Quote:
Originally Posted by Mariah Christmas
I don't understand how people think that punishment by death is any more 'worse' than making someone rot in jail for their whole lives. People let their guilty conscience rule over their moral judgement.
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Because death is an immediate consequence and imprisonment *should be* punishing. If someone is ready to die and decides to take out a couple of his/her classmates or work colleagues with them, what's the point in killing them anyway? I know that if I lost a loved one and that person killed themselves, or was put to death, I'd effectively be left with no answers as to why they did it. In actuality I did lose a cousin in a stabbing nearly fifteen years ago and the perpetator received a ridiculously short amount of jail time (roughly 6-8 years, IIRC). Does that make me angry? Of course. But only because of the length of the sentence. I don't feel I'd have any more resolution with what happened if he'd been killed. But then I was very young at the time and I can't really say I was "incredibly close" with him (he was twice my age) so I know I can't
directly speak for all grieving relatives/partners. I just think the reason we can call ourselves civilized is because the law isn't dealt out with emotive interests and vendetta.
The glamour of taking a vengeance to the grave and becoming a martyr to whatever cause they're pushing, or indeed whatever mental illness they're taken over by, just seems to create more killers.
I don't doubt that prison's too easy in some cases. Of course prison costs are not ideal but the figures spent on lethal injections are on the rise at a bizarre rate (at least in America, because anything pharmacological is
) And I also don't have a lot of sympathy for child rapists/killers being killed in retribution / by other inmates, of course, but that would really be their actions and not society's.