To reconsider my feelings re. Death penalty.

[FoxgloveFairy]

Just read a story about a young guy in the US who broke into a house and, not finding anything to steal, decided to rape the female occupant. A 101 year old woman. Not a string-em-up advocate, but just looking at the arrogant grin on this young man's face in court, I feel right now I could be persuaded.

Governments do whatever gets them votes, and believe me, if they can secure votes from prisoners, and if prisoners can become a voting block, governments will go after those votes. They don't give a F about morals or the whims of you or I. That is the nature of politics. It is about power and control, not doing good by people or acting in their best interests. Have you never wondered why taxation always go up, every year, without fail, regardless of who or what you vote for?

there are 85,000 prisoners in the UK, most of them are not serial killers and rapists. there are 60 million + people in the UK. The rapist and serial killer voting block isn't a big concern.

DarceyBustle - No amount of funding will ever 'educate' a rapist or a murderer better. You can love them all you want, and stand in Parliament Square and shout about the rights of rapists to be treated like good decent human beings, but at the end of the day, it's hypocrisy at the point they rape you, your mother, or your child. You just fail to admit it in the belief that living with your head in the sand is the safest place for your mind to be, because then you can pretend that caring for these people is the best way to keep your family safe.

Besides, we live in a country with enough money to give every 'poor' person a million pounds, and we live in a country with the richest 'poor' people anywhere on the planet. Our 'poor' people are in the top 50% best paid people anywhere on the planet! and people travel from all over the globe so that they might have a chance of being a 'poor' person in our country. Ignorance and lack of education and skills is a choice made by parents and children. It is not imposed upon them. They choose not to avail themselves of everything they are offered.

And, face it, no government is ever going to give rapists and murderers the vote. Not least because they will know that it will lose them more votes than it gains.

elephantspoo, your argument about "poor" people doesn't stand up to any kind of analysis. Any examination of their income has to be set against the cost of living.

A disquietingly high proportion of prisoners have learning difficulties including dyslexia that have never been adequately addressed in school. If you think our so called rich country makes adequate provision for special needs, you are deluded. It makes absolute sense to try to make up for that whilst they are in prison so that they stand a chance of making a new start and becoming self-supporting when they are released.

And even if they don't have learning disabilities, what is the relevance of the fact that some prisoners may not have availed themselves of educational opportunities earlier, anyway? If they want to learn whilst in prison, what conceivable argument is there fore refusing them that opportunity?

Icimoi - You seem in some way to avoid the fact that every crime is an act of freedom of choice by the criminal. I am not saying I would not steal food to feed my child, but you can't just blanket blame society from men raping old grannies (the OPs frame of reference), and you can't explain it away with 'lack of education' dogma. People know right from wrong. It is the cornerstone of our judicial system. If they do they should be tried and prosecuted. If they do not they should be evaluated and institutionalised.

A lack of education comes from somewhere. I do not abdicate my responsibility to educate my child by sending him to school. Regardless of how good or how bad school or housing estate is, it is the parents' responsibility to educate their children and teach them right from wrong. Not the State's

elephantspoo, you won't find anything in my posts either avoiding the facts about crime or blaming society.

DarceyBustle made a perfectly sensible point that better education would help to reduce crime, and it undoubtedly would. If people are better able to get the qualifications that lead to jobs, they are less likely to drift into crime. And better education will also help in simply enabling people to feel a part of society instead of alienated from it, and make them better able to resist criminal influences. And it doesn't help to stand back smugly and say it's all the parents' fault, because that changes nothing.

What I find interesting about your posts is your determination to avoid the facts about prison. Contrary to your belief, it isn't a place where people get cuddled and have a lovely time, but you refuse to acknowledge that.

You can love them all you want, and stand in Parliament Square and shout about the rights of rapists to be treated like good decent human beings, but at the end of the day, it's hypocrisy at the point they rape you, your mother, or your child.

being anti death penalty doesn't make you love rapists. it just makes you hate killing people.

I am not willing to give the state the power to lawfully take lives.

writtenguarantee - You already do! Every state lawfully kills people 'for the greater good'. Mankind's greatest atrocities have been committed in the name of doing it 'for the greater good' of its citizens. Right now we are killing people all over the world 'to keep Britain safe from evil'. Burying your head in the sand and pretending it's not being done in your name does not reduce the death toll. All I'm saying is, let's not be hypocritical about it. If we do live in a country that kills allegedly 'for the greater good', then go for those preying on our women on children, not those arguing over who controls an oil field in a desert that isn't ours in the first place.

Icimoi - I don't argue that education is a bad thing and should be avoided. It is a fine thing and should be encouraged, but it is a fact that you could have every single person in the UK with a masters degree, and all you end up with is a prison full of people with masters degrees. Britain has no utility for such a large population. We do not need all the people who live here. And it's not an immigration issue. The planet does not need all the people who live on it. We have no means ever of employing all the people who exist. So even if. Britain cut it's minimum wage to 50p/hour, we would only be gaining full employment at the expense of a country paying £1/hour. Every job we gain results in a loss of employment elsewhere. We have no use for all these people. That is why the welfare system only ever gets bigger and bigger, and why you only ever pay more and more taxes.

As regards prison, I am well aware of the cycling of offenders through my local prison, and I can assure you, they have greater access to satellite TV, games consoles and recreation than they do in the outside world where they have to find a means of paying for them. For some people, if you live in a near derelict council house and don't have the money for the heating, and only get to watch TV from your mattress on the floor, and are expected to go out to collect your giro and have to both choose your food, and cook it yourself, all the while there is a place that does all those things for you, the difference in lifestyle, and the trading of liberty for care is not so much of a deterrent as it is an inevitable consequence of playing the game. They go in, they come out, they go in, they come out. They couldn't give a shit.

elephantspoo, if you think your local prison - or your perception of it - is representative of every prison, you are deluded. I wish I understood the relevance of your perception that we don't need large sections of the population, but that's a whole different issue.

Again, the fact that we have an army cannot and does not justify capital punishment. Ever heard of the expression about two wrongs not making a right? We simply cannot, as a society, take the stance that murder is wrong and then cold-bloodedly kill murderers and rapists.

I notice that you are evading the issue of the Stefan Kiszkos and Sally Clarks of this world. As long as you do so, you cannot accuse others of hypocrisy.

My sister spent three months working with prisoners on death row. She described it as the most depressing, soul destroying time in her life. Ironic that in the US a bible belt state leads the way in executions.....am sure one of the ten commandments was 'Thou shalt not kill'.

Elephants all your arguments are completely worthless, you cannot construct a logical or even believable argument by logical fallacy alone. It's just not working and makes a complete nonsense of the discussion. We've had strawman, appeal to emotion, slipperly slope et al.
The fact is that it has been clearly demonstrated, certainly in the scandanavian countries that educating criminals and operating a different sort of penal system results in an extraordinarily low reoffending number. T

Iicimoi - I only mentioned my local prison because you asked. I have experience of two, both in Scltland, so I guess that makes a difference. Either way, that is irrelevant to the question posed by OP.

To answer your other points... In regard to wrongly acused murderers/rapists, your stance seems to be that we should not take an irreversible course of punishment such as a death sentence, because we have means of redressing the balance if an error is made. A just point. How about letting the victim and their family choose to exercise justice, and point out to them that if they wrongly kill a person, they face the death penalty. In such a case, they would have to be damn sure Mr X killed little Gina before they pressed the red button and injected him with chemical formula 257.

You see, you have offered no form of justice in respect to crimes being commingled. Your stance in they the penal system should detain and rehabilitate in all cases, and you offer no form of redress or justice to the victim of the rapists and murderers of this world. And while you may have some mileage in arguing that people steal cars and smuggle drugs as a result of their inability to engage with education, that does not wash for rapists and murderers.

Lastly, it is perfectly reasonable to draw a comparison between the actions of a soldier enforcing the will of the country, and the actions of a penal system enforcing the will of the courts if you, and others, are going to trot out the, 'I won't santion state sponsored murder' rhetoric. There is a far less tenuous excuse and zero moral justification for a soldier killing a family in Iraq, than for a judiciary killing a serial rapist oe a paedophilia here in the UK. My position is, if we must live in a country that kills, allegedly 'for the greater good', then let it be paedophilia, rapists and murderers to get the bullets, than Iraqis and their wives and children defending their homes.

Committed, not commingled, bloody autocorrect.

No, there is no reasonable comparison between the actions of a soldier and the penal system. How can you possibly consider that to be a valid argument. It's like Morecambe and Wise watching you argue, you have all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order.

Don't believe in death sentence but just re comment that DNA does not provide proof that the person committed the murder - surely it is down to the context of the DNA evidence - eg

the DNA is that of the victim and it links the murderer to the crime as the DNA is from the victims blood on the murderers clothes and in the vehicle of the murderer.

The DNA is from a sample of blood that is proved to be that of the murderer at the scene where the murderer claims they have never been to.

The sample is from semen at a rape scene and from the victim belonging to the rapist who says he has never met or had sex with the victim.

Same as finger prints - a finger print only shows the presence of the person at the place where the crime occurred - but a finger print of the murderer in the victims blood show the presence of the murderer at the scene of the crime.

It also undermines the accused's testimony as they can be caught in a lie - eg they say they have never met the victim or been at the scene yet evidence proves they are lying.

The sample is from semen at a rape scene and from the victim belonging to the rapist who says he has never met or had sex with the victim.

This too is not infallible, it is perfectly possible (and has happened) that dna is so similar that it could be used to identify someone who really wasn't there. It's something like 1:10,000 or higher, but as I say, it's happened. DNA evidence is still not wholly reliable.

The sample is from semen at a rape scene and from the victim belonging to the rapist who says he has never met or had sex with the victim.

I am with Dawn on this not being infallible evidence. Statistical anomalies will always exist. One only needs to look at the the volumes of flawed fingerprints that have been discovered to see how certain our forms of scientific evidence is. Now match this with an admission, fingerprint evidence, CCTV footage, a selfie from the guys phone, and a few witnesses. Maybe you have a solid conviction I could see warranting a capital sentence.

I don't suggest capital punishment should be dished out like leaflets on the steps of our courts, all I suggest is that is has a valid place in a judicial system that otherwise would spend in the region of £50K-£100K a year looking after our better know personalities.

What I take issue with is the belief by some that everyone should contribute to the care and well being of Ian Huntley. The dogma that we all have a responsibility to show him more compassion and understanding than he showed his victims.

Unless it can be argued that there is a possibility that he is innocent, that we fabricated the evidence in a lab, or obtained his confession under duress, then I see no reason to force the public, and the victims parents to pay for his detention for the foreseeable future. Maybe if you were to lock him in a cell and feed him on Super Saver canned food and tap water, I'd concede that there were some reasonable level of punishment occurring at minimal expense to the public, but when he costs us tends of thousands a year, and will be entitled to live off the public purse for the rest of his life, whether in jail or in the community, I see no justice or equity in the penal system.

Dawn - Avoiding the issue and the questions asked is a politically evasive move. That's why no one trusts our politicians. Because they are offered a point of view, asked a question, and then just roll out the same old rhetoric and refuse to answer the questions posed.

How about answering the questions and explaining your viewpoint, rather than just dissecting mine?

Not Saying it is infallible just that it can be solid proof in some circumstances due to the context of the evidence - eg victim's blood on clothes and in car of the murderer and in others can substantiate certain facts - eg that the accused had penetrative sex with the alleged victim and when in context of all evidence eg opportunity, perhaps CCTV footage with an attacker fitting the description of the accused, fingerprint evidence in a place the accused testifies he has never been etc can make a solid case.

There was one case where a woman stole a condom from the bin of a man she was stalking and "created evidence" of a rape - it was the presence of his wife's DNA - a person the woman had confirmed she had never had sex with. - in the specimen that revealed that the sample was from a condom used when the man had sex with his wife. So no - of course semen in a rape case is not absolute proof but it will always be a major aspect of the evidence in a case.

You already do! Every state lawfully kills people 'for the greater good'. Mankind's greatest atrocities have been committed in the name of doing it 'for the greater good' of its citizens. Right now we are killing people all over the world 'to keep Britain safe from evil'. Burying your head in the sand and pretending it's not being done in your name does not reduce the death toll. All I'm saying is, let's not be hypocritical about it. If we do live in a country that kills allegedly 'for the greater good', then go for those preying on our women on children, not those arguing over who controls an oil field in a desert that isn't ours in the first place.

There is a difference between killing a person who can't defend himself and an armed soldier. It is, in fact, illegal to kill prisoners of war that you have captured, so there is no inconsistency there. But I disagree with war as well. I am not pro war, but think rapists and murderers should be defended.

Norway

I see a difference between a soldier killing someone who is intent on killing him, or his colleagues, but the majority of death inflicted by soldiers is on persons they are not face to face with, or threatened by, and more than 20% of casualties are women and children. There is no law against killing women and children and no-one ever goes to jail for killing a mother and child. But it's all for the greater good of our nation, so where's the harm?

More importantly however is the question, does the victim have the right to feel justice has been served? My problem with the whole protect the rapist and murderer and teach them they were bad mentality is, no one gives a fuck about the girls who are raped or the families of the murdered. They get a pat on the head, some fluffy rhetoric about how bad it was that young Jimmy won't see his dad again, a free ticket to a shrink, and a lifetime of pain and mental anguish.

Now, there is an argument that no amount of torturing and slaying of rapists/murderers in the most horrendous and gruesome ways can ever alleviate the pain and anguish of the wronged, and that is used as a means of explaining why no action should be taken to end a killers life. And I can see a certain amount of logic in that regard. But what of the girl who lives her life knowing her rapist is going to get out?

Maybe a good first step would be to set the minimum term for serious offences at 40 years, scrap the parole system for 'rehabilitated rapists who now believe in God', and forced labour to pay for their upkeep, so at least they are not being paid for wholly by the good citizens they prey upon.

but the majority of death inflicted by soldiers is on persons they are not face to face with, or threatened by, and more than 20% of casualties are women and children. There is no law against killing women and children and no-one ever goes to jail for killing a mother and child.

I don't know what's against the law in war, but certainly targeting non-combatants should be.

But, in fact, most people who die in a war zone don't die from bullets. They die from the breakdown of basic civil services (bad water, no medication, starvation etc). So people aren't being targeted to be killed, but die as a result of war conditions.

But it's all for the greater good of our nation, so where's the harm?

you keep saying that like I, or some of us, agree with that. I don't.

More importantly however is the question, does the victim have the right to feel justice has been served?

the problem is that rather depends on the individual (and society). some people think 1 year for robbery is ok, some don't.

My problem with the whole protect the rapist and murderer and teach them they were bad mentality is, no one gives a fuck about the girls who are raped or the families of the murdered.

Who doesn't give a fuck? I think most people do. just because I don't want to behead someone for the crime doesn't mean I don't give a fuck.

Maybe a good first step would be to set the minimum term for serious offences at 40 years, scrap the parole system for 'rehabilitated rapists who now believe in God',

I am not sure the number 40 is right, but in principle I agree that rape sentences are light.