I don't think the government should kill people.
I think it is bad that my government has chosen to kill this person as a punishment.
Its going to cost more and make martyr out of him and we may not have a humane way to do it, and it might be easier on him, and harder on some victims to go through the process of putting him to death
If none of that were true,
It is still something I find immoral.
I used to think that "justice" sounds neat. It's still a stylish word. The older I grow, the more I want to vomit when it's evoked as a motivation.
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Lord Palingtonhe.him.hisHistory-loving pal!Registered Userregular
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and one of the guys arguing for the death penalty on air said something to the effect of, "If this guy doesn't deserve the death penalty, then no one does."
One thing about the cost of death penalty cases. Most of it comes from the almost unending appeals, correct? Since this guy pleaded guilty, does that mean he doesn't get any or that they will be reduced?
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
One thing about the cost of death penalty cases. Most of it comes from the almost unending appeals, correct? Since this guy pleaded guilty, does that mean he doesn't get any or that they will be reduced?
Death penalty automatically gets a whole heap of appeals.
One thing about the cost of death penalty cases. Most of it comes from the almost unending appeals, correct? Since this guy pleaded guilty, does that mean he doesn't get any or that they will be reduced?
Death penalty automatically gets a whole heap of appeals.
The process of appeals should last about 10 years, is what I am hearing.
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and one of the guys arguing for the death penalty on air said something to the effect of, "If this guy doesn't deserve the death penalty, then no one does."
And honestly, I had to agree.
No one does.
'Deserve' is not a useful concept in criminal justice.
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Lord Palingtonhe.him.hisHistory-loving pal!Registered Userregular
I'll have to go back and see if I can find the transcript, but it may not have been the word "deserve," but something to that effect. Maybe "If the death penalty isn't appropriate in this case, it never is."
Main point is, I don't think we ever need the death penalty In America, not even in this case.
Funny thing is, the main sponsors for the bill are Republicans, and that it's gotten this far in a mostly conservative/GOP state legislature: Apparently they've come to the conclusion that when you figure in the cost of appeals, trying to execute is just too expensive to be worth it.
It's nice to hear a pro-life person actually reach the intellectually consistent conclusion that pro-life also equals anti death penalty.
It won't be intellectually consistent until pro-lifers remember that life is still sacred once it's out of the womb and so maybe stop slashing public education and welfare funding.
It's nice to hear a pro-life person actually reach the intellectually consistent conclusion that pro-life also equals anti death penalty.
It won't be intellectually consistent until pro-lifers remember that life is still sacred once it's out of the womb and so maybe stop slashing public education and welfare funding.
Baby steps can still be steps in the right direction.
If a toddler almost makes it to the toilet before soiling themselves it's still better than than not trying at all.
It's nice to hear a pro-life person actually reach the intellectually consistent conclusion that pro-life also equals anti death penalty.
It won't be intellectually consistent until pro-lifers remember that life is still sacred once it's out of the womb and so maybe stop slashing public education and welfare funding.
Every time my newborn cries for food I tell her to pick herself up by her boot straps and get a damn job. I don't see the problem.
I support abolishing the death penalty. But I think I may be about as close to a supporter of it as there is here, in that if it were limited to cases like Tsarnaev I would probably support it. It never will be. But in cases where there is certainty that a person planned and executed the cold-blooded murder of random people for politics or simply pure joy, I do not have a problem with the state taking their life.
Because either way, that's what the state is going to do. Keeping him for life in an SHU is taking his life as surely as executing him, but a lot less clean.
For hours, days, I fixated on the patch of sunlight cast against my wall through those barred and grated windows. When, after five weeks, my knees buckled and I fell to the ground utterly broken, sobbing and rocking to the beat of my heart, it was the patch of sunlight that brought me back. Its slow creeping against the wall reminded me that the world did in fact turn and that time was something other than the stagnant pool my life was draining into.
Here, there are no windows.
I would rather that he die still the person that committed those crimes, knowing what he did and why this is happening, than as something who's humanity and mind have been worn away by decades of nothingness. And I think it is better too for us to face that death, with all its attendant expense and judicial process, rather than locking him away and forgetting about him, pretending that he isn't being destroyed because his heart is beating.
I'm not surprised many family members would prefer he spend life in prison. If I were them, I would be that angry too. But I don't think it's a morally better outcome.
Account not recoverable. So long.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
This is separate from the routine abuse of solitary as a method of punishment or torture in prison.
Also, sometimes it has to be done for their own safety. Jeffery Dahmer is a great example of what happens if a serial killer is kept in the general population. To be fair, this was his choice, I'm pretty sure he knew what the outcome would be if he wasn't in solitary.
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
This is separate from the routine abuse of solitary as a method of punishment or torture in prison.
You say this like people in this thread aren't arguing that we should maybe figure out how to do this whole mental health thing. Your post treats psychopaths like dogs to be put down, and you assume there's not already psychological options for treatment.
What I quoted above is a false trichotomy. There is a spectrum of options available to us that do not include solitary confinement, chemical alteration and execution. You assert that they can't be reformed, and I would like you to give me a citation for that assertion.
joshofalltrades on
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
It's nice to hear a pro-life person actually reach the intellectually consistent conclusion that pro-life also equals anti death penalty.
It won't be intellectually consistent until pro-lifers remember that life is still sacred once it's out of the womb and so maybe stop slashing public education and welfare funding.
It's perfectly intellectually consistent to hold that life is sacred (or whatever) and hold that the state is not obligated to care for the people.
I mean the position is that it's morally wrong to deliberately kill a human being and that a fetus is a human being. The second claim is irrelevant to anything else and the first claim says nothing about how people should be treated besides not getting killed.
And anyway you can be intellectually consistent with a pro-life and pro death penalty position. It just depends on what exactly the premises are that you use.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
You could still give the guy a window though. That some people need to be separated from the general prison population doesn't mean you have to make solitary confinement as torturous as the US sometimes makes it.
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
This is separate from the routine abuse of solitary as a method of punishment or torture in prison.
You say this like people in this thread aren't arguing that we should maybe figure out how to do this whole mental health thing. Your post treats psychopaths like dogs to be put down, and you assume there's not already psychological options for treatment.
What I quoted above is a false trichotomy. There is a spectrum of options available to us that do not include solitary confinement, chemical alteration and execution. You assert that they can't be reformed, and I would like you to give me a citation for that assertion.
Cite. In addition to this, a number of fMRI studies have found atypical activation patterns in the brains of psychopaths, psychopathic traits emerge very early in childhood, and psychopathy is strongly heritable, all of which suggest that this is a deep-rooted brain condition which can't be "reformed." Possibly in the future there may be medical interventions that can cure it, just as possibly in the future there might be cures for autism, but in the present day nothing works. As far as your suggestion that we treat this as a mental health problem, this has been tried, per Wikipedia:
In England and Wales, the diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder is grounds for detention in secure psychiatric hospitals under the Mental Health Act if they have committed serious crimes, but since such individuals are disruptive for other patients and not responsive to treatment this alternative to prison is not often used.
Or we could just give that guy a window...? Any "death is more humane than life in prison" argument carries with it the silent assumption that the prison system either can't or shouldn't be improved to the point where it is generally preferable to death.
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
You could still give the guy a window though. That some people need to be separated from the general prison population doesn't mean you have to make solitary confinement as torturous as the US sometimes makes it.
They usually get TVs in the US - there is a comparison in the article I linked. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind no windows. Either way, solitary is a soul-destroying condition, and sticking some niceties on top will not change that.
Cite. In addition to this, a number of fMRI studies have found atypical activation patterns in the brains of psychopaths, psychopathic traits emerge very early in childhood, and psychopathy is strongly heritable, all of which suggest that this is a deep-rooted brain condition which can't be "reformed." Possibly in the future there may be medical interventions that can cure it, just as possibly in the future there might be cures for autism, but in the present day nothing works. As far as your suggestion that we treat this as a mental health problem, this has been tried, per Wikipedia:
In England and Wales, the diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder is grounds for detention in secure psychiatric hospitals under the Mental Health Act if they have committed serious crimes, but since such individuals are disruptive for other patients and not responsive to treatment this alternative to prison is not often used.
.
mentalhealthmy.com -- you realize this is not a legitimate source, right?
Man, I sure would like to promote that mental.
My favorite part is how the article sources itself.
Please give me an actual citation. Predisposition to all sorts of things, including heart disease, is genetic, and yet they are treatable. I'm not convinced by any argument that says something that is hereditary is not treatable.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
The solitary confinment thing, and removing people from the general prison population reminds me of Breivik (the 2011 Norway terror attack) and how, while they removed him from the general prison population, they had rotating guards so that he had human contact for a few hours a day, a PC (not connected to the internet), reading matterial, and a TV.
While I personally wouldn't be happy with such an arrangement, I doubt that I would consider it torturous.
Anyway, even your own "article" says that many don't share the pessimistic view that psychopathy is incurable. Really, after looking around myself, the subject is actually very controversial with some people holding your viewpoint and others saying that they were able to make some progress. Here, have a real citation:
One argument sometimes used in support of the idea that psychopaths are not truly capable of being treated is that studies have found brain abnormalities in psychopaths that might be associated with their deviant behavior. This argument becomes less valid, however, when we consider that there are neurobiological aberrations that can be detected in the brains of sufferers of any disorder. Just because there are predisposing neurobiological aspects of a disorder does not mean the disorder is untreatable; if this were the case, the list of psychological disorders we could treat would arguably be empty.
(...)
As indicated, however, just because behavior is based in neurobiology doesn't mean it is immutable. If that were the case, we might as well give up on trying to change anything about ourselves. A more important question is if the research suggests that psychopathic behavior becomes less so with rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, there is not a straightforward answer to that question. Some do report that treatment may be beneficial. For example, studies by Caldwell et al. (2006) and Skeem et al. (2002) both found improvements in psychopaths with treatment (measured by likelihood of recidivism). However, other studies have obtained less optimistic results, ranging from little improvement in psychopathy with treatment to treatment seeming to exacerbate psychopathic behavior. All of the studies on psychopathy treatment have limitations, however, and there is not a well-controlled experiment that we can point to and feel confident that it tells us if psychopathy is treatable.
So... you know, instead of claiming you know for a fact that it's untreatable, maybe we should be keeping these people alive while we actually devote ourselves to figuring out how to treat it. It's also important to keep these people alive for study so you can fix other people before it gets to the point of people getting murdered. You can't do research with a dead psychopath.
Anyway, even your own "article" says that many don't share the pessimistic view that psychopathy is incurable. Really, after looking around myself, the subject is actually very controversial with some people holding your viewpoint and others saying that they were able to make some progress. Here, have a real citation:
One argument sometimes used in support of the idea that psychopaths are not truly capable of being treated is that studies have found brain abnormalities in psychopaths that might be associated with their deviant behavior. This argument becomes less valid, however, when we consider that there are neurobiological aberrations that can be detected in the brains of sufferers of any disorder. Just because there are predisposing neurobiological aspects of a disorder does not mean the disorder is untreatable; if this were the case, the list of psychological disorders we could treat would arguably be empty.
(...)
As indicated, however, just because behavior is based in neurobiology doesn't mean it is immutable. If that were the case, we might as well give up on trying to change anything about ourselves. A more important question is if the research suggests that psychopathic behavior becomes less so with rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, there is not a straightforward answer to that question. Some do report that treatment may be beneficial. For example, studies by Caldwell et al. (2006) and Skeem et al. (2002) both found improvements in psychopaths with treatment (measured by likelihood of recidivism). However, other studies have obtained less optimistic results, ranging from little improvement in psychopathy with treatment to treatment seeming to exacerbate psychopathic behavior. All of the studies on psychopathy treatment have limitations, however, and there is not a well-controlled experiment that we can point to and feel confident that it tells us if psychopathy is treatable.
So... you know, instead of claiming you know for a fact that it's untreatable, maybe we should be keeping these people alive while we actually devote ourselves to figuring out how to treat it. It's also important to keep these people alive for study so you can fix other people before it gets to the point of people getting murdered. You can't do research with a dead psychopath.
The results of a follow-up conducted an average of 10.5 years after completion of treatment showed that, compared to no program (in most cases, untreated offenders went to prison), treatment was associated with lower violent recidivism for nonpsychopaths but higher violent recidivism for psychopaths...
Why did the therapeutic community program have such different effects on the two offender groups? We speculated that both the psychopaths and nonpsychopaths who participated in the program learned more about the feelings of others, taking others’ perspective, using emotional language, behaving in socially skilled ways, and delaying gratification. For the nonpsychopaths, these new skills helped them behave in prosocial and noncriminal ways. For the psychopaths, however, the new skills emboldened them to manipulate and exploit others.
How about CBT? Everyone loves CBT!
High psychopathy offenders who were rated as having shown the most improvement (as measured by conduct during the treatment sessions, quality of homework, and therapists’ ratings of motivation and change) were more likely to reoffend than other participants, particularly in violent ways.
It does kinda look like therapy simply makes psychopaths more dangerous by arming them with insights into normal cognition.
What's the upshot?
Alternative Conclusion 4. No clinical intervention will ever be effective. Psychopaths are qualitatively different from other offenders but do not have deficits or impairment in any standard clinical sense. From this standpoint, the entire clinical enterprise is fundamentally unsuited to interventions to reduce the harm perpetrated by psychopaths. All that can be hoped for is a set of strategies to limit the harm by psychopaths by constraining their activities and opportunities....
In the final analysis, we adopt a blend of Alternative Conclusions 3 and 4....
We believe there is no evidence that any treatments yet applied to psychopaths have been shown to be effective in reducing violence or crime. In fact, some treatments that are effective for other offenders are actually harmful for psychopaths in that they appear to promote recidivism. We believe that the reason for these findings is that psychopaths are fundamentally different from other offenders and that there is nothing “wrong” with them in the manner of a deficit or impairment that therapy can “fix.” Instead, they exhibit an evolutionarily viable life strategy that involves lying, cheating, and manipulating others.
As an aside, it's very clear what conclusion you want here, and that you are fishing for doubts that will allow you to maintain that conclusion. That's not a good strategy if your goal is to think things that are true. In any field of science you can take isolated work and use it to discard the much larger body of work militating against your view, or at least to maintain a state of doubt - climate denialists do this all the time.
As far as studying dead psychopaths goes, this is a silly argument. Psychopathy is a renewable resource. We are not going to run out of them or lose valuable information by executing them, especially since any treatment that might be effective would surely be more effective in children than adults.
Anyway, even your own "article" says that many don't share the pessimistic view that psychopathy is incurable. Really, after looking around myself, the subject is actually very controversial with some people holding your viewpoint and others saying that they were able to make some progress. Here, have a real citation:
One argument sometimes used in support of the idea that psychopaths are not truly capable of being treated is that studies have found brain abnormalities in psychopaths that might be associated with their deviant behavior. This argument becomes less valid, however, when we consider that there are neurobiological aberrations that can be detected in the brains of sufferers of any disorder. Just because there are predisposing neurobiological aspects of a disorder does not mean the disorder is untreatable; if this were the case, the list of psychological disorders we could treat would arguably be empty.
(...)
As indicated, however, just because behavior is based in neurobiology doesn't mean it is immutable. If that were the case, we might as well give up on trying to change anything about ourselves. A more important question is if the research suggests that psychopathic behavior becomes less so with rehabilitation.
Unfortunately, there is not a straightforward answer to that question. Some do report that treatment may be beneficial. For example, studies by Caldwell et al. (2006) and Skeem et al. (2002) both found improvements in psychopaths with treatment (measured by likelihood of recidivism). However, other studies have obtained less optimistic results, ranging from little improvement in psychopathy with treatment to treatment seeming to exacerbate psychopathic behavior. All of the studies on psychopathy treatment have limitations, however, and there is not a well-controlled experiment that we can point to and feel confident that it tells us if psychopathy is treatable.
So... you know, instead of claiming you know for a fact that it's untreatable, maybe we should be keeping these people alive while we actually devote ourselves to figuring out how to treat it. It's also important to keep these people alive for study so you can fix other people before it gets to the point of people getting murdered. You can't do research with a dead psychopath.
The results of a follow-up conducted an average of 10.5 years after completion of treatment showed that, compared to no program (in most cases, untreated offenders went to prison), treatment was associated with lower violent recidivism for nonpsychopaths but higher violent recidivism for psychopaths...
Why did the therapeutic community program have such different effects on the two offender groups? We speculated that both the psychopaths and nonpsychopaths who participated in the program learned more about the feelings of others, taking others’ perspective, using emotional language, behaving in socially skilled ways, and delaying gratification. For the nonpsychopaths, these new skills helped them behave in prosocial and noncriminal ways. For the psychopaths, however, the new skills emboldened them to manipulate and exploit others.
How about CBT? Everyone loves CBT!
High psychopathy offenders who were rated as having shown the most improvement (as measured by conduct during the treatment sessions, quality of homework, and therapists’ ratings of motivation and change) were more likely to reoffend than other participants, particularly in violent ways.
It does kinda look like therapy simply makes psychopaths more dangerous by arming them with insights into normal cognition.
What's the upshot?
Alternative Conclusion 4. No clinical intervention will ever be effective. Psychopaths are qualitatively different from other offenders but do not have deficits or impairment in any standard clinical sense. From this standpoint, the entire clinical enterprise is fundamentally unsuited to interventions to reduce the harm perpetrated by psychopaths. All that can be hoped for is a set of strategies to limit the harm by psychopaths by constraining their activities and opportunities....
In the final analysis, we adopt a blend of Alternative Conclusions 3 and 4....
We believe there is no evidence that any treatments yet applied to psychopaths have been shown to be effective in reducing violence or crime. In fact, some treatments that are effective for other offenders are actually harmful for psychopaths in that they appear to promote recidivism. We believe that the reason for these findings is that psychopaths are fundamentally different from other offenders and that there is nothing “wrong” with them in the manner of a deficit or impairment that therapy can “fix.” Instead, they exhibit an evolutionarily viable life strategy that involves lying, cheating, and manipulating others.
As an aside, it's very clear what conclusion you want here, and that you are fishing for doubts that will allow you to maintain that conclusion. That's not a good strategy if your goal is to think things that are true. In any field of science you can take isolated work and use it to discard the much larger body of work militating against your view, or at least to maintain a state of doubt - climate denialists do this all the time.
As far as studying dead psychopaths goes, this is a silly argument. Psychopathy is a renewable resource. We are not going to run out of them or lose valuable information by executing them, especially since any treatment that might be effective would surely be more effective in children than adults.
The conclusion I'm trying to draw is that there's no reason to kill psychopaths, because even the most deranged lunatic who obviously murdered 20 forsaken children can be housed in a prison safely and more cheaply than if we were to put them on death row and kill them. Additionally, they would be of more use to society in that respect since we could then study them. If we don't have a safe, humane prison system right now, well, then that's part of the problem and should be fixed!
You're quoting the fourth, alternative conclusion of your citation as if it is obviously the correct one. It is not. There is no evidence one way or the other right now to say if we will ever discover a standard method to treat psychopathy effectively. All we know is that the things we have been trying haven't worked consistently. That is not an agenda, it is fact.
This is as far as I take this tangent, though, because the thread isn't about whether psychopaths are treatable. It's about whether we should kill them. And we shouldn't.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I disagree, but that's fine. My overall argument does not rest on that assertion.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I disagree, but that's fine. My overall argument does not rest on that assertion.
People keep making the assertion without supporting it, despite the fact that it's an illogical assertion that fails to hold up to even the briefest consideration.
Our rates of incarceration so vastly exceed our rates of executions that it is simply not possible that we are executing people so quickly that we have no one left to study.
Your argument might not rest on the assertion but you still saw fit to make it, and I find that annoying.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I disagree, but that's fine. My overall argument does not rest on that assertion.
People keep making the assertion without supporting it, despite the fact that it's an illogical assertion that fails to hold up to even the briefest consideration.
Our rates of incarceration so vastly exceed our rates of executions that it is simply not possible that we are executing people so quickly that we have no one left to study.
Your argument might not rest on the assertion but you still saw fit to make it, and I find that annoying.
*sigh*
I see value in studying as many people as possible, and right now the research is so limited that we're not doing nearly enough studying in the area of violent, mentally ill offenders. This is to say nothing of potential research benefits from having a wider pool of psychopaths from which to draw study, some of which may require specifics pertaining to a particular subgroup of violent offenders.
Unless you're claiming that of the <1% of the population that suffers from psychopathy and the smaller percentage of that group that is currently incarcerated has quite enough of every potential research variable that we can afford to kill a few off because there was nothing of potential research interest in their specific case anyway. Should we screen all psychopaths and make sure there's nothing particularly special about their case that anybody would ever want to research, and then kill them when we don't find anything?
But regardless, if tomorrow we did find a reliable treatment protocol for psychopathy, I would rather everybody with that particular mental disorder be alive so that they can benefit from such a protocol and be potentially rehabilitated. And that's what I'm really getting at.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I think the argument that psychopaths are still human beings deserving of life, and that we shouldn't keep the death penalty around just for them.
Even with zero chance at rehabilitation, there is still a reason for incarceration in protecting the rest of society, while still keeping the retribution aspect of the death penalty off the table.
We are studying psychopaths. The death penalty is not creating a shortage of them to study nor is it preventing study, nor will eliminating the death penalty result in more study of psychopathy.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I think the argument that psychopaths are still human beings deserving of life, and that we shouldn't keep the death penalty around just for them.
Even with zero chance at rehabilitation, there is still a reason for incarceration in protecting the rest of society, while still keeping the retribution aspect of the death penalty off the table.
I'm not sure what the phrase "deserving of life" means, but I am sure it has no business in the criminal justice system.
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I think it is bad that my government has chosen to kill this person as a punishment.
Its going to cost more and make martyr out of him and we may not have a humane way to do it, and it might be easier on him, and harder on some victims to go through the process of putting him to death
If none of that were true,
It is still something I find immoral.
And honestly, I had to agree.
No one does.
Death penalty automatically gets a whole heap of appeals.
The process of appeals should last about 10 years, is what I am hearing.
'Deserve' is not a useful concept in criminal justice.
Main point is, I don't think we ever need the death penalty In America, not even in this case.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
I remember listening to NPR about this.
Funny thing is, the main sponsors for the bill are Republicans, and that it's gotten this far in a mostly conservative/GOP state legislature: Apparently they've come to the conclusion that when you figure in the cost of appeals, trying to execute is just too expensive to be worth it.
It won't be intellectually consistent until pro-lifers remember that life is still sacred once it's out of the womb and so maybe stop slashing public education and welfare funding.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Baby steps can still be steps in the right direction.
If a toddler almost makes it to the toilet before soiling themselves it's still better than than not trying at all.
Every time my newborn cries for food I tell her to pick herself up by her boot straps and get a damn job. I don't see the problem.
Because either way, that's what the state is going to do. Keeping him for life in an SHU is taking his life as surely as executing him, but a lot less clean.
I would rather that he die still the person that committed those crimes, knowing what he did and why this is happening, than as something who's humanity and mind have been worn away by decades of nothingness. And I think it is better too for us to face that death, with all its attendant expense and judicial process, rather than locking him away and forgetting about him, pretending that he isn't being destroyed because his heart is beating.
I'm not surprised many family members would prefer he spend life in prison. If I were them, I would be that angry too. But I don't think it's a morally better outcome.
I consider it torture basically
Somewhere between 1 and 2 % of the population are psychopaths. Some portion of those are low functioning enough that they kill repeatedly and brazenly and rapidly find themselves in penitentiary. There they keep killing. People think the defining characteristic of pyschopathy is lack of empathy, but equally important is the inability to be deterred by punishment. SHUs were originally invented for these prisoners: they can't be reformed and pose a constant threat to guards and other inmates. That's one option. The second option is to chemically or surgically alter them so they're incapable of aggression. The third option is execution. Of these, I think execution is the better option.
This is separate from the routine abuse of solitary as a method of punishment or torture in prison.
Yes, it is a thing. Shoebomber guy is in it, along with the Unabomber and some others.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
You say this like people in this thread aren't arguing that we should maybe figure out how to do this whole mental health thing. Your post treats psychopaths like dogs to be put down, and you assume there's not already psychological options for treatment.
What I quoted above is a false trichotomy. There is a spectrum of options available to us that do not include solitary confinement, chemical alteration and execution. You assert that they can't be reformed, and I would like you to give me a citation for that assertion.
It's perfectly intellectually consistent to hold that life is sacred (or whatever) and hold that the state is not obligated to care for the people.
I mean the position is that it's morally wrong to deliberately kill a human being and that a fetus is a human being. The second claim is irrelevant to anything else and the first claim says nothing about how people should be treated besides not getting killed.
And anyway you can be intellectually consistent with a pro-life and pro death penalty position. It just depends on what exactly the premises are that you use.
You could still give the guy a window though. That some people need to be separated from the general prison population doesn't mean you have to make solitary confinement as torturous as the US sometimes makes it.
Cite. In addition to this, a number of fMRI studies have found atypical activation patterns in the brains of psychopaths, psychopathic traits emerge very early in childhood, and psychopathy is strongly heritable, all of which suggest that this is a deep-rooted brain condition which can't be "reformed." Possibly in the future there may be medical interventions that can cure it, just as possibly in the future there might be cures for autism, but in the present day nothing works. As far as your suggestion that we treat this as a mental health problem, this has been tried, per Wikipedia:
They usually get TVs in the US - there is a comparison in the article I linked. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind no windows. Either way, solitary is a soul-destroying condition, and sticking some niceties on top will not change that.
mentalhealthmy.com -- you realize this is not a legitimate source, right?
Man, I sure would like to promote that mental.
My favorite part is how the article sources itself.
Please give me an actual citation. Predisposition to all sorts of things, including heart disease, is genetic, and yet they are treatable. I'm not convinced by any argument that says something that is hereditary is not treatable.
While I personally wouldn't be happy with such an arrangement, I doubt that I would consider it torturous.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
So... you know, instead of claiming you know for a fact that it's untreatable, maybe we should be keeping these people alive while we actually devote ourselves to figuring out how to treat it. It's also important to keep these people alive for study so you can fix other people before it gets to the point of people getting murdered. You can't do research with a dead psychopath.
OK, here you go.
Intense group therapy:
How about CBT? Everyone loves CBT!
It does kinda look like therapy simply makes psychopaths more dangerous by arming them with insights into normal cognition.
What's the upshot?
As an aside, it's very clear what conclusion you want here, and that you are fishing for doubts that will allow you to maintain that conclusion. That's not a good strategy if your goal is to think things that are true. In any field of science you can take isolated work and use it to discard the much larger body of work militating against your view, or at least to maintain a state of doubt - climate denialists do this all the time.
As far as studying dead psychopaths goes, this is a silly argument. Psychopathy is a renewable resource. We are not going to run out of them or lose valuable information by executing them, especially since any treatment that might be effective would surely be more effective in children than adults.
The conclusion I'm trying to draw is that there's no reason to kill psychopaths, because even the most deranged lunatic who obviously murdered 20 forsaken children can be housed in a prison safely and more cheaply than if we were to put them on death row and kill them. Additionally, they would be of more use to society in that respect since we could then study them. If we don't have a safe, humane prison system right now, well, then that's part of the problem and should be fixed!
You're quoting the fourth, alternative conclusion of your citation as if it is obviously the correct one. It is not. There is no evidence one way or the other right now to say if we will ever discover a standard method to treat psychopathy effectively. All we know is that the things we have been trying haven't worked consistently. That is not an agenda, it is fact.
This is as far as I take this tangent, though, because the thread isn't about whether psychopaths are treatable. It's about whether we should kill them. And we shouldn't.
It's a red herring argument that people should stop making.
I disagree, but that's fine. My overall argument does not rest on that assertion.
People keep making the assertion without supporting it, despite the fact that it's an illogical assertion that fails to hold up to even the briefest consideration.
Our rates of incarceration so vastly exceed our rates of executions that it is simply not possible that we are executing people so quickly that we have no one left to study.
Your argument might not rest on the assertion but you still saw fit to make it, and I find that annoying.
*sigh*
I see value in studying as many people as possible, and right now the research is so limited that we're not doing nearly enough studying in the area of violent, mentally ill offenders. This is to say nothing of potential research benefits from having a wider pool of psychopaths from which to draw study, some of which may require specifics pertaining to a particular subgroup of violent offenders.
Unless you're claiming that of the <1% of the population that suffers from psychopathy and the smaller percentage of that group that is currently incarcerated has quite enough of every potential research variable that we can afford to kill a few off because there was nothing of potential research interest in their specific case anyway. Should we screen all psychopaths and make sure there's nothing particularly special about their case that anybody would ever want to research, and then kill them when we don't find anything?
But regardless, if tomorrow we did find a reliable treatment protocol for psychopathy, I would rather everybody with that particular mental disorder be alive so that they can benefit from such a protocol and be potentially rehabilitated. And that's what I'm really getting at.
I think the argument that psychopaths are still human beings deserving of life, and that we shouldn't keep the death penalty around just for them.
Even with zero chance at rehabilitation, there is still a reason for incarceration in protecting the rest of society, while still keeping the retribution aspect of the death penalty off the table.
MWO: Adamski
I'm not sure what the phrase "deserving of life" means, but I am sure it has no business in the criminal justice system.