Should convicted pedophiles receive the death penalty?

Well I'd say claiming someone is faking compassion is also to some extent a personal insult


Posted from TSR Mobile

The defenseless position makes perfect sense. Innocent law abiding people who go around their daily business don't deserve to be killed. Serious child sexual abusers do. Even if they are in a state of defenselessness during execution, their execution isn't unwarranted.

True, some sexual offenders can be reformed and for those that can, kudos, just as long as they are also punished.

I didn't say capital punishment should be applied to cases of rape in general, but a specific type of rape, the rape of children, because raping children is particularly horrific and repulsive.

Fair enough, you've taken the moral position that all forms of punishment is completely wrong and that nobody should be forced to endure privations or sanctions for actions deemed harmful to society. I disagree with this approach because it tries to outsource blame for the actions of a criminal to everybody and anything but the criminal.

Finally, no, in all honesty, I'm not a mathematician and I couldn't possibly try to explain the analysis in either of those studies, but I referred to them to dispel the myth that there is no academic support for the idea that the death penalty has a deterrent effect.

Finally, consider this. Since the abolition of capital punishment in 1965, the homicide rate has steadily increased and has never actually fallen back to pre-abolition levels. In 1965 the homicide rate was 6.8 per million, in 2015 it was 10 per million. At one point it was nearly double what it was in around 2001/2002 when it reached about 16.6 million, but the fact is that the homicide rate is still higher than it was when hangings were abolished. Given that the number of homicides in the UK started to spike immediately after capital punishment was abolished, I attribute this to a considerable degree to the removal of the deterrent effect which capital punishment had and which is no longer present. The number of attempted murders, the number of threats to murder, the numbers of assaults, have all risen disproportionate to population growth. The fact is that most criminals are rational beings. They take into account the costs and benefits of their actions and right now those willing to use lethal violence aren't deterred by the costs.

No, a simple statement of fact.

You can't factually say people are showing 'faux compassion' because you can't be certain that's true. Your claiming that it's a statement of fact just gives more credence to what I said


Posted from TSR Mobile

Excellent point.

So, what exactly are you personally doing to help paedophiles in the real world?

At what point have I said I support pedophiles? Or even have sympathy for them? Would you like to quote me?

I disagree with use of capital punishment which means at the moment there is nothing for me to do in this country


Posted from TSR Mobile

Faux compassion it is then.

Troll it is then


Posted from TSR Mobile

If thats how you choose to deal with uncomfortable truths, so be it.

What is on display here is faux compassion.

Progressives champion the rights of the very worst in society simply to boost their virtue signalling.

I mean, how uber compassionate would an individual have to be to show compassion for the sub-human that raped a seven year old girl?

There's compassion and then there's blinding softness and the misguided belief that human nature is inherently pure and human intent is always good.

You're so obsessed with condemning liberals that you fail to see that it is YOU that is championing the rights of the worst of society.

Kill a child molester who has raped a seven year old child and you are FREEING that child molester. If they are convicted and imprisoned they WANT to die. You are giving them exactly what they want.

The seven year old child, however, is left to live with what has happened to them. The convicted paedophile who is killed doesn't live with what they've done. They just cease to exist anymore. Big punishment!!

So it's not actually about being defenceless in your eyes, it's about whether or not you're guilty of a crime. The problem there is it's pretty hard to draw a line at what crime you can be executed and what you can't.



What is the purpose of punishing them? What are you hoping to achieve?



But how does killing someone fit the crime of raping a child? What measurement are you applying?



I'm not outsourcing blame at all I'm saying that punishment serves no purpose. It's far more beneficial for society that you rehabilitate criminals and get them back into society so they can make a positive contribution.



But then you can't keep plugging this idea that it's a deterrent if you don't understand the arguments in favour of that.



That's quite a simplistic take on it really because you're not accounting for the fact that multiple incidents of murder by one perpetrator was recorded as one homicide until 1997 nor are you accounting for changes in society over time.

I could just as easily use a similar argument; states in the US with the death penalty have a higher collective murder rate than those who don't. But like I said, that's an overly simplistic view

I suggest you read this which essentially dispels the academic arguments you posted: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/discussion-recent-deterrence-studies


Posted from TSR Mobile

The purpose of any punishment is deterrence. Raping a child is especially obscene and heinous because the victim is a minor who is most probably weak and very unable to defend themselves, it is a sickening form of exploitation. This goes for all rape victims in general, but the fact that in this case the victim is a child, makes it especially horrific. Again, I'm not saying rehabilitation doesn't serve a purpose but you seem to assume that rehabilitation and punishment can't co-exist which it absolutely can. It is perfectly possible to put somebody in an austere environment where they lose their right to liberty and luxury whilst educating them and giving them the necessary skills to re-integrate into society. This makes them fear going back to prison (which decreases the likelihood of re-offending) and gives them options once they are back into the open, even further decreasing the likelihood of re-offending.

If I'm not accounting for the fact that multiple incidents of murder by one person was recorded as one homicide until 1997 then my argument is strengthened because the homicide rate immediately after the abolition of capital punishment if measured by today's standards would have been even higher and was therefore artificially repressed by statistical methods, meaning we don't know the full extent to which the deterrent effect of capital punishment was watered down after its removal and we only have a very small picture.

What "changes to society" are you referring to? Society certainly witnessed a rise in violent crime and homicide rates disproportionate to population growth and the criminal justice system in the 1960s moved away from punishment and introduced elements of restorative justice, so either you're blaming your own philosophy of soft justice for the rise in violent crime and homicide rates, blaming more immigrants settling into the UK (which seems to be the only overt and noticeable "change to society" since capital punishment was gotten rid of, but I find this highly implausible and I doubt you would blame that either), or you're suggesting that Brits just one day woke up decided to become more violent and willing to use lethal force on average.

The United States has the death penalty only in name, it is rarely ever applied anymore in sentencing and when it is, convicts wait for decades on death row, meaning the deterrent effect is diluted. Last year the US had nearly 16,000 murders but only 20 executions. In fact the number of executions per year over the last 17 years have fallen.

If the US applied the death penalty more consistently and without the delay of death row, then my guess is the deterrent effect would kick in and homicide rates would fall. And okay, the link you've sent me isn't really anymore credible than the previous studies I sent you, the recurring criticism seems to be that studies which support the notion of a deterrence effect use flawed statistical models and methods of analysis without explicitly explaining why. In fact Professor Richard Berk makes a claim which partially supports my hypothesis on the application of capital punishment in the US, which is that it is rarely applied, so yes I guess in that sense it's hard to measure the deterrence effect of a sanction which isn't actually used very often.

Any society which has rule of law, presumption of innocence before guilt, trial by jury, shouldn't have qualms about executing heinous criminals.

Total nonsense.

Unless of course you can explain why condemned criminals in the US spend years fighting against their execution?

Can you?

Besides the point, thanks to liberals the human garbage featured in the link i provided was sentenced to 17 years so with good behaviour will be out in 8 years.

So, thanks to liberals like you championing the cause of such human vermin, 8 years is now viewed as suitable punishment for repeatedly raping a 7 year old girl in the UK.

Well done.

The purpose of any punishment is deterrence.

...so you're telling me that retribution is nothing to do with criminal justice? as if righting a wrong is a fantasy? I think a lot of juriprudents will disagree with your view here. if we only punished people as a means of deterrence, that would literally mean that "punishment" is the totally wrong word for what we do to criminals...but we do "punsish" them. and in the retributive sense. because ther eis a concept of what is deserved or earned in justice. if you DESERVE to be wronged for the wrong you've committed, then that's justice. the balancing of the scales.