If the Death Penalty doesn't have a profit motive, and is so obviously barbaric, why do political groups and people in America still rally behind it? Surely there's more to it than most Americans just being blood thirsty monsters, right?
Surely there's more to it than most Americans just being blood thirsty monsters, right?
No.
I want to steal things. I want to kill people. I want to cut people off in traffic and run over bicycles. Get the fuck out of my way, right? But you know what? I control myself. I follow the rules. But when I see someone stealing, or who cuts me off, I get so fucking angry, man. Why should they get away with it? I'm sitting here doing everything right and all I get from it is shit. So why the fuck shouldn't I just steal shit and kill people if you can just get away with it? Society only works if there's punishment. Don't let your fucking dog shit on my lawn and not pick it up. God dammit. Just fucking behave. It makes me so fucking angry. I wish I could punish these people myself. So many people do bad things and get away with it. There are people who follow the rules and people who don't. I see someone who doesn't follow the rules. I'm so angry. We need more good people and less bad people. Society won't work like this. My fucking hands are shaking man I get so worked up when I think about it. You can't let them get away with it. They need to be punished more severely, obviously. We need to catch all of them. Until it sinks in. Until the bad people are gone or stop being bad.
Meanwhile, every study ever shows that hitting your kid once has measurable, entirely negative effects on their lives. CW: Christian Fascists, DV
spoiler
And all those Christian Fascist dipshits think beating their kid is a commandment from god and if they don't find an excuse to hit their kids their kids will go to hell. It's really, really, terrifying, tragic, bizarre sicko shit, and not our joyful sicko. Like if you ever think the world is too bright and beautiful and want to take it down a few shades look up the theological (lol) basis of Christian Fascist physical violence against their kids.
I very openly will call people who defend spanking children child abusers. They don’t like it but I try to shame them about it as far as possible
You're right
We have no choice but to make the death penalty profitable
Gun range but with live targets
Pay extra to choose the race, gender, sexuality, and age of your target
Are you seriously giving them ideas right about now? :madeline-stare:
I think most Americans don't realize how expensive the death penalty is, and IME when you explain it to them, their response is usually something like, "Well they should just shoot them, bullets are cheap." People are more inclined to see the expense of the death penalty as government inefficiency that needs to be fixed, rather than a reason to get rid of it.
In other words,
Surely there's more to it than most Americans just being blood thirsty monsters, right?
No.
Why is the death penalty so expensive?
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Legal costs: Almost all people who face the death penalty cannot afford their own attorney. The state must assign public defenders or court-appointed lawyers to represent them (the accepted practice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the prosecution as well.
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Pre-trial costs: Capital cases are far more complicated than non-capital cases and take longer to go to trial. Experts will probably be needed on forensic evidence, mental health, and the background and life history of the defendant. County taxpayers pick up the costs of added security and longer pre-trial detention.
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Jury selection: Because of the need to question jurors thoroughly on their views about the death penalty, jury selection in capital cases is much more time consuming and expensive.
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Trial: Death-penalty trials can last more than four times longer than non-capital trials, requiring juror and attorney compensation, in addition to court personnel and other related costs.
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Incarceration: Most death rows involve solitary confinement in a special facility. These require more security and other accommodations as the prisoners are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells.
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Appeals: To minimize mistakes, every prisoner is entitled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at taxpayers’ expense. These appeals are essential because some inmates have come within hours of execution before evidence was uncovered proving their innocence.
Genuinely how would ending the death penalty change those? Those are all costs of the court case, which still has to happen for the same crime. That's not the cost of the death penalty
The fact that we spend so much money to ensure no one is unfairly sentenced to the death is not a reason to keep the death penalty. It is cheaper to house an inmate for life than to go through the legal process of charging them with death.
And even then people get unjustly sentenced to death, like, all the fucking time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#United_States
Oh yeah, death penalty convictions are about skin color and how many lying "expert witness" cranks the prosecutors can find who will swear before god that according to the entrails of this goat (haruspicy) the accused definitely certainly did it.
Yes, but people are granted additional recourse to appeal when they're sentenced to death, and the total costs end up being more than life in prison.
This is the part where the bloodthirsty monsters respond, "Well, bullets are cheap, just shoot them."
I don't see how life in prison is more just than death. Not everyone is a bloodthirty monster for having a different perspective than you.
So your argument for how the death penalty being more expensive , from what youve told me, is that people facing the death penalty are given MORE legal representation than someone charged of the same crime without the death penalty. That doesn't give me confidence in your goal.
The death penalty is more expensive, innocent people are executed all the time, and there's also a heavy racial bias in who is subjected to it.
You don't have confidence in my goal? I don't have confidence in yours.
Bruv the goal is telling you the plain fact that it costs a dramatically greater amount of money for the state to murder someone than to put them in a cage indefinitely. What is your goal?
And life in prison isn't more just. Nothing the American carceral system does is justice. But if you're alive then at least it gives you time to prove that the cops who fingered you were lying about everything and try to get a new trial. Though even that doesn't work sometimes thanks to our august and venerable supreme court.
Give us your actual views instead of this boring devil's advocate shtick. Have some courage.
Well see, that's not exactly what you said. You've provided a ton of additional context that changes the way I'm going to approach this conflict. In fact, if your argument is simply that focusing on the financial incentives will just lead to lower quality of care for prisoners, that's something I'd be willing to consider.
I thought the same - the list is not self-explanatory, nor does it argue that it is "cheaper".
But if you click the link it will take you to a page that explains a bit more:
Overview
The death penalty is a moral issue for some and a policy issue for others. However, it is also a government program with related costs and possible benefits. Many people assume that the state saves money by employing the death penalty since an executed person no longer requires confinement, health care, and related expenses. But in the modern application of capital punishment, that assumption has been proven wrong.
The death penalty is far more expensive than a system utilizing life-without-parole sentences as an alternative punishment. Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case, and the relative rarity of executions. Most cases in which the death penalty is sought do not end up with the death penalty being imposed. And once a death sentence is imposed, the most likely outcome of the case is that the conviction or death sentence will be overturned in the courts. Most defendants who are sentenced to death essentially end up spending life in prison, but at a highly inflated cost because the death penalty was involved in the process.
The Issue
How much the death penalty actually costs and how that compares to a system in which a life sentence is the maximum punishment can only be determined by sophisticated studies, usually at the state level. Many such studies have been conducted and their conclusions are consistent: the death penalty imposes a net cost on the taxpayers compared to life without parole. The question is whether the assumed benefits of the death penalty are worth its costs and whether other systems might provide similar benefits at less cost. The assessments of law enforcement experts are particularly relevant in identifying what expenditures are most effective in reducing crime.
That page unfortunately does not use references, so they don't make it super easy to jump to the evidence that they base each statement on. But you can find a few specific cost studies here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs/summary-of-states-death-penalty, and I'm sure there are many more resources through the site if you are really interested.
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Surely there's more to it than most Americans just being blood thirsty monsters, right?
No.
Sadism. It's just sadism. A lot of people in the US enjoy seeing others being hurt and killed. They think that people accused of death penalty crimes are acceptable victims so they can fully indulge their blood lust. The number of cases where the family of the victim of the murder pleads with the prosecutors not to seek the death penalty and then the accused is sent to death row is really illustrative. It has nothing to do with justice for families or anything else, it's just the state flexing it's power to kill and the bloodthirsty mob indulging their love of violence and misery.
Like all these nut jobs who defended trying to murder the very obviously failed-by-society Parkland shooter
Like with every other harmful and barbaric practice in the US that hurts the working class, the cruelty is the point. It always has been the point, throughout North America's entire history of settler colonialism. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the US are so grave, so atrocious, so absurdly evil that they can never be atoned for.
Take a look at the US' prisons. They deliberately engineer them to be sites of torture. They deliberately restrict nutritional value and variety, refuse to have air conditioning installed, and facilitate the conditions for violence and abuse to occur both from guards and fellow inmates. The heat in the summer is getting worse and causing people to drop like flies in US prisons, just like they deliberately let COVID run rampant and eat everyone alive. There's also the arbitrary use of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation that frequently goes anywhere from a few years to several decades. These places are built to thoroughly destroy people in the worst possible ways imaginable. I've even read something once about lethal injections not being efficient in some cases, causing the victim extreme pain sometimes for days before they finally die. It's not about rehabilitation, it's torture porn for these fuckers.
The US has never been the hero of really any story. It's always going to be the epicenter of the world's evil, until it is irreversibly destroyed in its current form and rebuilt to benefit the working class and punish evil instead of endlessly rewarding it.
It's really frustrating. I throw around :gulag: a lot, and i've got no issue with killing people in the prosecution of war or for clear, important strategic reasons, but the lust for revenge is very offputting and, on a purely material basis, it's actively counterproductive. We know from endless research that punishment doesn't discourage others from behaving badly, it doesn't reduce recidivism, it doesn't fix anything and actively makes things worse on almost all metrics. I get that people are upset and want to find some kind of way to assert control, but we're supposed to be the materialist ideology.
Plus, also, I think it's much, much crueler to convert bad actors than it is to kill them so I do admit there's a little sadism in my opposition to death penalties or other forms of violent punishment.
Prisons themselves are still profitable. Private prisons get a government stipend tied to the number of inmates. That's all cost to the state and/or federal budget, but the people writing bills take campaign donations from the prisons.
"Expensive". The cost is fully paid for by the government (federal or state), this is not directly money out of pockets of those crazies.
