An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind
Having death penalty still present around the world is shocking to me. We still kill to punish killers. Isn't that what hypocrisy is? I could talk about how some countries are so terrible that they still punish being gay with death or like a recent case with "offending" someone's religion but I will stay in my happy bubble and ignore the stupidity that is still very much present around the globe and focus on developed countries with democracy (or trying to have democracy). @eco-alex made an interesting question about what kind of message does the death penalty send to society. Not a good one, in my opinion. Not a good one.
CC0 image, Pixabay, author: kesie91 , adapted by me
We live in a diverse world and that diversity includes people that are not so nice. Some of them are pretty bad and there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to protect the good ones from the bad ones. Some countries have full prisons and a lot of crime while some have almost no criminals and there is a strong correlation with how countries are governed and how high the happiness of their residents is. I will not go into that because there is too much to be said about the link between happiness and crime, instead, I will focus solely on my views on capital punishment and why I am so against it. I think my reasons may surprise you.
We all have flaws and we all make a mistake here and there. There are two problems that are present when it comes to mistakes, the first one is not being able to admit it and having an ego so huge that it prevents a person from realizing he or she was wrong. The second one is the massiveness of some mistakes. Some of them are so big that they become the reason I do not see you as a human anymore.
Some actions have
NO justifications.
I don't care how sad or difficult your childhood was or were you abused or not, if you raped a child you are no longer a human in my eyes. You are no longer a human in my eyes if you rape, abuse or murder people. Sorry but I am not that open-minded to see you as a human being. I am just not. There is absolutely no excuse for that kind of action, none what so ever and normal people should be protected from monsters like that. Killing the monsters is not the solution but I will get to that later. I want to make a distinction here that not all crimes are the same, some could be justified. Crimes with no human victims are different from those that have and a persons need for crime should be considered too. If you are sick and using marijuana to ease your pain, there is no logical reason that should be a crime. There is no logical reason that plant should be illegal in any situation but ok, people will learn sooner or later. Considering gays to be criminals just because they are gay or any other primitive view is not what I am talking here. I am talking about creatures that look like humans but do not act like ones, those that hurt others for their pleasure or gain.
Most people that are against capital punishment have humane reasons behind their opinions. They talk about love, humanity, how life is sacred and should never be taken away, how even criminals have the right to live and be treated like humans. I disagree and I explained why I disagree in the previous paragraph, I do not think some creatures are humans and therefore do not deserve human treatment. That is the premise for the logical conclusions that will follow.
If you kill a criminal,
you are rewarding him.
When you sentence someone to the death penalty, you are giving him an easy way out. Everything stops for him. He does not have to redeem himself to society, does not have to work, worry or contribute. He does not pay for his crimes in any way, how is that justice? There is so much he could do, so many things he could be used for, good and valuable things that would help the entire human race. By killing criminals, we are killing the means that could help us learn, evolve, progress and become better ourselves. Yes, they can help. They are perfect for certain things, ideal really. Why kill them if you could use them? Not only can they work and perform certain tasks in return for food and water (because if the rest of the world has to work to earn food, why not them?) but you can also use them in medicine, pharmacy, cosmetics, and various research. There are ways, logical and useful ways to benefit from these creatures. Why are we still not doing it?
Can you imagine how much benefit would testing on humans be? Hom much medicine would evolve? We still do various research on animals to create better drugs and treatments but animals and humans are not the same species. We have different chemistry and reactions. Testing drugs and treatments for humans on humans is the only logical solution if we want to get completely accurate results.
Criminals could help
the humanity to rise.
By using criminals in medicine we would not only save animals, but we would also make faster progress in getting some new treatments for diseases. We could help sick people, so many sick people with healthy kidneys from criminals (they only need one so the other could be donated), their blood and bone marrow and by using them in clinical trials. By doing this, criminals would be giving something back to society and contributing to human race, to our progress in medicine. Between choosing should my medical treatment be tested on that bunny to the left or on the criminal who raped and murdered 10 women, I choose the criminal and I choose him with no regret or any doubt in my mind.
My opinion on the death penalty is that it is a complete waste of perfectly good resources that could be used for so much gain in various areas. What do you think? Have I gone completely mad or does all this sound like a surprisingly good idea to you? Let me know in the comments below.
Until next time,
KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!
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Ohhhhh. One of my hot button topics. I may have to go look at the entire question to decide if this is worth a whole post.
Like you, I am adamantly opposed to the death penalty. Not that I think society doesn't have the right, but that it can in no way be administered fairly. Besides the obvious "It doesn't work" which has been proven over millennia.
Also like you, I believe there are people that have no soul. Not that all of them are killers, but that there is a certain % (my numbers again) that are just flawed in that way.
I'm going to quit here, but that doesn't mean I'll quit thinking about it. I haven't done a position paper on the death penalty for at least two years, it might be time.
One last bit: An eye for an eye was written as a specific punishment for a very specific action. How it got to be so generalized is simply beyond me.
Thanks. I think :) I'll let you know later today.
I pushed a button? :D I like pushing buttons. Have you ever watched a cartoon called Dexter's laboratory? He has a sister named Didi that goes around pushing buttons, sometimes I am like her lol :D I am looking forward to reading that post of yours. 💚
A real hot potato you have here @zen-art!
I believe that's a good way for them to try and give retribution if that's possible but then it can be abused as well unless people have a choice in whether they'll partake. It's not an easy solution though, I've been told by a very good police officer that our prisons are more like places where criminals go to learn how to become better criminals, abd that's not a nice thought!
Todays prisons only create more criminals, that is sadly true but yes, they would have to be given a choice to participate in clinical trials. Not all would agree but I am sure that a lot of them would.
Another thought-provoking discussion topic, however I have to say I think this would be a very bad idea indeed. And this is not because I'm a "bleeding heart" who loves people who commit hideous crimes. Absolutely not. It's because once you allow such things, you are on the slippery slope to torture and all kinds of atrocities. It is humans who would judge who would deserve to be tested on – and the judgement of humans in these matters is generally flawed.
I've been listening to a fantastic podcast about the Salem witch trials ("Unobscured", recommended by @ethandsmith), where 200 people were hanged for witchcraft. It's fascinating and horrifying, because those people genuinely believed that the accused – one of whom was just four years old – were committing heinous acts, sometimes right in front of them.
The Nazis of course did use medical experimentation on people they despised. What was their philosophy? Why did they allow such horrors? Some say it happened because the Jews were blamed for the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Bolshevik revolution and in some of the Eastern European communist revolutions, eg Hungary. If so it was a horrendous distortion of logic. I wouldn't want to allow that door to be opened again.
That is all terrible and hopefully will never be repeated but I would not compare medical experiments done by Nazis on good people who did not ask or deserve it with those done to criminals who would need to give their consent to it. I am not saying this is the perfect solution but in my opinion is better when compared to killing a criminal and using him or rehabilitating him in any way.
Your post certainly made me think more about this issue. A couple of weeks ago, for some reason I started thinking a lot about a particularly nasty murder case where the murderer was convicted. I was thinking about the people who will have to deal with him in prison. If I was in that position I would just want to stab him in the guts. I think these people must be traumatised just from having to interact with this man. And I don't really know what the answer is in cases like this. I just worry that if medical experimentation was allowed in such cases, it could be extended to be allowed for criminals who have committed much lesser crimes. Where would the line be drawn, and who would draw it? I don't like animal experimentation either, yet so much scientific research is done using rats. It's such a difficult moral dilemma.
I Was hoping one of use would use the saying
"an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
thats a nice way to put it!
i cant say i condone testing on criminals though, that sounds a bit scary to me!! ill have my say as soon as I can type propery agsin! <3
Keep in mind that it has to be consensual, otherwise it is a step too far. If we gave criminals a choice to take part in some trials during their redemption and work, I am sure that many of them would agree to it and see it as an opportunity to give something back to the world.
I am also opposed to the death penalty, simply because it is not a deterrent, it is heavily biased to low SES individuals, and data shows that many innocent people are either on death row, or have been murdered by the state (and yes, I see it as state-sanctioned murder). This opinion is with respect to people who have done truly horrible things. Individuals, cultures, religions, and governments who kill people for being gay, or giving up a religion, or drawing pictures of religious figures honestly have no place in a modern society. I really believe that we need a universal bill of rights along with enforcement through humane sanctions. As to testing on prisoners, I have to agree with the human subjects guidelines: they are a vulnerable population that should not be used as a convenience sample. We need to be protected from those who are dangerous, but we also need to focus on rehabilitation. There are at least a few examples of "monsters" who managed to change into decent human beings.
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I'm afraid human medical testing on prisoners has already been done. At the time the world shuddered in revulsion and said, "Never again!" I don't see any reason to believe that anything has substantially changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
Those were experiments on people who did not deserve it and did not consent to it, ergo, a completely different story. I have a feeling that a lot more prisoners than we think would actually give their consent to this as one way of their retribution. If I was in prison for the rest of my life and someone asked me if I wanted to help others by donating blood or bone marrow, I would said yes and I think there are others who would too. We are all very sensitive about this topic (I am not saying we should not be) and always point to Nazis but there is a huge difference there and those two things are actually not comparable at all.
You're absolutely right. Consent makes all the difference in the world. I mis-understood your last statement and I apologize for I misrepresenting your idea.
If you're talking about research done with consent, what you're suggesting is already widely done, and not just in prisons. Prisons, group homes, and the like are often studied because some of the variables are already controlled. So, I wrongly assumed that you were suggesting something different.
For example, there are almost 5,000 results on Pub Med related to prison populations:
https://vsearch.nlm.nih.gov/vivisimo/cgi-bin/query-meta?query=prison&v%3Aproject=nlm-main-website
That is ok, I should have been more clear ;) Thank you for all the info you have provided 💚
Campaign against capital punishment was one of the many good reasons I joined Amnesty International. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ — it should be very easy to understand.
(Very cool animated signature, by the way!)
That is such a push button topic. For me, the only time or the only circumstance that I am in favor of the death penalty is if there is a chance that that person will get out and do whatever they were doing again.
That said, condoning killing is one of those things we feel is wrong as a society, yet we have wars all over the place and so many feel that killing in that circumstance is okay.
In the US, many states still have the death penalty and to actually fulfill it cost way more money than keeping that person in prison for the rest of their life - that money could be spent on healthcare for kids.
Your idea of testing is interesting, but knowing that as I am writing this, there are quite a few innocent people sitting on death row, I don't think it would be a good idea.
As long as people are doing the judging, there are always mistakes, biases, the real quilty being rich and framing a poor person, that the risk of impacting an actual innocent person is too big.
Being for war and against the death penalty is hypocrisy, I agree. This idea would only be put to action in a proper and good way if the criminals would be given a choice to participate in testing. I am sure that many of them would say yes to it and use it as a way of giving something good back to the world. Thank you for sharing your views on this.
That's wonderfully written.
I appreciate the way you think Petra. Stop testing on animals and start on criminals. Make them guinea pigs and use them. Criminals should get their due punishment and there should be no escape from that. A death is a very easy solution. The sad part in today's world is there is no equal justice. The powerful get away with their crimes so easily and it is that equality that our law makers need to establish
It all depends on the country, some are very good with their methods and have almost empty prisons. The point is to change the entire society and that is always hard. The powerful do not get away in all countries with their crimes and there are places in the world where justice really is justice. Thank you for your lovely comment darling 💚