Does anyone else think the death penalty is being subtly made more thinkable?

[WhizzBangCaligula]

Or perhaps unsubtly?

There have been a few cases recently of horrific murders, some involving the torture of victims beforehand. When you read the news reports on sentencing, they always say the murderer will be eligible for parole in 17 years, or 25 years or whatever.

Most people think life should mean life or at least as much of life as possible, like till 80. When MP's in the 60's voted for the abolition of the death penalty (against the will of the majority of voters) it was on the understanding that dangerous sadistic murderers would stay in prison until they were either very old men (usually men) or they died there. It was not on the understanding that a 29 year old would be sent to prison for torture and murder, and know that they would be let out at the age of 54, when they could still have a chance of a relatively normal life in the community, or indeed still be young enough to commit the same sort of horrible crime.

If someone asks me "what would you prefer? A life sentence or the death penalty for those people who killed that 15 year old/ that poor teenage girl who was raped, tortured, burned and murdered/ all those other victims who suffered horrifically and who will never have birthdays again?" I'd say life because I don't believe in the death penalty. (Sally Clarke and Angela Cannings could be dead now if we had it.) But if they asked if I'd prefer 25 years or the death penalty, then I'd say the death penalty frankly, because 25 years for having taken someone's life and hope and future and made them face death in agony and terror and put their friends and relatives through the anguish of that kind of loss seems shockingly frivolous to me - immoral in fact. And it seems to me that the authorities are deliberately making the death penalty more attractive by having these laughable sentences.

Am I just getting old and fearful or have I spotted a plot to butter us all up so that we'll find the re-introduction of the death penalty acceptable? Is this happening in other European countries (at the moment you can't be a member of the EU if you have the death penalty, but that could change)? Or is it just that it costs too much to keep brutal murderers in prison? Why doesn't life mean life? Why is the need for justice not being met, leading people to conclude that the death penalty needs to be re-introduced? I've met loads of people recently who have been life-long opponents of the death penalty but have changed their minds as a result of a few of these cases and the knowledge that the murderers will be out in their 40's and 50's (in some cases, even in their 30's)

Oh and I know the prison service is awful and prison needs reform, but this is about sentencing.

Caligula - I think that's a really really good question....and i'm going to find time to think about it.

do you think he's lying? only I wouldn't have thought he'd need to go that far to hoover up the undecided voters (me, I'm not voting for either of them in the near future).

Of course he's lying. He's got no more moral integrity than the contents of ds2's potty.

Unfortunately many British voters have the memories of goldfish, so he probably will get in. God help us.

Really interesting question Caligula. I hope that we would never take that step back, it is so wrong and there is so much about the death penalty that disturbs me, I don't know where to start.

Does anyone remember that documentary that was made years ago called something like "14 days in May"? I was only about 15 at the time but it really affected me, it just showed how utterly wrong the whole thing is.

Re the army thing, I am broadly pacifist although I do think there is a need for peace-keeping forces. But there is a great difference between killing an opponent that is armed (or you suspect to be armed) in the name of your country and killing a defenceless person regardless of what that person has done to others in the name of the state.

I wonder what happens to the executioner, what it must do to their soul or mind.

But armies don't kill armed opponents. Don't they generally bomb from the air, so that in fact the biggest number of people killed in conflicts are not armed oppononents but civilians? Isn't that true of most Western armies anyway?

I don't know the numbers, but I'm willing to bet that in most conflicts where western "civilised" armies are involved, they have killed more non-combatants than opposing army people. And yet there is broad agreement that the army is beyond reproach; they're our "brave boys" doing a difficult job in trying circumstances when they don't want to be there. I'm not saying this as a criticism of the army; just pointing out that on the whole, people do accept the need for states to have the right to kill and use violence, even if they don't call it that. And yes they do prosecute individual soldiers for killing civilians "unnecessarily"; but surely the number of non-combatants killed must far outweigh the number of prosecutions for civilian deaths? Most civilian death is written off as regrettable accident, isn't it? So we accept violence as regrettable but broadly tolerable. That's why philosophically, I don't think it's an enormous jump to accept the right of the state to kill its own citizens - if you think our state has got the right to kill the citizens of other countries, why shouldn't it have the right to kill the citizens or subjects of its own country? (Not arguing in favour of that, btw, just musing.)

Is there a broad agreement on that though?

I do see what you mean, but I think actually, on the whole, most people do oppose air raids in general, with a few exceptions for military installations and the like. I know I do (but as I said, I'm a pacifist). The "shock and awe" campaign was widely criticised I thought.

I agree, senorapostrophe. The bombing of civilians is never justified. That is murder.

War currently is a very messy on the ground situation, not as clinical as perhaps some in governments would hope. I read an article in the Sunday Times recently about how some of the American soldiers who had served in Iraq had escaped to Canada in order not to have to return. The stories they told of their time out there suggested many soldiers out there are totally numb to violence, and for whatever reason, are killing civilians deliberately and without punishment all the time. I don't think there is any moral order in the current war. And this is a war that was supposed to 'defend' the Iraqi people. It is very difficult to have a war with pure motives on the 'defending' side.

My nan told me this story about WW2. My family are from the East End and were hop-picking in Kent. My nan's brother was isolated in a field when a German plane came over. It flew at him and the gunner started to fire his gun at him. He ran and got to a shelter where he flung himself flat on his face; the bullet holes were around the wall at head height. He was five. When I said to my nan that the pilot in the plane couldn't have realised, she told me not to be so stupid. That is what war does, it takes men who probably had brothers, sons or nephews of their own and turns them into people who can gun down an innocent child in a field in Kent.

five. that sends shivers down my spine.