Assisted dying for paedophiles and life-prisoners

My father knew the hangman before WW2. Capital punishment was stopped in part due to the deaths of Ruth Ellis and Derek Bentley. Dan Walker the journalist looked at the issues on capital punishment he was very upset about it. I would not want to see it reinstated. It was stopped around 1950 I think.When you see the deaths of the girls at the Taylor Swift concert it's understandable why people suggest it should be reinstated. I have concerns about people who want the choice to die at a time of their choosing. When you're very ill with cancer the drugs that you are prescribed will shorten your life. I think there are some very strong minded people like Esther Rantzen who have the strength of mind to be able to go through with it. The actress Liz Carr made some very strong reasons to oppose it.

I support the Assisted Dying Bill but when I read posts like this it does give me pause for thought.

No as a survivor i belive that they should serve there sentence .This also allows time for other victims to come forward.
As a nurse the assisted dying Bill has been a long time coming and I welcome it for terminally I'll people who would otherwise have far less dignity in there own death . This bill means that people can choose not to suffer in agony or be on such heavy medication they are sleeping for for days weeks while the family sits and waits for the inevitable.
The importance of this bill is so monumental I can't actually believe that criminals and paedophiles have even been mentioned.

I wouldn’t pay them but I’m not offended by the idea of offering assisted suicide to prisoners of heinous crimes. It’s not like paedophiles get better in prison.

If I was facing a long sentence and had done something awful I think I’d consider it.

Incentivising people to commit heinous crimes so that their family benefit from a cash payout is perverse.

Cmon OP, give your head a wobble.

There are literally hundreds of studies regarding how the death penalty is a pointless costly waste of time on so many levels.
It doesn't prevent crime, it costs more to implement than just keeping people alive in prison does.
And then morally. I personally think it's completely backwards and has no place in a civilised society. It's just murder.
And you may think 'great!' When it's the people you have decided it's OK to dehumanise, who are getting murdered by the state.. but you've essentially given the state the legal power to murder people so what happens when a government get voted in who you don't agree with who start murdering people you can no longer dehumanise?

And if you are trying to make some point about the assisted dying bill being shit then that's just really stupid. Murdering people is not exactly the same as people who have terminal illnesses being given the right to consent to assisted dying instead of going through a potentially lingering and traumatic death.
Secret ingredients being both CONSENT and the fact these people are already dying.
It doesn't mean we can just murder anyone we don't like.

I think the point they're making is that it costs a lot more than 50k to house prisoners for years and years.

Not saying I'm agreeing but that's what the OP is saying.

The state could livestream it too and make some money off the clicks? I mean why not?

FFS.....

Christ, we are a broke country and going to offer someone £50k to allow the state to murder them!

get away with you

I’m pretty sure many surviving victims would recoil at the thought of a ‘death payment’ from their attacker. 🤢

I support capital punishment and I think it should be brought back in this country to relieve prison crowding, and to clear out the absolute worst of criminals who have done things so heinous and/or have NO chance of being rehabilitated.

But calling it "assisted dying", which is something I also support, is completely tonedeaf.

No, but we don’t have the death penalty and no one was proposing bringing it back on those terms, so I’m not sure why it’s relevant or somehow more ethically sound to financially bribe them into it.

Didn't Ian Brady want something like this for himself, to be allowed to die decades after his crimes? Of course, "psychopath" doesn't even begin to describe him, so we should take his ideas with a pinch of salt.

I also get where the OP is coming from. I know it's a Daily Mail view that Farage and Johnson would be proud of, but it seems perverse that we pay through the nose for the accommodation of the country's most dangerous criminals, with everything handed to them on a plate, while people who have worked an honest living all their lives struggle to make ends meet. Yes, I know that prisons are not the holiday camps which the Daily Mail makes them out to be.

And yes, what @MugsyBalonz says is true, about it being a slippery slope from "allow them" to "persuade them" to "force them".

The payment seems an odd addition.

If you believe killing paedophiles and life-prisoners is morally correct, why add the payment?

I worked in Child Protection. These sorts of silly thoughts achieve nothing. 🙄

Why this is a bit of a 'cruel teenager who thinks they are cool' argument I dont get they they would be paid and why would you think using tax payers money on this would be good? (Aside from the fact they should be just spending the rest of their lives behind bars).

Let's say we engage with the argument though, a paedophile may get 4 years in prison, why would he want to be euthanised if he can then go out and continue with his life?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64835051

That Belgian case involved a woman who psychiatrists determined was not of sound mind when she killed her children, who had been in a psychiatric hospital for six years.

The law in Belgium adults who are in a ‘futile medical condition of constant and unbearable physical or mental suffering that cannot be alleviated’ to request voluntary euthanasia.

Not just any old random prisoner. She could ask for and be granted it because she was ill and could not be treated, not because she was in prison.

It's a slippery slope from "let them volunteer for it" to "maybe we should just force some of them to do it" and then you have reinstated the death penalty.

I think I largely agree with you here although watching the thread with interest to read the opposing argument too

How about a situation where we "as a state" just kill criminals who don't want to be killed ?

I get where the OP is coming from. However how does it help justice ? How does it work if someone innocent decides they'd rather use this special offer (buy one get one free ?) rather than spend 30 years in jail knowing they are innocent. Andrew Malkinson springs to mind.

I don’t believe in giving people money in that case but I do think life sentence and indefinite sentence prisoners should be given the option of euthanasia. If I had committed some terrible crime and were in their situation I’d take the option and it would be a win win for society as the threat and expense of their upkeep would be gone.

Not so much a slippery slope as complete free fall with that idea OP...

Assisted dying is an entirely separate issue from the death penalty.

I support assisted dying but oppose the death penalty.

Discuss 😄