I begin to get irritated here, as you had only to read further down:
The death penalty is a fitting response to heinous crimes (not merely murder, but murder with aggravating circumstances) because we must preserve a sense of proportionality in sentencing, and in the schedule of penalties. By the time we reach simple murder, we exhaust our recourse to simple imprisonment as punishment. If we want to differentiate between the ordinary crime and even fouler acts, we resort to execution. We could, of course,chronically torture the inmates to achieve a similar effect, but we have decided that execution is more humane than torture.
See above for most of your complaints.
The empirical evidence about systems of justice is complicated and brings into play numerous variables, and neither of us is sufficiently expert to seriously review it. We cannot control for factors like ethnic homogeneity, relative lack of immigration, family solidarity, and habits of social deference left over from (disintegrating) class systems. We also have a difficult time because there was a lengthy hiatus in executions in the States, and they are still unusual except in a handful of states, so whatever social message that may be intended may be diluted. Also, it is not necessary for there to be an effect on murderers for there to be a salutory effect on potential criminals more generally, but that would be difficult if not impossible to measure. We have gang wars and occasional outbreaks of senseless violence, as in school shootings. They have soccer hooliganism and serious fascist parties, and, in some countries, such as the UK and the former Yugoslavia, chronic political violence (Northern Ireland and the various ethnic wars in the Balkans). Historically, it is not long since Germany, Japan, and Italy were in the thrall of fascist leaders who brought untold misery to the world, and countries like France were full of collaborators, helping to haul Jews to Auschwitz. If some of these countries are more peaceful now, maybe it is because of the previous bloodletting. I do not, in any case, feel confident in any "empirical" assertions either of us might make about such things, when they are, in fact, highly speculative.
If you are not persuaded by the argument, so be it. Since our initial premises are so different, I did not expect to persuade you. |
