K
kesa82
Guest
I understand the churches line on capitol punishment, but it still leaves me with a question :
I actually think that many times executing someone is more merciful, charitable, compassionate, even more restrained and dispassionate than incarceration , or the modern equivalent of the scarlet letter.
When I was a child in kindergarten and observed kids torturing another kid for the fun of it, my profound reaction, to the very core of my being, was that if killing is the basement, then torture is crawling into the toilet in the basement. In the 35 years that has passed since then that is still my reaction. I live on a farm, so I have seen death often, I even saw a person die. But looking at a person torture another with obvious glee is like looking at the worst sort of porn you can imagine.
Now I’m guessing that most of the regulars on this forum have never been to jail. Let me enlighten you, no, american jails and prisons aren’t Dachau, but the " Hilton Hotel " stuff is #%@.
Here is what it is like for many : you live in a closet 23 1/2 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you do go outside, then you don’t really go outside. You go to a concrete slab with a wall around it.
If / when you get out that is hardly a mercy. They have done away with the concept of paying your debt to society, if they were ever serious about that in the first place. Any record is permanent. But that is actually the least of it. Like I heard in a movie recently , " when you have been in trouble before and people know it, you feel guilty for things you never even did, because people think you have it in you. "
All of this incarceration, fines, probation, offender registries etc, also deffinately seems to have the unintended
consequence that we can just keep passing more and more laws, putting in place ever more controls, but there is no price to pay, we don’t have to prioritize, we can have it all, because we never see a blatant, direct, effect. Everything is subtle, always indirect. You can always deny what you don’t have to see, what you don’t have to feel.
To put it another way, would you still think this law was absolutely necessary and important, if the manner in which we had to enforce it ( as opposed to the typical sly way we are doing things now ) was that we hanged a few soccer moms on main street ?
Was this a rant or a question? I’m not sure.
I actually think that many times executing someone is more merciful, charitable, compassionate, even more restrained and dispassionate than incarceration , or the modern equivalent of the scarlet letter.
When I was a child in kindergarten and observed kids torturing another kid for the fun of it, my profound reaction, to the very core of my being, was that if killing is the basement, then torture is crawling into the toilet in the basement. In the 35 years that has passed since then that is still my reaction. I live on a farm, so I have seen death often, I even saw a person die. But looking at a person torture another with obvious glee is like looking at the worst sort of porn you can imagine.
Now I’m guessing that most of the regulars on this forum have never been to jail. Let me enlighten you, no, american jails and prisons aren’t Dachau, but the " Hilton Hotel " stuff is #%@.
Here is what it is like for many : you live in a closet 23 1/2 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you do go outside, then you don’t really go outside. You go to a concrete slab with a wall around it.
If / when you get out that is hardly a mercy. They have done away with the concept of paying your debt to society, if they were ever serious about that in the first place. Any record is permanent. But that is actually the least of it. Like I heard in a movie recently , " when you have been in trouble before and people know it, you feel guilty for things you never even did, because people think you have it in you. "
All of this incarceration, fines, probation, offender registries etc, also deffinately seems to have the unintended
consequence that we can just keep passing more and more laws, putting in place ever more controls, but there is no price to pay, we don’t have to prioritize, we can have it all, because we never see a blatant, direct, effect. Everything is subtle, always indirect. You can always deny what you don’t have to see, what you don’t have to feel.To put it another way, would you still think this law was absolutely necessary and important, if the manner in which we had to enforce it ( as opposed to the typical sly way we are doing things now ) was that we hanged a few soccer moms on main street ?
Was this a rant or a question? I’m not sure.