To consider capital punishment reasonable in this instance?

[Sn0wflake]

I consider myself a bit of a fluffy liberal and at 34 have always been against the death penalty but the actions of Neil Strachan and James Rennie take me to a place where I feel like killing them quite frankly. I still see problems with capital punishment...that innocent people die but I at least think for these offences life should mean life. Do you think that is unreasonable?

Just in case you don't know what I'm talking about:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8331388.stm

How the hell do people get like this? We never seem to hear explanations in cases like this & Vanessa George's.
It can't just be someone else suggesting it & them going "oh, that sounds cool" surely?

I sometimes think that if someone did something to my child then I would kill them with my bare hands myself.

I can see why people carry out vigilante attacks. I don't know how the wronged restrain themselves tbh.

I'm not talking about capital punishment - just if someone fucks with me to that extent I'd jolly well want to get my revenge.

YANBU

With you posh, I have no idea how anyone can say that they would not want to hunt down and seriously hurt their childs attackers. I would happily work for the prison and administer the lethal injection myself - nothing about going down to their level they are being punished for a horrible act. Prison is in no way a punishment. End of.

So you are OK with the State deciding who lives and who dies carcarcar? You trust the Government to get it right everytime? You are OK with it being written into law now under a (reasonably) benevolent Government and being available immediately to the next one which isn't so benevolent.

Don't get me wrong I would love to see child molesters and rapists strung up and would be extremely slack in sentencing any parent who did so, but the State cannot be allowed the power of life and death, it just can't.

Absolutely.

Thanks for the link ponders

The only life sentance sadly will be for the victim(s) and families.

I wonder if found guilty at court, whether a victim should have a greater say in the atonement: ie how the offender recompenses for what they have done to allow the victim to regain some say, some control, over the events that took away their rights in the first place. I've heard of a system used in New Zealand that I thought was really simple and yet, very effective in bringing about earning the rights back into the communities, even for the greatest of deeds.I can't remember what it was.

Although it would never replace the loss or negate the trauma of crimes such as these.

Capital punishment might make sense in an ideal world, but there are LOADS of miscarriages of justice where people are locked away, sometimes for over 20 years, before the courts sort out the mess.

If all those people had been executed there would be no way to take it back. That's a large part of the 'against' argument for me.

I know what you mean. The Baby P horror came out when DS was a week or two old, and a mother stabbed her baby to death a week later. I was shocked at how personally distressed I was - before, I would have thought it sad, but not felt much more, but once I was a mother of a tiny baby it was horrendous to know other children suffered like that. The nursery case last month actually made me come close to throwing up. So yes, I understand. If anyone did anything that appalling to my son I would want to make them suffer more than they imagined possible, before killing them extremely slowly. But that's why the state is in charge of punishment and not the victim, or their family. Killing is evil, full stop, and an eye for an eye is no basis for a civilised society. Nor is vengeance actually - it serves no practical purpose, and doesn't really help anyone. (It doesn't assuage the pain of the victim. I don't think anything can.) And that's before getting into how often mistakes are made in the criminal justice system - you can't free and compensate a corpse.

Having said that, I do think life should mean life in a larger proportion of cases. Some people are simply not worth the risk of freeing. And personally, I'd far rather be executed than live out my days in a prison, so perhaps it's not the most humane option. I don't really care, tbh, because I think capital punishment is wrong because it makes murderers of us all, and because mistakes are made, not because I care about the murderer per se. I'd rather they rot quietly, in a place they can't hurt anyone élse, without us all being complicit in their murder.

my evil coworker suggested that capital punishment was too good for them but perhaps using them for some form of drug/medical testing for the good of the rest of society was the way to go

not sure where that would leave the anti vivesectionists though

Oh I wept and wept over BabyP, and I'm not normally that sensitive... I still feel teary when i see stuff about him.

OK so CP is somehow wrong, it does bring us down to the same level as these animals.

But that young girl that was found killed after she was lured by a convicted paedo that had gone awol?

When people are convicted of child abuse, why can't they also get a chemical castration order, suspended as long as they continue to report in. Breach their conditions and that's it... lights out!

snowflake i'm with you. I, too, am a fluffy liberal but child molesters not be allowed to live. The money saved on keeping them in prison could go to so many other things.

Does anyone know how much it costs per week per inmate BTW? I've no idea. Just wondered...

a liberal society deals with deviancy and crime without resorting to capital punishment

whilst i understand your revulsion
i dont agree with your solution

About £50k a year apparently...

I want people like this to live on in the knowledge of what they have done.

Bringing them to that knowledge is the problem. But I know there have been programmes in prisons that do this - rare ones, that aren't funded nearly enough.

I long for death many times when life is hard, it's common, I'm not even depressed. Death is a privilege.

Sorry, Choosyfloosy don't agree that your statement? These are sick people who will never be sorry for what they've done - why waste money trying to make them see the error or their way.

Just leave them in prison until they die!

I'm pretty much with you Qally.

I'm against capital punishment and I do think the state having it at it's disposal is dangerous. So I am not calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty but I think the sentences handed out in this instance seems laughably short. I personally feel that people who would do this stuff to such young children (remember they specialised in very young children, little babies) really should never see the sunlight again.

The other thing I really want to know is how they could possibly get like this. I know it's bad but I understand how someone might be attracted to 14 and 15 year olds, I was pretty advanced at that age myself, but children that small, it's just beyond my comprehension how anybody could hurt them.

I think what I was trying to point out in a rather clumsy way is that this is the issue that turns me from a bleeding heart liberal to part of the masses baying for blood. Gah...how the did that happen? I really am glad that we have elected individuals to represent us in these areas otherwise things would be a lot worse.

Right I'm going back to stick my head in some sand and avoid all the news.

Maybe the knowledge that the sentences will be laughable gives a message that this sort of crime is not as serious as some others? I would fall far short of advocating capital punishment for any crime, but a natural life sentence for those criminals would send a message about how seriously society views this kind of crime. Sentences should have a deterrent effect. Part of the whole idea of sentencing is to make an example of the criminal, has been since the days of the stocks. Failing execution as a public educational method, sentences should be very harsh, hang the expense of lengthy imprisonment.

For me it was the monsters who tortured and killed those poor French students. I wept and wished the killers dead. But because I respect human life then I don't believe in CP. Equally, I think that letting murderers out of prison after a few years shows a complete lack of respect for human life.

I'm sorry, in this instance, i have to agree with OP, jail too cushy for them as they will most likely be separated from other inmates in case they're harmed, sit there with their TV's and being fed at tax payers expense. Then they'll get released into society, maybe given new identities and would you want them to live next to you and your children? I wouldn't. Capital punishment sounds pretty ok to me in this instance, and for that nursery teacher as well....pure scum.

If you have capital punishment you are making someone a legal executioner. That's an awful thing to put on someone's shoulders: even if they want it (or think they do).

You have way more faith in Governments than I do carcarcar.

Can't decide which would be worse abra1d having to do that job when you didn't want to or having someone who does want to kill people legally.