Death Penalty the only way of protecting society?

[Amolibri]

Mr. Dudley:
…and your sources are non-biased I presume? prodeathpenalty.com??? Come now. :hypno:

 

[dudleysharp]

Mr. Dudley:
…and your sources are non-biased I presume? prodeathpenalty.com??? Come now. :hypno:

All of the sources are pro death penalty. I was not trying to hide that and it was easy to see when any are opened.

My point was that the NYADP site is very often wrong or misleading and here are some sites which show that.

 

[Ender]

It is very important that we make sure criminals do not reoffend again and the we make a great effort to protect the innocent from known offenders.

The danger of wrongfully executing an innocent person cannot be eliminated from any system of justice. That danger surely exists but there is a parallel danger of innocent deaths resulting from the failure to execute the guilty. It would be useful to at least have some estimates of the numbers involved in both cases.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics in a section on recidivism estimates that 1.2% of murderers who serve time are re-arrested for murder within three years of their release. The ACLU claims that since 1976 102 innocent people have been released from death row but since they were released and not executed it’s not clear that they should be counted. The Legal Defense Fund argues that at least four innocent men have been executed since 1989.

Since I haven’t found numbers on how many murderers are let out each year I can’t estimate how many preventable, repeat murders are committed - but I’m pretty sure it’s going to a lot more than four in fifteen years and probably more than the four a year using the ACLU numbers. And that wouldn’t include the murders committed within the prison system which is surely not an inconsequential number.

We don’t get to eliminate the death of innocent people because of failures of the criminal justice system but we can exert some control over the numbers involved by the solution we choose. If someone chooses to argue against the death penalty because of the danger of executing the innocent then they must also take into account the danger to the innocent of not executing the guilty.

Ender

 

[vern_humphrey]

The danger of wrongfully executing an innocent person cannot be eliminated from any system of justice. That danger surely exists but there is a parallel danger of innocent deaths resulting from the failure to execute the guilty. It would be useful to at least have some estimates of the numbers involved in both cases.

A study done in Oxnard, CA in the 1980s aimed at incapacitating (locking up) career criminals. About 18 such career criminals were identified and targeted – and when they were all locked up, the murder rate plumetted, despite the fact that none of them were charged with murder.

When you release a violent criminal, you are experimenting with human life. When someone is murdered, you know the experiment failed. And we are collectively as guilty of that person’s death as we would be if we had executed an innocent man.

 

[Ender]

When you release a violent criminal, you are experimenting with human life. When someone is murdered, you know the experiment failed.

Although I have yet to find statistics for the US, I did run across some numbers for Canada. A study of prisoners who served time for homicide (1st degree, 2cd degree murder and manslaughter) from 1975 to 2006 revealed that they were responsible for 96 deaths after their release. That is, they were responsible for 0.5% of all homicides over that 31 year period for a rate of three per year.

npb-cnlc.gc.ca/infocntr/factsh/repeat_homicide_e.htm

As the US population is ten times that of Canada, if our homicide rate was equal to theirs then we would endure 30 recidivist killings per year. In fact homicide rates in the US are much higher than in Canada so if the proportion of those in the US killed by released prisoners is the same as in Canada (0.5%), then we would experience 80 deaths a year (16K * .005). Again, this number does not include killings that occur within the prison system.

Something to think about when the topic of innocent deaths is raised.

Ender

 

[vern_humphrey]

Although I have yet to find statistics for the US, I did run across some numbers for Canada. A study of prisoners who served time for homicide (1st degree, 2cd degree murder and manslaughter) from 1975 to 2006 revealed that they were responsible for 96 deaths after their release. That is, they were responsible for 0.5% of all homicides over that 31 year period for a rate of three per year.

npb-cnlc.gc.ca/infocntr/factsh/repeat_homicide_e.htm

As the US population is ten times that of Canada, if our homicide rate was equal to theirs then we would endure 30 recidivist killings per year. In fact homicide rates in the US are much higher than in Canada so if the proportion of those in the US killed by released prisoners is the same as in Canada (0.5%), then we would experience 80 deaths a year (16K * .005). Again, this number does not include killings that occur within the prison system.

Something to think about when the topic of innocent deaths is raised.

Ender

Absolutely.

We should rememer we are Catholics and accept that sins of omission are as grevious as sins of comission. When we fail to protect the innocent, we are as guilty as if we had done the killing ourselves.

 

[Ray_Scheel]

I live in Texas. We have the death penalty. If it works, why are we building prisons at a faster rate than schools and hospitals.

??? From what I understood we are adding prison capacity at a rate lower than that of the state’s total population growth, and that is despite the jump in numbers we had with the criminal element that came to Texas from Louisiana after Katrina.