Does Capital Punishment deter murder?

“A penalty imposed for wrongdoing: "The severity of the punishment must . . . be in keeping with the kind of obligation which has been violated" (Simone Weil).

right.speaking from a behavioral pov, whats the point of a penalty for wrongdoing? its so that the person learns to not do that again. if youre executed, you cant learn not to kill again, so its not punishment. in behavioral science terms like "punishment" and "reinforcement" have very specific meanings”

“sometimes, a punishment is just a punishment”

“Crash...I must disagree....learning only occurs when the behavior is modified....some scum sucking criminal becoming worm dirt....that to me is an EXCELLENT change of behavior.

You know I was up all Saturday/Sunday working a case. 23 year old fifteen time loser. Of all the stuff he has done (family violence, assault etc etc) he finally got charged, or should I say Pleaded, to Theft By Taking. He spent a few days in lockup is out on probation.

Does he learn from his ways...NOOOO. He got busted for DUI, was in the proximity to a fire that was set, and spent three hours lying to us about how he got there, what he was doing etc etc.

Granted he is small time scum, but you know while we were there it took three officers off the street, cost taxpayers money for the extra STUFF we have to do, and he got away thinking he is MR. TOUGH GUY. The sad truth is he will continue on that track until he gets probation revoked, or locked up for something even more.”

“learning only occurs when the behavior is modified

yes, i agree with that. thats kinda my point. let me put it this way. punishment is an attempt to modify behaviour. execution is not an attempt to modify behavior

ome scum sucking criminal becoming worm dirt....that to me is an EXCELLENT change of behavior.

that is not a change of behaviour. that is absence of behavior

im sorry, im not trying to argue with the way you feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel, just trying to show you that terms have specific definitions

when people say that execution is punishment, or that its "closure" for the families of the victims, what they really mean is that its revenge, it makes them feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel better. thats not a good reason for execution.

having the threat of execution hanging over your head, and knowing the state has done it before and theyll do it again, and hopefully thatll deter a few people, and save a few lives, thats worth it. to remove someone from this earth who has forfeit his life because he has shown to be a hopeless sociopath, in order to protect society, that is worth it.
last edited: 6/18/07 8:57:26 AM”

“"In the field of psychology punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition. In this field, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via a stimulus which is applied ("positive punishment") or removed ("negative punishment"). Making an offending student lose recess or play privileges are examples of negative punishment, while chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment.The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease then it is not considered punishment.

if youre executed, its a moot point. the behaviour doesnt decrease, because you just ceased to exist. there is no "after the fact" when youre effing dead

the point of punishment is to try to modulate behaviour. you cant modulate their behaviour IF THEYRE DEAD. execution is for the most worthless sociopaths, the ones all hope has been given up for, the ones who cant, wont, will never learn. if you punish someone, that means you still hope they can learn
last edited: 6/18/07 9:14:01 AM”

“Okay we can agree on that. I usually operated on the theory that most people are basically good and want to make the right decision. But we all have to make decisions with the information we have. Sometime the information, or our assessment of it is flawed.

Years ago I had a friend in Savannah who ran a liquor store. One night this waste of human flesh walked in to rob him. Now the criminal had three rapes (only one plea bargain for minor charges) a couple of minor strong arm robbery charges, on his record. He was probably responsible for a couple of rather violent armed robberys in the area.

He picked the wrong store. That night as he held his little 25 cal pistol, Charlie opened the register and quick drew a 9 MM automatic. He fired three times blowing the guy's thumb and forefinger off. The bullets also blew out his elbow, and one hit him in the shoulder.

Eight years later the criminal made probation. Charlie asked the prosecutor if he needed to worry about the guy. He was told "when you pulled the trigger that night our buddy there said he learned a lesson. Apparently he had never understood people CAN fight back."

The guy got out and he seems to have led a life on the straight and narrow.”

“Crashs's definition of "punishment" from Wikipedia and Psychology
refers to a technical use of the term for purposes of scientific study of how consequences for an individual organism influence that individual's behavior. I think common usage of the term includes punishment by death.

Some of this debate is very old. Many centuries ago, Moses Maimonides said: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent man to death."”

“I just looked up stats on innocence of those on death row. What I found was a list of people who since 1973 had been found innocent while under death sentence. The list included people in the US who were "sentenced to death and subsequently either-
a) their conviction was overturned AND
i) they were acquited at re-trial or
ii) all charges were dropped
b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence."

There were 124 names on the list.

The innocence project counts 203 post conviction exonerations by DNA, but notes that of those, only 15 were of people who had been sentenced to death.

Given that we had 60 executions in 2005 and 59 in 2004, we still a striking number of exonerations of people given the death penalty (more than two years worth since 1973 by all causes, 1/4 of a year through one recently developed and more specialized method).”

“Punsihment, deterent, revenge; call it what you want. Bottom line there are humans who; by there very nature, will never be able to live withen the bounds of society. Their crimes are so horrendous that the death penalty is the ultimate and appropriate punishment. Unfortunately there are some humans in our society who are just plain and simply evil; and evil is evil.

I think it is inaccurate to say that familes of victims feel better when the criminal is executed. And sometimes punishment is not to modulate behavior its just punishment. Its cause and effect. Someone knowingly commits a henious crime they know they will get a bad punishment, ergo if you commit premedatated murder you will face the death penalty. The threat of capital punishment is the deterent not the actual execution. But one must remember that an execution is a deterent to the crimes committed by others.

The ONLY thing good to come out of the VT shooting was that the Cho killed himself thereby saving the taxpayers of Virginia untold millions of $. Justice delayed is justice denied”

“Also, if we are to take punishment in the technical psychological sense we can discuss the phenomena of vicarious conditioning and vicarious punishment through which punishment of an act done by another leads to a decrease in that behavior by observers.”

“Ped...is that the explaination for the Reality Shows?”

“keep in mind, im not at all trying to argue against the death penalty. i just hate it when ppl mis-use words”

“I don't think I could ever explain reality shows, but it was definitely one explanation for public executions.”

“This reminds me of an oldy but goodie:

The Wilson-Bush Letters:
19 Hermes 80 p.s.U.


Your Royal Fraudulency King George II:

I wish to support your efforts to abolish as much as possible of the federal government and transfer its functions to faith-based organizations. I suggest that you should apply this idea especially to the controversial matter of capital punishment.

Let faith-based organizations take over our seasonal rites of human sacrifice; after all, they invented the institution in the first place, and it requires ardent faith to believe in it in the 21st Century. Distribute the boodle evenly to all faiths, so that Roman Catholics can burn offenders at the stake, in accord with their own faith-based system, Protestants can revive the public hanging, Moslems and orthodox Jews can employ stoning to death, Mormons can use bullets, Sikhs can chop off heads again, etc.

The federal funds so spent will not only boost the power of faith-based groups, but will proportionally decrease the influence of research-based groups, who often destroy faith and encourage doubt anyway.Think how much this will aid the drug war alone, along with most of your other programs, and you will see the long-range benefits of this modest proposal.

Hoping that this will meet with your approval, I remain

Your serf and servant,
Robert Anton Wilson

Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:02:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Autoresponder@WhiteHouse.GOV
Subject: Re: Faith-based Executions
Sender: White.House.Mail.Relay.Autoresponder

The President@Whitehouse.Gov received your electronic mail message.

Thank you.

”

“Punsihment, deterent, revenge; call it what you want.

no, dont call it what you want. punishment, deterrent, and revenge are three different things. with punishment, youre trying to change the behavior of the offender. with deterrent, youre trying to change the behavior of potential future offenders. with revenge, youre just trying to feel better by evening the score.

Bottom line there are humans who; by there very nature, will never be able to live withen the bounds of society.

no ones arguing against that. im certainly not arguing against the death penalty

I think it is inaccurate to say that familes of victims feel better when the criminal is executed

thats probably true, but i think a lot of them go into it believing theyll feel better

. And sometimes punishment is not to modulate behavior its just punishment.

im using punishment in a more precise, more correct technical sense, from a perspective of behavioral psychology. youre using punishment in more general, laymans terms.

The threat of capital punishment is the deterent not the actual execution

yes, i believe i said that already. the threat of being executed is the deterrent, not the actual execution. but they have to carry out that execution, or its an empty threat

Someone knowingly commits a henious crime they know they will get a bad punishment, ergo if you commit premedatated murder you will face the death penalty

if it gets to the point of death penalty, we've wholly given up on that person. they have to be removed from society for the good of society. life is a series of rewards and punishments. if you do good, dont do anything too bad, your reward is your freedom and maybe friends and family and a nice life, if you do bad, youre punished with fines, prison time, whatever, with the hope that youll learn that with bad actions come bad consequences. if you do something bad enough to get the death penalty, that means game over, we're not trying to teach you anymore, we're not hoping youll become a better citizen. you just need to be taken out of the game. not so youll learn, it just needs to be done”

“right.speaking from a behavioral pov, whats the point of a penalty for wrongdoing? its so that the person learns to not do that again. if youre executed, you cant learn not to kill again, so its not punishment. in behavioral science terms like "punishment" and "reinforcement" have very specific meanings”

It is a price tag for a certain action. Action A calls for punishment B which should be equitable to the crime. It's not about learning. It's about debt.

But this is all IMHO of course and you may thing differently which is fine. Wrong but fine. LOL!”

“It's not about learning.

correct! thats my point! capital punishment IS NOT ABOUT LEARNING. but real punishment, however, is

by calling it "capital punishment", we're softening it. i dont know why, but we are

in the strictest sense of the word ,capital punishment is not punishment. thats a misnomer. like "army intelligence" or whatever. we should call it what it is: execution. end of game. permanent time-out

i suppose if you believe in reincarnation, it could be considered punishment, assuming you remembered what happened in your previous life, since then death wouldnt be the end, and theres still opportunity to learn. but then, you probably wouldnt come back as a man. youd come back as something lower, like a lawyer
last edited: 6/18/07 7:38:33 PM”

“...this is me not caring...”

“dot dot dot this is you running out of rebuttals dot dot dot”

“No, I have a limited amount of time online these days and I'm not going to spend it having one of these back and forth debates of yours where you try and show me the light and get me to convert to your way of thinking. I can accept the fact that not everyone thinks like me or agrees with me. I can spend a few posts sharing opinions but beyond that I simply do not find it important enough for debate.”

“its not a debate. im not trying to convert you. i am trying to impart knowledge to you, as well as occupy my time. these are facts, not opinions that i am trying to demonstrate. i am trying to show you more specific and precise definitions for the words that us laymen bandy about carelessly. "deterence" has to do with behavior, so we need to be able to speak in the language of behavior analysis.

unfortuneately, tt has conditioned us to be defensive and dig in our heels about everything. so, therefore, class dismissed
last edited: 6/19/07 7:23:01 AM”

“"...class dismissed...."

What, like you have no class now?”

“The fact that you have repeated your position about five times now shows you have no need to be right in this non-debate. It's obvious it's much more important to be right in this and as it matters little to me, here ya go;

"I Nigal J. McGillicuty, due hereby state that I am of sound mind and body when I state that Crash B. Bang is 100% correct in his views pertaining to the death penalty and all things connected to it such as 'punishment' and 'deterrent'. I am completely and utterly wrong. He is right and he rules and is the smartest guy I have ever met.

Signed,
Opinionated layman Nigal"

Now be off with you.”

“I mean....once you discover that most of Crashes statements are based in a theoretical pseudo field of witchdoctory (new word!!) founded by a cocaine addicted quack who based his findings on the ravings of neurotic jewish housewives...you can put the theories into proper perspective.


Punishment should change behavior that I agree. Revenge is an action which seeks retribution. By the very fact that the death penalty for most parts is just "painless" putting the criminal out of their misery I cannot see how logic would classify this as revenge.

I think most humans want to do good. The very few who seem to be the EVIL among us have lost IMHO their ability at being human and have become no better than the snarling rabid dog.

Personally I think there should be a bit more fear to the death penalty. Would it deter future criminals? Don't really know, I have seen a lot of families who were counseled to "show forgiveness" when a killer of a loved one was put to death. Privately I have watched the nicest, sweetest grandmother you ever met dance a jib when the scum breathed his last.

I will not debate the minutae of the death penalty but I will debate whether it works. It does. The LIFE in PRISON term is a joke. I am sorry but when a cop dies and the scum is walking the streets 20 years or less later...

THe best finish for them is like the guy in California who butchered that girl and left her in the ditch. When release time came no law enforcement agency would accept responsibility for protecting him and he died in a trailer on the grounds of the prison.”

“By the very fact that the death penalty for most parts is just "painless" putting the criminal out of their misery I cannot see how logic would classify this as revenge.

physically painless, yes. but mentally horrifying to many.

it doesnt matter what logic would classify this as. someone who is greatly bereaved at such a horrifying atrocity is not going to always be rational. peoples motives arent always rational”

“http://home.knology.net/news/read.php?ps=1011&id=15179829&_LT=HOME_LARSDCCLM_UNEWS

Gotta love it. the comment

California spends a lot of money to put someone to death," Tyre said. "That money would be better served educating people (about crime) so things like this could be prevented."
By his attorney.

here is some education.

Video tape his death by injection. Have it carried out within one year of the sentence. Then have the body disappear, never seen again.”