why is human life so cheap in modern britain?

I think there is a big difference between shooting someone for some petty ****, and a police officer shooting someone to save a life.


Yet it is still called shooting. You missed my point.

That further validates my point...

My reply was to someone saying that killing someone through the justice system isn't killing. I'm saying it is. That was my point. Whats yours again?

Life is cheapened by killing people. Therefore killing more people cheapens life even more.

If we presume life if cheapened by it being killed and the killer being punished less than he/she should, executions cheapen overall life even more, as the executors are not punished at all (while a 20 year prison sentence for the original killer is still serious punishment)

life is cheapened by killing innocent people. its not cheapened by executing convicted murderers.


the 2 things are not the same-- much like murder and accidental death are not the same.


20 years for taking an innocent life diminishes life to the level of a bank robbery, for example. in essence, you are saying human beings are no more important than bags of cash.

It's the remains of a very upper/middle class dominated society (I'm talking when it was extreme, hundreds of years ago) that have created laws making property (of the rich, at the time) more important then human life... Poor and starving people were hanged for stealing a loaf of bread...

Our laws still reflect these sentiments (being capitalist), which is definitely wrong. But, that doesn't mean that the death penalty is okay.
I agree that the consequences for killing should be greater then they are now, but I think LIFE imprisonment and being worked while there is better. This is because 1. it saves the tax payer a hell of a lot of money, and 2. it stops the possibility of innocent people being executed because they were wrongly convicted.
I personally don't think it's ever ok to take human life, no one should have that power, despite what kind of person they are.

the problem is, you cannot be compassionate to everyone despite their actions.


its either compassion for the violent or compassion for their victims and potential victims. but not both.


personally, i'm not ideologically in favor of the death penalty, i support it because its pretty obvious that since it was abolished, things have got a lot worse in terms of crime.

at the very least, its has to be tried for a couple of decades because the present permissive system is a monstrous failure. barbarism is violent crime. and violent crime has increased dramatically since the 60s.

britain is amore barbaric place since abolition, not less.

I'm not talking about being compassionate to the criminal, compassion has nothing to do with it... I'm talking about my morals and ideals.
Violent crime has gone up everywhere, including places that still have the death penalty. It's not BECAUSE of the death penalty being abolished, it's because of many changes within society.

i agree. lots of things have contributed to rising crime. so, i would suggest justice should have got even tougher to meet the new changes, not weaker.

That doesn't mean the death penalty though... We moved on from that because of the moral implication, because a lot of the country are now against it morally...
Being tougher and trying to stop these crimes doesn't mean we have to take a step backwards like that. I've given another suggestion myself.
Do you know that violent crime (including murders especially) are falling at the moment in this country, and have been since 2001?

the step back was abolition. as has been proved by the dramatic increases in crime.

crime rates are not static. they ebb and flow, but after abolition they shot up dramaticially.

The liberal minority in the UK have decided that crime should be punished with weak sentences. I personally believe a murder should equal a minimum of 40 years in jail.

A murder should mean LIFE, actually life... and probably some labour from them to help the country out a bit.
Of course the sentencing should be worse then it is, just about everyone feels the same. But the death penalty is a completely different matter.

Yes. Something I also agree with. I support capital punishment so I would go even further than life. However liberal people make things difficult.

It's not necessarily "liberal" to not want to kill someone. There's different levels of everything.
But I personally disagree, as I've explained quite a few times on this thread.
Life in prison is a lot cheaper to the tax payer (clearly a concern atm), and it means we won't kill anyone who could have been wrongfully convicted.
Personally I don't think we should ever have the right to take someone's life, no matter what they've done. We can remove them from society to keep us safe, but locking them up for life, but killing them is just wrong to me. But obviously everyone has different morals.

I would kill them. I also believe in the three strikes and your out rule America enforces. Smaller crimes should be punished with long sentences.

Well I guess we have completely different morals then.