The Yorkshire Ripper question?

[PassingStranger]

Just read that it cost the taxpayer 11 billion to keep him alive including his funeral?
Do you still feel the same way about him being hung for his murders?

is it acceptable to the taxpayer to pay that much, when there are so many other things that the money could have been spent on, or dosent the money matter?

The whole premise is just dripping with colonialist arrogance, isn't it? You'd hope that society had moved on from seeing other countries as our dumping grounds, but clearly not.

this is interesting, Ian Hislop points out the problematic nature of the death penalty to Pritti Patel

@PassingStranger OP, please can you request a change to your thread title. Peter Sutcliffe was a weak and pathetic man. He only 'got away with it' due to the imbecility and misogyny of the police.
The murdered women's family's have repeatedly asked for him not to be called YR. Richard McCann is a hero, please respect his wishes and change the title. Thank you
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2020/11/16/stop-calling-sutcliffe-by-his-pseudonym-pleads-son-of-his-first-murder-victim/

It was estimated to be £10m, not £11bn. Even the whole of Broadmoor didn't cost £11bn to run whilst he was there. £10m could easily have been spent (and more) on a death penalty case if it was conducted in the same way as the USA with all the stages of appeal.

Had he not been judged to be insane, his incarceration would have been cheaper too.

You seriously want different sentencing for men convicted of murder? That would be a very slippery slope indeed. After all, if you can impose harsher sentences on men convicted of killing women, why should you not impose harsher sentences on women for other offences?

Why does it matter less if a wrongly convicted man is killed than a wrongly convicted woman?

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this has already been raised but we shouldn't assume that the death penalty saves money.

Here's a link to an Amnesty International report from last year:

Death Penalty Costs

Quicky summary. All in all, including trials, legal costs, keeping a prisoner on death row, more legal costs as there are repeals, death row costs more per year than a trial where life imprisonment is on the cards and subsequent imprisonment. Further to that it also diverts money from the whole of the criminal justice system including crime prevention, education and rehabilitation.

The cost differences aren't small. Death row system, and this is from a Californian report so I would assume these costs are just for that state, currently $137 million per year, with reforms that are being called for, $232.7 million. Life imprisonment system - so a system where there is no death penalty - $11.5 million per year. I'm sure that the amounts could be argued with. Maybe the death row system is a little less (or more) and the same with the life imprisonment system, but whichever way you look at it the cost differences between both systems are huge and all moral questions aside - and I'm against the death row system on moral grounds - the death row/death sentence system costs a lot more than life imprisonment.

N.b. the amounts are not per person per year but for they systems as a whole.

🤣🤣🤣

I think it is much better for them to spend the rest of their lives thinking about their crimes and how they have no-one but themselves to blame for the fact that they have totally ruined their lives. If that actually leads them to feeling sorry for what they did, so much the better.

One of my teachers at secondary school taught him. Not in my school , somewhere else. He was very quiet apparently. Op I’d take on board what she used to say. Pictures are hung, people are hanged.

Unless they had an incurable serious illness they wouldn't qualify on the basis of current proposals.

😂not twelvety?

That would be dreadfully unfair on the penguins.

But you simply cannot pick and choose in this way and have different sentences purely according to the sex of the perpetrator or victim. It doesn't take long to work out that that would be potentially disastrous. It's a truism that hard cases make bad law.

They shouldn't qualify under any circumstances regardless of whether the laws around assisted dying are changed

Peter Sutcliffe was in Broadmoor for most of his incarceration. Thats a hospital not a prison. Regardless, most of the 11m reflects costs we would still have incurred in order to have a high security hospital and to have high security prisons. Whether he was in them or not.

If he was executed or if he disappeared in a puff of smoke society would still need to spend most of the 11m to protect us from criminally insane people. Most of that cost is infrastructure and guards. Most of it is a fixed cost.

If we want to save money on prison and secure hospitals we need to reduce the number of people being sent there who could otherwise be kept out if we prevented them falling into crime and poor MH or both. These are going to be low level offenders and people who could be easily helped if we spent money on MH services.

we should have that debate not the one about a dead man who needed to be locked up.

If a dog bites ppl are quick to say it cannot adjust to normal life so end its suffering. So I think in bad cases like the ripper they should be kind, and end his suffering. The NHS is on its knees spend the money there to help ppl.

He was in Broadmoor (a hospital for the mentally insane) for years then a prison. At no time in recent history, would someone certified insane, as he was, for years, had suffered capital punishment.

Long sentences are expensive. 🤷‍♀️

OP, if you do the maths, £11m over 39 years = works out at just under £300k a year. Currently it costs around £90K to house high security prisoners in places like Broadmoor. The amount quoted would include the cost of the police operations and court costs to bring him to justice.

In fairness to the OP, the DailyFail article did say 11 billion
Ex-Broadmoor nurse recalls chilling detail about Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe that 'frightened' him | Daily Mail Online

But even if it was 11 billion I still wouldn't support the death penalty.

You're proud of your ignorance and the spreading of misinformation? As long as you feel happy hun, I'm sure that everything will be OK.

I agree with this.

I recommend "The Secret Barrister" as a fascinating insight into the pros and cons of our legal system.