Return Capital Punishment - ReCaP

I think "justice" isn't it at all; I think people simply need to be compensated for loss, so that they don't lose faith in the system of rules that support our society. I think "justice" is a word that obscures this simplicity.I don't get how we can compensate ANYBODY for lost time, whether they're jailed wrongly or killed wrongly. I don't think we even bother compensating anybody for lost time in jail. That makes me lose faith in the system.Getting to the point... I think we need to have a compensation system. If "justice" were handed out by a private company instead of the government, they'd be on the hook for their mis-steps, right?I'd say the way to provide compensation that fits best with our society is to have a "human life value calculator". Pay out based on the value calculated for the life lost, prorated for the number of expected years left.I doubt many people would be willing to go for it--I think people wouldn't like to be confronted with an explicit representation of how our society works. But I do think it's reflective of how we live, I do think captial punishment is a supportable system, and I do think it would necessitate a compensatory system like this.And if the system is too practical for you (generic you), then I'd say capital punishment is probably not up your alley.Ben

I agree, but that doesn't mean the system can't support ANY such failures. Again, I agree. But I don't think this says that there are no fixes... I disagree that we need to be "absolutely sure". As long as we keep some measure of error rates under some percentage (0.5%?), then we're fine. If we can't do it, then the system is too impractical to use. I still don't like the distinction that we seem to make between death and a temporary jail sentence. I don't see the hard line that others do between them. Killing someone's life, removing a certain range of years is a very important type of killing and loss. It is impossible to compensate for them; life is altered too drastically. Compensating for death seems a lot easier; at least there's no messy loose ends and guessing on the effects. Dead is dead after all. So in other words, we kill their "real life", and then use them to help fix the society that screwed them over? At an individual level, that sucks eggs. And America is such an individualistic society...Long jail sentences kill people's lives, kill their livelihood, kill their viability. If we look at say RAZD's argument for personhood vs. biological life in determining abortion, I think we can see that it applies here--killing someone's livelihood can turn out to killing their person, killing who they are, and thus killing what I believe is the essential and the most important aspect of them.Down with long jail sentences? Do we want to follow that slippery slope? This sounds like a failure of our humanity rather than any failure of a death penalty system. If the system is so wrong, lives will need to be sacrificed in order to fix it--regardless if those lives are physically or mentally sacrificed. Lost livelihood is not compensable. You certainly would know better than I, but it seems for some people it's the same deal with war. The experiences and effects of the experiences simply aren't expensible. Something essential is lost and cannot be recaptured.Is physical life such an important dividing line? Because in my mind, it is not. That's why I was able to agree with RAZD's writing on abortion & personhood. We, you and me, unintentionally allow people to die every day, due to the global and national systems of government we live in. I don't feel any worse about the state unintentionally allowing innocent people to die than I do about me allowing innocent people to die.Hope this post works together; I've written it in bits and pieces. But if I don't send it off now, I doubt I'll manage to write any reply at all... and I want to.Thanks Omni!

Why? I can't respond to you without understanding why you don't buy my argument.I am someone who tries to judge the past based on behavior and the future based on behavior with a dash of intent, these things are basically the same to me. It is your responsibility to be informed, just as much as it is your responsibility to conform to certain moral standards. I don't think American government policy is supposed to be based purely on moral/immoral decisions. Otherwise the gay marriage / abortion / euthanasia discussions would be a lot less one-sided.So, while I respect your morals and am glad to know about your moral position, I don't think this contains any commentary on what I'm trying to focus on--the administrative side of capital punishment.Ben

Hi Omni,Let me start off by clarifying the purpose and perspective from which I'm discussing this topic. I'm trying to understand the types of policies and moral convictions under which capital punishment can make sense. I want to find out what systems are consistent with capital punishment and it's implementational details, and what systems are not consistent with capital punishment and it's implementational details. I'm not talking about my own morals, the current American judicial system, etc. You're right, but for your argument to work, you have to be right 100% of the time. Let's cut through the philosophical difference we have, and get straight to physical death. if a single man kills himself due to despair of being put in jail for life for a crime he did not commit, then life-terms have the same flaw as the death penalty--they kill innocent people. If our goal is to avoid killing innocent people with 100% accuracy, then I'd submit you can't ever be wrong--because doing so might directly lead to somebody to kill due to the despair.I just think this "100% accuracy" criterion is so short-sighted. Another example I had brought up previously is driving--we should get rid of driving, because innocent people die during driving. Since when was it an important criterion for ANYTHING that we guarantee 100% of innocent people do not die before doing it? You know somebody died (again) at Disney just a week or two ago... I agree wholeheartedly. I don't want to dismiss you or you experiences, but the problem is not that there aren't some people who CAN enjoy their lives after such experiences. It's that there EXISTS A SINGLE PERSON who was not able to. That's the criterion being layed out here for acceptance of capital punishment. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I am just trying to carry out the argument of "100% accuracy" to it's end. I don't think it's a reasonable criterion for anything. I wasn't suggesting that compensation replace a justice system--after all, you can't properly compensate without some method of agreeing upon the truth of the matter. And a failed justice system would be just as poor at doing that as it would at doling out justice in the first place.Mistakes occur. They occur in everything that we do. I believe we have a responsibility to compensate those who have suffered due to mistakes--not just to say that mistakes happen, so it's too bad you're unlucky. The only compensation that makes sense to me is monetary compensation. America doesn't deal in any shared spiritual, religious, or cultural currency besides money as far as I can tell. So I don't know what another option would be. I agree. To judge after-the-fact is not meaningful to me in this case; their perspective from their previous life has already been lost due to their jail term. The point is to judge from NOW.If I lost all my current goals in order to fight against a system that wronged me, I judge that as being used. My personal goals were taken away forceably, and they were replaced by something I could not really choose--to fight against a system that wronged me. It wasn't chosen--what other options really exist in the mind of a person in such a situation?And who benefits from the effort? The society as a whole, not the person who got screwed. They get no compensation, they work for us, and they don't get any real choice about it. It screams "used" to me. That is not what I meant to suggest. I meant to suggest that if one innocent killing is unacceptable in one situation, it should be so in all situations. We don't live by that criterion in our lives, and to impose it here seems completely artificial and unwarranted to me. I need somebody to tell me why the criterion is critical for the death penalty, but not for any other policy that we create. It was completely pulled out of my ass as a place to start conversation. But of course, you know that I agree that this is a problem, and I would say that for any system to suppor capital punishment, it MUST have a way to measure success and failure, and people MUST be willing to judge one another.And I agree with your point that the American judicial system fails on all counts. I would then agree that the America should not implement captial punishment in conjunction with the current policies and state of affairs.And just to finish things up, I would say that morality is not what we think, but what we do. We live in a system that I think is described in the three ways you listed. By NOT dropping everything and fighting the system, we're a part of it. And I believe that is our true morality. Not what we say or think, but what changes we've made to the system we say is "wrong".Thanks!
BenP.S. Please feel free to pick and choose what to respond to--this post is almost untenable in it's length.

Hi nwr,For some reason, you always seem to be able to catch my meaning. I think this was a good summary of my diluted words. [qs]I largely agree with Ben on this[qs] I'd be interested to here any point of contention, big or small.