The other day, I asked my readers to share their views on the death penalty and why they believed what they believed. It is no surprise that most of the answers are divided down party lines with the more liberal readers being against the death penalty and the more conservative ones for. Even if it doesn't drive elections, this is probably one of the most contentious issues before us today. Most of the contention comes from the fact that there is no real factual basis for belief either way. There is nothing to point to on your side to say "I'm definately right and you're definately wrong." And when we try to assign factual basis to our arguments, then we sometimes end up a lot further off base than we'd like. For example: some conservatives argue that the death penalty is necessary because it costs too much to feed and house a criminal for the rest of his life. Personally, the idea of putting a dollar value on a human life, even the life of a serial killer, bothers me. If we allow it to be done in the case of a criminal, how long will it take to do it in other cases too? How long will it take to determine that keeping grandma alive simply costs too much? We're already headed in that direction due to other arguments and I'd like to aviod it as much as possible.

In order to understand the death penalty, we must understand the reasons behind the death penalty. And in order to understand that, we must first understand the proper reason for crime and punishment to begin with. Most people in the US believe that jail is (or should be) for the purpose of rehabilitation. Thus, we have introduced numerous social programs, projects and experiments aimed at turning the criminal into a useful member of society. This process fails for a number of reasons.

For the most part, a criminal has already been taught (or has been born with) a certain mindset. This mindset can be caused by any number of factors, but the largest factor is simply not being taught any differently at home. Does that mean that someone who grows up in a good home with loving parents and is taught right from wrong will never do anything bad? No, but the odds of them becoming a career criminal are far smaller than someone who grows up in a single parent home or with parents who disregard him and is not taught right from wrong.

A child, growing up and being taught, will absorb just about anything you give him at the time. They are constantly learning and emulating everything that they see and hear. They are eager to learn. However, once a person gets out of that child stage, learning becomes a matter of choice. They will not learn anything that they don't wish to learn. And when a person is being punished, they are nowhere near as likely to want to learn. So, when rehabilitation is combined with punishment, the likelihood of its success is dropped dramatically.

In order to simplify matters, I equate the treatment of criminals to raising children. In both cases, they need constant reminders of what is acceptable and what is not. And when they know the rules and break them intentionally, then they are swiftly punished for that violation. The punishment has nothing to do with rehabilitation and is used simply to make them scared enough of the punishment that they do not wish to repeat it.

Of course, this assumes that all criminals have "normal" minds. There will always be serial criminals or people who commit crimes of such horrific proportion that they must be treated differently. When such a person is identified, it is obvious that they it will never be safe to allow them to interact with other people. No amount of rehabilitation will change them and no social program will "reeducate" them. For this type of person, there are only two solutions. Leave them in jail for the rest of their natural lives or kill them. I propose that if this is the choice, it is more humane to kill someone rather than keep them locked up for the rest of their lives with no chance of ever seeing the outside again.

It has been suggested that if we are to supply such a horrific choice, the criminal himself should be given the choice to either live in prison or die. I'm afraid, though, that this approach would open the door to cries of "state assisted suicide." And that would be a reasonable claim. It would be somewhat of a catch-22 if someone knew that just by committing a horrendous crime that they would be allowed to die and they wouldn't have to do anything themselves. Would we still be able to put that person to death? Of course it's possible for that to happen even now, but the odds are much smaller when the decision is in the hands of a judge and jury.

Although our current death penalty system is not perfect, I haven't been presented with any reason yet to do away with it. In a just system, some people simply cannot be allowed to live. It's not pretty, it's certainly not nice, but it's the truth.

Posted by: Drew at 11:12 AM | Comments (41) | Add Comment
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