vern humphrey:
I’m somewhat confused as to your point here. My point is that when the death penalty was assigned to many crimes – some of them crimes we would consider petty – and people were used to seeing public executions, they still hesitated to apply the death penalty, and often would acquit rather than impose it. The result was a lack of respect for the law.
and
my point is only that this lack of respect has its genesis in the moral conviction of the citizenry that it would be
wrong to impose the death penalty in many instances; if, however, you simply socialized that conviction out of your populace, there would be no more ethical apprehension and all kinds of respect for the law.
and, if you like utilitarian calculi, the net benefit of such socialization would, at least facially, seem far to outsrip the costs.
so why not do it?
vern humphrey:
The record in England is clear – many people escaped the death penalty because to literally follow the law was impossible. Over time there were many “escape hatches” created – such as appealing to benefit of clergy. At one time, a person who could read and write could have benefit of clergy.
I personally know of a case in Singapore where two convicted drug dealers plead in their sentencing that they each owned half of the drugs seized at their arrest – and this brought the amount down below the death penalty threshhold. The judge agreed.
the judge was soft.
vern humphrey:
no. i mean, if crime was radically reduced as a result, then why not go for it?
it’s where utilitarianism takes you, if you are unflinchingly consistent (i.e. non-arbitrary) in its application.
vern humphrey:
I would say “we have no duty toward racial purity.”
Do you say the state has no duty to protect the citizenry?
sigh. what would you say if a nazi asked you, “how do we avoid our duty to protect the citizenry without killing a few jews and blacks and so on”?
vern humphrey:
That’s the Parable of the Skydiver – if you allow matters to reach that stage, you cannot turn back the clock and do what you should have done earlier.
But if you had laws in place, efficient enforcement mechanisms in action, you might well prevent such a horrible thing from happening.
cart before the horse: since all punitive consequences are
post facto, penal law is
necessarily the law of the skydiver, in
any society.
anyway, trying to determine if it’s moral to execute criminals by asking if killing criminals will prevent some other murders or rapes or whatever, is to engage in the central utilitarian conceit: to identify morality with outcomes.
and if you accept that methodology, then there’s no reason simply to institute a regime of moral pedagogy that makes people accepting of capital punishment for even the smallest misdemeanor. if you
really want to keep people from doing wrong, you make it clear that they’ll get executed for doing wrong, summarily and without appeal…
vern humphrey:
The easiest thing isn’t always the right thing, either.
It’s easy to ignore the kinds of people we have in our criminal justice system and in our prisons, close our eyes and ears, and let whatever happens, happen.
It’s hard to face reality and work out solutions for problems we’d rather not admit exist.
ignoing them can’t be any easier than killing them.
in fact, i would say it’s much harder,since, as you yourself are so quick to point out, “ignoring” the problem often leads to further harm and sorrow.
and
that’s the hard part about doing the right thing: realizing that you and others can go on suffering as a result of doing it.
i would rather that no one be guilty of the murder of a child-murderer and live with the
possibility that he’ll murder someone else, than live with another
guaranteed murder: the murder of the criminal.
