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Originally Posted by Fox McCloud
You're very confusing and very misleading in the way you presented your argument. At first, you start off by saying that "if they don't care about their lives" they'd be more inclined to commit the crime if they knew they'd be disposed of quickly. But then you quickly switch to the "and if they DO care about their lives, then the other option - long term imprisonment - is more of a punishment"; as though there is only one option for each scenario. You need to be more clear and credible: If someone cares for their life, what is worse, to have that life taken away from them? Or, to sit for a while in prison knowing that they'll be out at some point? which is more of a deterrent?
The issue of someone not caring for their life is irrelevant; merely for the fact that the killer in question did not kill themselves after committing the crime. The mere fact that they're still there means they care. So your point fails in that aspect. And to conclude, the prospect of losing this life that they care about, is much more of a deterrent than to know that they have hope in coming out after they've finished their "time-out"/grounding stage
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Yeah, reading back on it now, I can see how it would be confusing. It was just something I typed up hastily as I was busy with something else at the time. Let me try to elaborate and explain a little better what I was saying. Admittedly this argument falls short in that it fails to take into account crimes of passion. What this argument addresses is those crimes that are pre-meditated. Now, I think it would be a bit easier with an example, so I'll use me.
I care very much about my life. If it ended of anything other than natural causes I would be most unhappy, of course I'm not even particularly happy with that scenario. Now, if I were to commit a pre-meditated crime, there would be lots of things to think about. Probably the biggest would be how not to get caught. The obvious reason for not wanting to get caught is the punishment, so of course I would have to at least have an idea of what the punishment for my crime would be (at the very least it would be a good idea to know) before I could begin to plan how to avoid it. If I was faced with the option of death penalty or life in prison (assuming my crime is heinous enough to get that sentence) or even just 20 years, death penalty would honestly start looking pretty good.
This is assuming of course that whatever country you're in can perform death penalty swiftly, but since that's not the case in America where I live, it might become a little different. But then again, a couple of years waiting for death would be nothing compared to 40 years of your life. So to at least me, the fact that the death penalty is not an option would make me seriously rethink committing the crime, because regardless of how thought out it was, there's always the potential that I could get caught. And yes you could try to commit suicide in prison, but then again you could mess up and spend the rest of your life on life support.
I don't know, the more that I type, the more I realize this argument is a little weak and far too specific to get a law changed. Most of the reason I even posted that argument was because there was only one person that was opposed to the Death Penalty in the whole thread. To be honest, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I think in most cases that it shouldn't be done, but then again when you've got absolute atrocities like rape or imprisonment and torture being committed, maybe it should be used more.