Public Executions & The Death Penalty

acd said:
Radicalized Islam as in terrorism. What else should it be called? Other than terrorism? Is extremist problematic? Ordinary average Muslims aren't blowing non Muslims (and each other... Basically anyone) up.
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Really I think it's a way of avoiding the use of the words "Islam" or "Muslim" or "islamofascism," and avoiding talk about personal autonomy and problems within a culture. "Terrorist" would be a good word though, but for whatever reason terrorists are spoken of as people who got "radicalized," though as I pointed out there is nothing inherently wrong with or necerssarily violent in being a radical, so referring to them as "radicalized" kind of implicitly defuses their murderous ideologies and actions. So these people seemingly, as if by some evil spell, became "radicalized." They had no control over the situation. They got radicalized like someone gets the flu. They were nice folks and then radicalization befell them. They didn't decide to become terrorists/murders, or so such phraseology implies
 
PintoBean said:
Really I think it's a way of avoiding the use of the words "Islam" or "Muslim" or "islamofascism," and avoiding talk about personal autonomy and problems within a culture. "Terrorist" would be a good word though, but for whatever reason terrorists are spoken of as people who got "radicalized," though as I pointed out there is nothing inherently wrong with or necerssarily violent in being a radical, so referring to them as "radicalized" kind of implicitly defuses their murderous ideologies and actions. So these people seemingly, as if by some evil spell, became "radicalized." They had no control over the situation. They got radicalized like someone gets the flu. They were nice folks and then radicalization befell them. They didn't decide to become terrorists/murders, or so such phraseology implies
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I personally don't see it that way. I never implied those who become radicalized did not make a choice to do so. They chose a radical version of that belief system that esposes terrorism.
 
Kgal said:
I think humanity's level of consciousness was lower back then during the burnings and public executions.
Personally I think they were "encouraged" to attend as part of keeping them trapped in Fear.

When my parents lived in Saudi Arabia for 7 years back in the 80's they were invited to a beheading in the town square of a rural city called Yanbu. Mom said none of the Westerners would go...but they heard that villagers were made to attend. Mom said when they went "shopping" for food in Yanbu they'd see men standing around on the corners of the streets with machine guns across their backs. Mom also talked of what was called the "Religious Police" who were constantly monitoring what the women wore and the actions of the people. One time they came up and used a black magic marker to mark on her body where her clothing should be to cover her skin.

So I think in the early days the peasants - the slaves - the oppressed ones - were made to witness the brutality and horror in order to keep them manageable.
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hush said:
Control through fear and terror. "If you step out of line, this could be you next."
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I agree with this and I don't think this feature of executions has necessarily changed much for society. It's there to warn people that they should not do certain things. (I am definitely not saying that they should do certain things, just that this is still there to let them know that it's not acceptable to do those things.)

In a similar sort of way I think it is there to give people a sort of false sense of safety in society. It makes it seem more like there will be a "final" or "absolute" justice. But that's a false reassurance. I think that because we as humans are these kind of thinking-beasts, society can never be perfect, it can only be as good as we can try to make it. That's just my opinion - that humans are thought-beasts and in that sense basically what some people would call "evil" - I recognise that others believe humans are basically good, like as Skarecrow mentions on this thread his faith in humans as good, and you may agree K. But I think that this functions to reassure people that things are "good", that "justice" can be "finally achieved", that the "scales" are "balanced", when in fact, piling more rage and hatred on top of the existing injustice does not provide that kind of resolution at all.
 
Yes, despite being an avid consumer of various Romantic Art, I have the "Classical" rather than the "Romantic" temperament, I believe that humans are basically "evil", and it is always a special effort for us to try to be "good", to resolve these overwhelming emotional impulses that don't necessarily serve us at all.
 
invisible said:
Yes, despite being an avid consumer of various Romantic Art, I have the "Classical" rather than the "Romantic" temperament, I believe that humans are basically "evil", and it is always a special effort for us to try to be "good", to resolve these overwhelming emotional impulses that don't necessarily serve us at all.
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This is just my personal, humble take on things, but I tend to see humans as not necessarily inherently good, nor evil; rather, I see them as full of great potential. There is indeed effort that many need to undertake in order to be "good," as there are many temptations inherent in what could be construed as "bad," but this effort varies from person to person for a myriad of reasons. Some of those reasons are outside one's control, some are due to a conscious effort to be good, to the degree that it becomes part of who you are. Doing someone harm becomes such a core part of yourself that you are repulsed by even the very idea.

I think, punishments such as these, stem from society's (albeit poor) attempts to keep people in line, to keep them "good." Many aspects of religion, for instance, follow along this vein. The concept of heaven and hell, for instance, is based on these behaviors, and growing up surrounded by heavily religious people, I have heard many say you shouldn't do something, simply because you would be sent to hell for doing so. Not that it's necessarily wrong to do so because of the pain it would inflict on others, but because of simple reward/punishment dynamics. "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. I'd be sent to hell." Which is very much so in line with "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. I'd be sent to prison." Executions, prison, and even these beliefs, end up seeming like methods of control. However, they do not teach the right things. Compassion, for instance. "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. It would hurt someone. I know what that pain feels like. Why would I want to inflict such a thing onto someone else, knowing how much it hurts?" I know that there are extreme circumstances in which individuals legitimately are beyond reasoning, in which they would cause pain no matter how much you attempted to teach them the merits of things such as compassion, however... there are many, many, instances, in which we defer to these simplistic, harmful methods, out of the convenience of using them to keep control. Let fear and pain do the work.

I fear I am ranting, so I shall stop now... these are simply things I think about. Prison, quite often. The effects of it upon those who are kept within such inhumane walls. Those who leave worse than they entered. Those who die within the walls worse than they entered. Those who are killed who did not need to be killed. All the lives that could have been saved by focusing our efforts on saving lives, rather than taking them. There is so much potential there - for good, for bad, for everything inbetween. Often it pains me, how much of that potential is lost.
 
hush said:
This is just my personal, humble take on things, but I tend to see humans as not necessarily inherently good, nor evil; rather, I see them as full of great potential. There is indeed effort that many need to undertake in order to be "good," as there are many temptations inherent in what could be construed as "bad," but this effort varies from person to person for a myriad of reasons. Some of those reasons are outside one's control, some are due to a conscious effort to be good, to the degree that it becomes part of who you are. Doing someone harm becomes such a core part of yourself that you are repulsed by even the very idea.

I think, punishments such as these, stem from society's (albeit poor) attempts to keep people in line, to keep them "good." Many aspects of religion, for instance, follow along this vein. The concept of heaven and hell, for instance, is based on these behaviors, and growing up surrounded by heavily religious people, I have heard many say you shouldn't do something, simply because you would be sent to hell for doing so. Not that it's necessarily wrong to do so because of the pain it would inflict on others, but because of simple reward/punishment dynamics. "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. I'd be sent to hell." Which is very much so in line with "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. I'd be sent to prison." Executions, prison, and even these beliefs, end up seeming like methods of control. However, they do not teach the right things. Compassion, for instance. "Oh crap. I shouldn't do that. It would hurt someone. I know what that pain feels like. Why would I want to inflict such a thing onto someone else, knowing how much it hurts?" I know that there are extreme circumstances in which individuals legitimately are beyond reasoning, in which they would cause pain no matter how much you attempted to teach them the merits of things such as compassion, however... there are many, many, instances, in which we defer to these simplistic, harmful methods, out of the convenience of using them to keep control. Let fear and pain do the work.

I fear I am ranting, so I shall stop now... these are simply things I think about. Prison, quite often. The effects of it upon those who are kept within such inhumane walls. Those who leave worse than they entered. Those who die within the walls worse than they entered. Those who are killed who did not need to be killed. All the lives that could have been saved by focusing our efforts on saving lives, rather than taking them. There is so much potential there - for good, for bad, for everything inbetween. Often it pains me, how much of that potential is lost.
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Quite right. Touche, great points. Optimism is the constructive way.

Having conceded those arguments, I err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing the community to people who endanger it. But, like you, I don't see prison as a social good at all. Just in many cases, a social necessity. It seems clear to me that its operations and society's attitudes about its functions need serious reform.
 
Going OT a bit (my apologies), but this whole discussion takes me back to the many holocaust books I've read. The big question with any of these atrocities, from Auschwitz to Rwanda to ISIS, anywhere by anyone, is how could this happen and who is responsible? Just the executioners? Also the baying mobs? The cheering crowds? The people who turned in their neighbors? They people who wouldn't hide their neighbors? If you extrapolate from works by scholars like Goldhagen and Browning (the "willing executioners" crowd), societies in which large-scale atrocities occur, usually have an element of tacit consent and even explicit participation relating to the sociological history of that time and place. I do not disagree with [MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION] that people are basically good and want to do good, but perhaps people are also weak and certain circumstances bring out the worst in people. I immersed myself in holocaust literature (and later just anything relating to genocide) since I was about 11 because one of my grandmothers was a death camp survivor and I was truly tortured by how humans could inflict such suffering on each other. I just couldn't understand (still can't). I suspect my grandmother's experience is also the origin of a long line of vegetarians in my family as well. Anyway, the big question for me was always how responsible those besides the actual killers were. I remember reading one particular holocaust memoir and being so disturbed I had to quit reading. The part that got me was a town somewhere in Germany that had a particular fondness for clubbing Jews to death in their town square. The "clubber" was somewhat of a local celebrity for his ability to brain people with a variety of blunt instruments for the entertainment of one and all. "Clubbing Days" were like a town party. No one, according to the author, was required to attend, but everyone wanted to. The part where I closed the book was when I read how parents held their kids on their shoulders to see the spectacle.

All this behavior is not new or unique to Nazis or ISIS. It goes back to the Roman Bread and Circuses. Having disturbed my mind for years asking how and why, I am afraid I cannot find an answer. I've always wanted to believe there are a few bad seeds and everyone else is good and got involved due coercion or simple stupidity. History proves this is certainly not always the case though. Avarice, sadism and simple, inexplicable cruelty are undeniable factors. I don't disagree with [MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] either as to humans being basically evil. But I think in general humans are basically weak, which is perhaps different than good or evil.
 
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invisible said:
I agree with this and I don't think this feature of executions has necessarily changed much for society. It's there to warn people that they should not do certain things. (I am definitely not saying that they should do certain things, just that this is still there to let them know that it's not acceptable to do those things.)

In a similar sort of way I think it is there to give people a sort of false sense of safety in society. It makes it seem more like there will be a "final" or "absolute" justice. But that's a false reassurance. I think that because we as humans are these kind of thinking-beasts, society can never be perfect, it can only be as good as we can try to make it. That's just my opinion - that humans are thought-beasts and in that sense basically what some people would call "evil" - I recognise that others believe humans are basically good, like as Skarecrow mentions on this thread his faith in humans as good, and you may agree K. But I think that this functions to reassure people that things are "good", that "justice" can be "finally achieved", that the "scales" are "balanced", when in fact, piling more rage and hatred on top of the existing injustice does not provide that kind of resolution at all.
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Yes.

...as if the "boogy monster"...the criminal ...was caught and eliminated and the populace can sleep safely at night...kind of thinking.
 
There is no doubt that we need some serious reforms within our criminal justice system here.
I just don’t think people care about the inmates enough (with their own lives going on and everything) to really push for the real reforms that need to be done.
My main concern is that of the mental ill.

In New York, a man with schizophrenia spent 13 years of a 15-year prison sentence in solitary confinement.
In a Minnesota county jail, a man with schizophrenia stabbed out both of his eyes with a pencil in his cell.

A study of 132 suicide attempts in a county jail in Washington found that 77 percent of them had a “chronic psychiatric problem,” compared with 15 percent among the rest of the jail population.

In a country where the mentally ill are often incarcerated instead of treated, these kinds of incidents are far too common.
According to a report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, which includes the anecdotes above, American prisons and jails housed an estimated 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness in 2012—on par with the population of Anchorage, Alaska, or Trenton, New Jersey.

That figure is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals in the same year—about 35,000 people.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-in-prisons-instead-of-psychiatric-hospitals/


But wait there are more fun facts!!!

1. The United States has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners.

2. The total incarcerated population in the U.S. is a staggering 2.4 million — a 500% increase over the past 30 years.

3. One in every 108 adults was in prison or jail in 2012.

4. One in 28 American children has a parent behind bars.

5. At the end of 2007, 1 in 31 adults was behind bars, on probation or on parole.

6. Currently, 65 million Americans have a criminal record.

7. There are more people behind bars today for a drug offense than there were in 1980 for all offenses combined.

8. The U.S. spent $80 billion on incarceration in 2010 alone.

9. About as many people were returned to prison just for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted in 1980 for all reasons combined.

10. Parole violators accounted for more than 35% of all prison admissions in 2000.
Of those, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; the rest were returned for a technical violation, such as missing a meeting with the parole officer.

11. A first-time drug offense carries a sentence of 5-10 years.
In other developed countries, that sentence would be six months of jail time, if any at all.

12. The vast majority of those arrested with a drug offense are not charged with serious offenses.
For example, in 2005, 4 out of 5 drug arrests were for possession, not sales.

13. In the 1990s, marijuana possession accounted for nearly 80% of the spike in arrests.

14. Three out of four young black men in Washington, D.C., can expect to serve time behind bars.
This is despite the fact that people of all races use and sell drugs at the same rate.

15. African-Americans comprised 12% of regular drug users, but almost 40% of those arrested for drug offenses.

16. More than 96% of convictions in the federal system result from guilty pleas rather than decisions by juries.

17. Conservative estimates put innocent people who plead guilty between 2% and 5%, which translates to tens of thousands of innocent people behind bars today.

18. Eighty percent of defendants cannot afford a lawyer. Tens of thousands of people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer or going to trial.

19. A public defender will routinely have a caseload of more than 100 clients at a time.
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http://mic.com/articles/86519/19-actual-statistics-about-america-s-prison-system#.suznRWHb9



There is a clear conflict of interest in the US.
We have mostly privately run, for-profit prisons, who in turn hire lobbyists to push for more and stricter laws and longer sentences.
Until that is resolved then we most certainly are not the "land of the free".
That’s very hard to say sincerely these days.
 
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HR3wsNK.png


This excellent data graphic has got a lot of upvoting on reddit. It's unusual that the absence of data displayed in this visualisation is what makes it so good.

Somehow this just got me thinking more about prison populations. Keeping a few people in prison who need to be in prison for life in order to protect society from them, would hardly seem like an issue if there were not so many people in prison. I'm not saying rehabilitation is easy, but I wish we could think more in society about rehabilitation and less about the need for capital punishment.
 
How do all of these other counties not execute anyone supposedly and US is still like yeah we're cool with it lol

There's no rehabilitating school shooters but all the people in for petty crimes or even some that just got with the wrong crew could do fine if supported properly.
 
Wyote said:
How do all of these other counties not execute anyone supposedly and US is still like yeah we're cool with it lol

There's no rehabilitating school shooters but all the people in for petty crimes or even some that just got with the wrong crew could do fine if supported properly.
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Yeah, it seems like most wealthier parts of the world are moving away from capital punishment.

I know prison isn't a holiday but I wish it could have a bit more of a caring approach. I mean I know that's a poor disincentive for committing crime. But surely the goal should be to get people back to contributing to society rather than draining its resources getting prisonised.
 
@invisible there are some programs in place but I hear you. Do better.
 
Im pretty cool with the death penalty. Here in America I think it would solve a lot to have public executions where all TV stations had to show it. Plus make the execution painful so that whoever was being executed gave out blood curtailing screams as they died. All of this would serve as a deterrent to others breaking the law.

However... our justice system is broken. Killers and rapists go free while inoccent people are convicted. Until that's solved we have no right to pass out punishment of this nature. Before you kill someone there can be no question of their guilt at all.
 
Wyote said:
How do all of these other counties not execute anyone supposedly and US is still like yeah we're cool with it lol

There's no rehabilitating school shooters but all the people in for petty crimes or even some that just got with the wrong crew could do fine if supported properly.
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Because other countries do execute people. Not sure where you get your information from.
 
Eventhorizon said:
Because other countries do execute people. Not sure where you get your information from.
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ORLY? Lol.

If you don't understand what I meant then I don't need to explain myself. You are trollin me or incapable of intuiting. Or both.

For other people- look at the graph.
 
Wyote said:
ORLY? Lol.

If you don't understand what I meant then I don't need to explain myself. You are trollin me or incapable of intuiting. Or both.

For other people- look at the graph.
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Oh, I do not always read entire threads. Sometimes I just see a title or a.single post and respond to that.
1) I dont troll.
2) my intution is off the chart.
 
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