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Wednesday, January 13. 2010
Death
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How do we reconcile the assertion "life is something special and isn't ours to take away" in the context of punishment with an innocent murder victim's life being taken by someone who has no respect for that particular point of view? You suggest that even life imprisonment may be too harsh a sentence. What constitutes adequate punishment for such a crime - 20 years, 10, or maybe 5? If so, it simply means that we consider the criminal's life as something precious while at the same time devaluating the life of the victim. If anything, it should be the other way around.
I have to agree with Adrian. Murder is murder, it makes no difference if it is done by a criminal or the justice system. I feel much more comfortable with a system that assumes you could still be innocent even after being convicted. Time after time we have seen people wrongly convicted only to be acquitted by new technology or new evidence.
@Frik du Toit: The point of a modern criminal justice system should not be to punish or have revenge. That would only lead to "eye for an eye", which does little to deter and leads to even more blood shed. I prefer to lock someone away from society for life, than to have to later live with the fact that I as part of society killed another innocent person due to a mistaken conviction.
For certain types of criminals the period in jail is the period in which they don't commit crimes. To some extent acting sensibly comes with age, and some people need to remain in jail until their are old enough to not reoffend immediately they are released.
Other criminals will keep offending as long as they live. If the crime is minor kleptomania from shops then society could tolerate it. But for serious crimes such as rape a life sentence is the only option.
The more difficult cases to justify sentences are for crimes of passion. Someone who kills their spouse in a fit of jealousy could be claimed to be of no risk to society (IE you just have to not marry someone who has done that before). There is no evidence that the potential for punishment has much impact in preventing such crimes. In such cases the sentence can only be for the purpose of punishment.
But then any criteria for reducing the sentence will be claimed by everyone who is convicted. So it seems that there is a good argument for consistency, you kill someone you get 20 years, regardless of who or why.
I am against the death penalty for only one reason: I do not want to live in a society that employs people to kill other people. What kind of character must an executioner have and how could a society support that?
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