Kyle Clifford - does it make you think the death penalty in some cases might be right?

[mids2019]

Read about Kyle Clifford's crimes and although for most of my life objected to the death penalty actually found it difficult to find reasons in this case not to have it. I really just couldn't think of justification for keeping the guy alive as there. Is no hope of redemption, reformation or education leading to a man being able to renenter scoiety. We would be in a position of keeping someone alive for pets face it the ideological reasons we don't believe it is rig h for the state to forcibly take a life.

Maybe my mind might change but reading about that blokes crimes I think sometimes you do forfeit the right to life.

I used to believe in the death penalty but now I think they should live a long, miserable existence. I agree prisons should be more self sustainable and prisoners should work more.

"A long, miserable existence" is likely to be more expensive in the long run, as is an attempt to have prisons be self sustainable.

Prisoners are provided with facilities such as education, leisure, healthcare etc for a number of reasons. Some can be rehabilitated. That costs, but saves money in the long run as you reduce rates of recidivism. Reasonable minimum living standards in prisons also means that prisoners are less likely to riot and cause trouble generally. This results in few staff being required.

Lack of liberty is the punishment. If the prisoner can be rehabilitated, then great, lets do what we can to achieve that as that is much better for society as a whole. If they can't, we deprive them of their liberty and provide reasonably basic facilities for the duration of their sentence.

@OchonAgusOchonOh I agree with you for crimes that aren't as serious and rehabilitation is possible.
But for murderers and paedos I think they should be kept very basicly and ideally in isolation.

Well just being convicted and jailed led to Sally Clark drinking herself to death a few years after her release.

I assume being treated like this would have finished her off sooner so if that’s what you are aiming for, it would have worked!

Also, a senior prison officer once told me this would be a nightmare for the prison officers. They desperately need lifers to have something to lose in order to keep control of the prison.

Loss of liberty is the punishment. Keeping them in very poor conditions is wrong from a humanity perspective but it's also counterproductive. Prisoners are much more likely to be compliant and behave if conditions are reasonable. That requires fewer staff and is actually cheaper to the exchequer.

Nobody is suggesting 5* facilities but things like access to education, leisure activities, private hygiene facilities (as in not crapping in an open toilet in a shared cell), healthcare facilities are the minimum we should be providing.

@CandidHedgehog Well just being convicted and jailed led to Sally Clark drinking herself to death a few years after her release.

I assume being treated like this would have finished her off sooner so if that’s what you are aiming for, it would have worked!

And presumably when it's revealed that the evidence was flawed and the conviction wrong the people in favour of this would shrug and say "oh dear. Sorry about that" and move onto the next public enemy number 1, with no more thoughts for the actual innocent person involved.

Angela Cannings lost her marriage and relationship with her only surviving child due to the stress of being wrongly imprisoned for murdering her baby sons, but judging by some previous posts she should probably appreciate that she still has her life.

Or given their faith in the justice system, she obviously did it and it's just a technicality that she got out. Because, after all, only the guilty are convicted.

Nobody is suggesting 5 facilities but things like access to education, leisure activities, private hygiene facilities (as in not crapping in an open toilet in a shared cell), healthcare facilities are the minimum we should be providing.

What's the point of wasting money on education for someone in prison for life? I believe Myra Hindley had a degree, what was the point as she was quite rightly never going to be released?

Put down is the wrong term .Ian Huntley had a choice not to do what he did. It's not like an innocent dog being put to sleep for biting someone because it's been badly bred or badly treated.

One use for these types of criminal may be psychiatric experimentation as to what makes their brains run the way they do. They could actually provide a useful contribution to medical science.

Because it keeps them compliant and more willing to engage.

Christ. Is your surname Mengele?

As someone who is both by virtue of ethnicity (Roma ancestors on both sides, Jewish ancestors on one ) and disability one of the people whom the Nazis wanted to annihilate, I am not advocating a Mengele type of experimentation but certain psychiatric interviews with people who have no clue conscience could may be provide a clue into how the sociopathic mind works, and could even lead to finding some kind of cure? Perhaps I'm being naively optimistic, but surely this is something that could be useful for society .

So you are not referring to psychiatric experimentation then. Sure, interviews and research could be helpful and if the knowledge could be used to prevent this sort of this happening again, that would be great. But yeah, I think you are being a bit naive.

Most crime could be prevented by decent education and decent living conditions. No government is rushing to do that.

@OchonAgusOchonOh Nah they don't deserve any humanity.

It's about whether you or other members of society have humanity or not. Lack of humanity spreads and is rarely restricted to the initial "undeserving". I know what type of society I would rather live in.

Yeah I should have said interviews and research.

I'm not sure when it comes to paedophilia and murder whether education or living conditions neccessarily are much of a factor . Narcissism and sociopathy more of a consideration perhaps. Remember the two boys who murdered James Bulger? Interestingly the one who was rehabilitated and hasn't reoffended was the one who came from an abusive chaotic home.

By most crimes, I meant things like robberies, shoplifting, drugs, violence etc. Most of those crimes could be eradicated with education and decent living conditions. An awful lot of murders could be prevented this way too as many of them are gang related, part of another crime such as robbery gone wrong etc.

While I agree that paedophilia and certain types of murder are not as simply solved, most paedophiles have been abused themselves as children so there is certainly an element of nurture involved in that. Eduction and counselling could go a long way to preventing them from going on to repeat the cycle themselves. Some of the more extreme types of violence and murder are committed by those who had very poor childhoods. Look at Barbie Kardashian in Ireland. He is psychotic but his upbringing by his father was appalling.

And then you have the psychopaths and the sociopaths. They are the tiny minority that education and decent living standards won't help but perhaps with appropriate treatment they could reform. there are certainly people where we could benefit from research in to their minds.

Yep, can hear the mutters of "well there's no smoke without fire after all" 🙄.

As someone once said, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth makes for a blind and toothless society. " we do have to draw a line somewhere so we don't sink to their level.

I do think there are a small minority of people who are bad seeds, and seem incapable of showing remorse. I'm not sure what to do with them, maybe not murder, just a long life behind bars or in a secure hospital where they can't cause much harm.

That said it grinds my gears that the government are slashing welfare for the disabled to cut costs and prisons are overcrowded and these people are taking up resources.

Do you really think that they would use the money for welfare/disability payments if they weren't using it on prison places?

@OchonAgusOchonOh Worrying, some people will do. Possibly the same ones who drank the kool aid voted for Brexit because Boris's bus said if they did then the £350 million the country apparently sent to the EU every week would go to the NHS instead. Wonder how that's working out for them...🤔.

@AnotherSlicePlease the thing is there's about 5,300 in prison for murder (I don't have a breakdown on the type or odds of rehabilitation) and around 65 on whole life sentences. Taking the emotion out of it, do you really believe those numbers (or lack of them ) would make a substantial difference to the budget?

Probably not tbh. Thanks for the statistic.

Probably not . I don't trust the government to care about the disabled tbh.

We are quick to put animals down if they attack/kill someone.
Why are humans so different.