The death penalty

The death penalty has been abused. Badly, historically. Plenty of reason to think it still is.

Innocents (at least of the crimes for which they were killed) have been executed. Many times, surely.

A living innocent unjustly incarcerated always has hope of release. The innocent executed, not so much.

The whole concept of jail, punishment, and probation is harsh, and has become an intolerably huge and corrupt industry having little to do with justice and nothing to do with rehabilitation; a reflection of the failing of our level of moral advancement as a society - yes, better than our ancestors, but hideously barbaric by our descendants' standards. I hope.

And, as mentioned, giving The State such power is dangerous, when the State is not people of intelligent self-rule.

NEVERTHELESS

If a person is proved to be, by our best current understandings, an irredeemable sociopath, civilized citizens have every right to protect ourselves, to intervene, to incarcerate, to prevent reproduction of the genetically criminal, and to terminate life, depending on the level of threat. The threat is to those who must manage the prisons, as well as the remote but real threat of escape. (Cost of feeding & housing the hopeless degenerate, obnoxious as it is, ought not be relevant considerations compared to justice and social welfare.)

If a person has a brain tumor affecting self-control, today, we may remove it and, watched carefully, that person may lead a normal life. In the past, they could do nothing but lock him up or hang him, not knowing his medical problems. In the futute, wonders of therapy and drugs and DNA science and spiritual counsel may make true rehabilitation so common that jails are rare. Society may become advanced enough not to produce such a burdensome criminal class in the first place.

However, today's justice cannot depend on what our descendants may learn. They were relatively right to jail or hang in the past, at times. It is still right, at times. It may always be true, at times. We just hope to make the times as few as possible. as fair as possible, to the best of our times' abilities, confident that higher judges will sort us all out perfectly in the next life.

:: waggles wig, sneezes ::