(Failed) London Bombers

Doing my usual flick through on the BBC news website, I was pleased to see the terrorist scum got what they deserve and each have to serve 40 years minimum.

The article can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6291238.stm

But this begs the question, why should we have to fund their incarceration? The government estimates that it costs £30,000 a year to keep someone in prison, so 4 men at 40 years each means £4.8 million. £4.8 million spent on terrorist bastards that don't deserve to be alive. Couldn't that £4.8 million be better spent?

I propose an alternative solution. £20 on a baseball bat...£4,799,980 to people that deserve it...

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

bk2006

Should be death in my opinion - i am very much for an eye for eye .

Ben

Reply 2

jack_sparrow

I'm not quite sure why we abandoned the death penalty, it would cut costs so dramatically and free up space in our overcrowded penitentiary system. It may also act as more of a deterrent for people planning on committing the most heinous of crimes. Bring it back I say!

Reply 3

thatwhichiam

jack_sparrow

Aside from the massive moral implications...

Reply 4

jack_sparrow

Moral implications...you think the people planning to kill dozens, possibly hundreds of innocent people have any morals?

Reply 5

cutcopy

jack_sparrow

Moral implications...you think the people planning to kill dozens, possibly hundreds of innocent people have any morals?

But who gives one human the right to kill another regardless.

Reply 6

DenkMit

Exactly. This isn't even murder or attempted murder, it's treason!

Reply 7

Collingwood

The death penalty does seem the cheapest option. The only downside is that if you make a mistake, you can't just let them out with an apology and some compensation. Perhaps we could reintroduce the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes with some additional burden of proof required?

Reply 8

donuticus

Surely by killing them we give them waht they wanted. Can't see them lasting too long in Belmarsh anyway to be honest.

Reply 9

cutcopy

donuticus

Surely by killing them we give them waht they wanted. Can't see them lasting too long in Belmarsh anyway to be honest.

Precisely. It isn't like they're going to serve a comfortable sentence.

Reply 10

jack_sparrow

donuticus

Surely by killing them we give them waht they wanted. Can't see them lasting too long in Belmarsh anyway to be honest.

I don't care if it's what they want, if they want to die, then that's their choice, but I don't want to fund the incarceration of scummy terrorists, particularly at £1.2million a time.

As for the statement "who gives the right to say whether another human being dies...". If the death penalty was instated as part of our criminal justice system, the perpetrator would be fully aware that he could receive this form of punishment, and is thus condemning himself to die if he commits the crimes for which the death penalty is an option.

Reply 11

jack_sparrow

Insincere Dave

Precisely. It isn't like they're going to serve a comfortable sentence.

I appreciate that, and it's important that they should bear some suffering for what they've done (or tried to do). I'm more in favour of protecting the economic viability of our prisons than ensuring terrorists get their comeuppance in the showers of Belmarsh. (no pun intended).

Reply 12

thatwhichiam

Giving them what they want and sinking to their level by killing them is not right, however much it costs our criminal justice system. Once we deal with murderers in this way, how long before someone suggests rapists and paedophiles? Once that's suggested, how long before GBH offenders? Living a nasty, uncomfortable life has got to be worse than death, although I think we're about to stray into philosophy and religion.

Reply 13

Collingwood

The slippery slope is a logical fallacy for a reason. Instituting the death penalty for one crime does not lead inexorably to the death penalty being applied to an increasingly wider array of crimes. We have not observed this happening in America or India, for instance, where they still have the death penalty. Similarly, executing murders is no more "reducing society to their level" than imprisoning kidnappers, which no one seems to have a problem with. There is a clear difference between launching an unprovoked attack on a peaceable citizen and imposing punitive measures on a convicted felon, and society recognises this. Aside from the impossibility of reversing miscarriages of justice, I don't understand why the death penalty is treated as some particularly indefensible punishment by a lot of people

Reply 14

Johnny 5

Collingwood

Go on. What's going to be a greater burden of proof than the absence of any reasonable doubt?

Reply 15

Dionysus

Oh for god's sake, not the bloodthirsty retribution brigade again. By that rationale, you'd be executing everybody who commits attempted murder, most of whom do it with less understandable motives. The death penalty is fundamentally wrong. It's a question of morality - something which there seems to be little of around here.

Reply 16

thatwhichiam

Collingwood

We don't imprison kidnappers in the same way they imprison their kidnapped people, generally. Prisons in Britain must be of a standard, and I think taking someone's freedom and privacy away is a perfectly good punishment. I also don't see how not reducing society to the level of killers is not a good argument. Killing people is wrong is the message we are trying to send out - it makes us hypocrites to then go and kill them especially for as spurious a reason as money.

Reply 17

Collingwood

2 5 +

Go on. What's going to be a greater burden of proof than the absence of any reasonable doubt?

Perhaps a requirement for unanimity amongst the jury and relevent DNA evidence? I'm not entirely sure how it would work - Im not even sure I support the death penalty - but it seems to me at least that the only opposition to it that stands up to scrutiny is the inability to undo miscarriages of justice.

Cage

The death penalty is fundamentally wrong. It's a question of morality - something which there seems to be little of around here.

I'm happy to accept this as a possibility, but why, exactly, is the death penalty fundamentally wrong?

thatwhichiam

Nor need executions be brutal stabbings in darkened side streets. We can be polite and humane about it, but the fact remains that if you built a UK prison-style building and locked someone in it against their will then you would be a criminal, and you would be an immoral one at that. I don't see why you see a distinction between lawful retributory imprisonment and kidnap but you don't see a distinction between execution and murder. It seems like nothing more than an illogical emotive appeal used by people who have already made up their minds.

Killing people is wrong is the message we are trying to send out - it makes us hypocrites to then go and kill them especially for as spurious a reason as money.

Kidnapping people and locking them in small rooms is usually wrong, too. You don't seem to have any answer to this; constant repetition of the same assertion doesn't demonstrate anything much.

Reply 18

mudblood

donuticus

Surely by killing them we give them waht they wanted. Can't see them lasting too long in Belmarsh anyway to be honest.

But it would also being giving us what we wanted (or what I want) and I think it's fair to say that I'm more important than they are. :wink:

Reply 19

DenkMit

thatwhichiam

Well then how about making prisons nasty uncomfortable places? No nice food, no tvs, no mobile phones - if I had my way, they'd be lucky to get heating even... If I was running prisons, then it wouldn't take £4.8 million each to keep them.