I remember hearing that the cost to execute the death penalty is significantly more expensive than life imprisonment with regards to the layers and layers of judicial and legal bureaucracy and procedures that have to be performed in order to legally enact it vs permanently incarcerating someone.
This is 100% correct. The cost is in the appeals process.
And even with the extensive appeals process, we still wind up executing innocent people. There really isn't any excuse to use the death penalty outside of a revolutionary context, and even then, Mao's treatment of Emperor Puyi is in every way superior if you have the luxury to do it.
I disagree, life imprisonment is only cruel if your system is designed for cruelty. There are people that are genuinely a threat to society to the point they have no hope of being integrated. Prisons in the common understanding of it aught to be abolished but that does not mean there won't be some form of exception.
I point to the Swedish incarceration system as a decent starting point where criminals who's mental illnesses are so severe and untreatable are kept in well furnished rooms with common amenities that anyone would have. They aren't treated as beasts or monsters but as people who's conditions renders them unable to be part of society through no fault of their own.
Much like how it's dependent upon who controls the State determines for who's benefit the state acts for, the same method must be applied to all aspects of society - the incarceration system included.
I remember hearing that the cost to execute the death penalty is significantly more expensive than life imprisonment with regards to the layers and layers of judicial and legal bureaucracy and procedures that have to be performed in order to legally enact it vs permanently incarcerating someone.
This is 100% correct. The cost is in the appeals process.
And even with the extensive appeals process, we still wind up executing innocent people. There really isn't any excuse to use the death penalty outside of a revolutionary context, and even then, Mao's treatment of Emperor Puyi is in every way superior if you have the luxury to do it.
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I disagree, life imprisonment is only cruel if your system is designed for cruelty. There are people that are genuinely a threat to society to the point they have no hope of being integrated. Prisons in the common understanding of it aught to be abolished but that does not mean there won't be some form of exception.
I point to the Swedish incarceration system as a decent starting point where criminals who's mental illnesses are so severe and untreatable are kept in well furnished rooms with common amenities that anyone would have. They aren't treated as beasts or monsters but as people who's conditions renders them unable to be part of society through no fault of their own.
Much like how it's dependent upon who controls the State determines for who's benefit the state acts for, the same method must be applied to all aspects of society - the incarceration system included.