimes on their release.

I can say with a 100% certainty that if they were unable to have access to their victims they would not have RE-offended again.

And anyone else considering malice aforethought may have been dissuaded by considering that they may end up swinging from a rope. Because what we can say with a 100% certainty is that the current system isn’t working and those people would be alive if capital punishment was in place.

I can accept you have the right to hold a minority opinion on this matter but you have not produced any “evidence” to substantiate your position, pesky or otherwise.

What you have done is to look at the tactics involved in the punishment and the not the strategy of the concept of the punishment.

To my knowledge no one has advocated murdering people who are innocent of the crime but that is not the topic of this article – the topic is the rights and wrongs of the state to have the right to execute those who it deems necessary of such punishment. Personally I would have natural life imprisonment which would achieve the same thing although perhaps not acting as such a good deterrent.

Anyway now we know that you disagree with capital punishment. Fine.

But where’s your evidence it doesn’t act as a deterrent…

No, as mentioned in this very discussion thread, it’s incapacitation, which is really not the same thing at all.

Where’s your evidence that, outside America, which has rates of murder disproportionate to the rest of Western society, that it does? And moreover, more than a few isolated studies that it does, even in America?

And considerably less than half the population support murdering people as acceptable. Polls show that a majority do NOT support the death penalty in practice…more do in theory, yes, but there is a significant proportion of the electorate (even, and especially, in America) who accept that it’s not practical, without it being sometimes used on innocents – murder – and they can’t support it.

“Because what we can say with a 100% certainty is that the current system isn’t working”

Of course it is. Crime is at near historic lows, including homicide. Deterrence doesn’t work on the mentally ill, who carry out a significant proportion of homicides, and neither does it work in “heat of the moment” situations, another huge percentage.

It’s about red-handed vengeance, not deterrence. And it’s accepting murder, because of the failures – in practice – of every system designed to stop innocents from being judicially executed, where it’s allowed.

Far-right wingnuts like you may accept this as valid, but those of us who are civilised…

Leon Woflson – Your emotive words like “murder” are not the issue.

You are also incorrect on people that are mentally carrying out a “significant proportion of homicides” – From Wednesday, 29 June 2011: http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/news/suicide-and-homicide-people-mental-illness-launch-challenging-report

The NSPCC states at least one child a week is murdered in this country. That statistic is significant since most people in favour of capital punishment certainly want it for child murderers.

Anyway now we know that you disagree with capital punishment. Fine.

And along with your usual New Labour smearing Wolfy Boy, you have not shown a single piece of evidence that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent.

Well?

It’s not “emotive words”, it’s an accurate description of a crime.

And capital punishment for child murders eh?

Timothy Evans
Sally Clark
Stefan Kiszko
Angela Cannings
The Birmingham Six (one victim was 17)

I could go on, but it’s quite evident that you don’t give a shit about lives, except when advocating taking them.

You can’t even admit it’s red handed vengeance, and has nothing to do with deterrence at all – America’s situation simply isn’t similar enough to ours to draw the lines you are, and as I said it’s utterly out of touch with the real situation, which is that crimes rates have plummeted over the last decades, and in America, in the states where the death penalty is least used.

Utterly ignoring reality.
Utterly ignoring civilisation.
Utterly condoning murder.

(And you STILL can’t get over the fact I’m an actual left-winger, can you…pathetic…typical BNPer)

Only 5 reasons? I have ten reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated – http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/ten-reasons-to-not-have-the-death-penalty/

Leon Wolfson – No it is capital punishment not murder. A state cannot “murder” an individual. It is a state.

And apart from the evidence shown to prove my case you have produced nothing but smears as usual.

And I certainly can understand you are a left winger – that’s why despite being a Lib Dem voter I frequent this fine blog. Nothing like some dogma to start the day with.

So we have nothing from you apart from the fact you are a danger magnet with bullets, bombs and “ambushes” from the marauding BNP gangs that frequent your local Asda (twice) – or was it some secret mission we’re not allowed to be told about?

Please don’t go anywhere Wolfy Boy. Life would be so much less colourful without your “theories” to lighten up the day…

(I’ll do the “Monster in the bushes” stuff next time)

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

Five good reasons why the death penalty should not be reinstated: http://bit.ly/r05nfE : writes @danielelton

Yes, I’m sure you love your monster in the bushes. Physical assaults are very much your style. Probably because there’s the blood you crave involved. And killing an innocent person is murder, your cheese-slicing makes no difference to this.

There is much evidence, you haven’t read it. As usual.

The “theories” are yours. Your theories that murder is acceptable, for instance, which is pure BNP – your claim that you’re a LibDem voter is about as credible as Pol Pot’s.

This is a pointless debate. All the petitions in the world won’t change the fact that the death penalty can *never* be brought back. EU law forbids it. Unless you honestly think that the UK will be happy to leave the organisation that serves as its largest trading partner.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099693/as-britain-debates-the-death-penalty-again-studies-from-america-confirm-that-it-works/

“the weakest in society” (point 12) ARE those who kill.Their impoverished life experience will have led them there,so that is what we have to try and improve.
Death penalty is supposed to be a deterrent ? what are the stats ? Is this an attempt to deal with the prison population? Society already kills many people ,on the roads,from eating sugar and smoking (slower yes) Hanging is barbaric, the death penalty is SYMBOLIC, the ‘crime’ will not be killed – it WILL happen again.

and of course soldiers kill for society for the world for justice ,sometimes.

I submitted the following comment to the Sun on-line debate:

“I regret to report that this opinion survey is an absolute nonsense and totally meaningless, Assuming that the aim is supposed to be to reflect the opinion of the people of Britain about the ‘Death Penalty’ in Britain?

I have succeeded in voting in it 10 (Ten) times, Colleagues around the UK have also found that they were able to register multiple votes and even contacts of mine in the USA and Australia have also found that, not only where they are able to register a vote but they were also able to register multiple votes??

I trust that the Sun will not be trying to convince its readers and the nations politicians, that the results of this survey are a genuine reflection of opinions in Britain when it has permitted multiple voting from home and overseas? For this reason the results will truly be meaningless!

It will be interesting to see if there is any response from the Sun about this?”

Needless to say, they did not post my comment and subsequent to making that comment, I an now unable to log-in in order to comment further. Freedom of speech, eh?