SaltandPepper98 said:
Mule, I am a little to the right politically of Genghis Kahn so I think we can execute a good 500 people a week in this country. Life without parole? Does that stop them from killing again in prison? Does that make life easier for the prison guards? What are you going to do give him more life if he kills again? At $50,000 a year cost to the taxpayers?
With you all the way "Genghis"! (I understand that Khan avowed he derived his greatest pleasure from seeing his victims' "near and dear bathed in tears.")
First, to dispose of the theistic component , I don't subscribe to a god myth, so the argument for revering all life as a sacred generation of some deity is irrelevant.
And, please, before the knees start a-jerkin', note I do find the beauty and uniqueness of all life extraordinary and worth exceptional investment to cherish and preserve. In general.
But there are exceptions, and we as thinking, rational, self-aware beings have every right to define what we will accept or prohibit in our societies and how we will go about removing from those societies those members that prove a danger to the rest of us.
Life without parole effectively removes these components from general society, but as S&P points out, makes it difficult for prison guards. Of course, that argument is as valid as the one insisting we should outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars because the wait staff is ******* to smoke: If you don't like the conditions at work, don't work there.
(No I'm not a smoker and I did vote to outlaw smoking in all restaurants, but not because the employees are ******* to smoke. Its their free choice to work there. The conditions of the job aren't kept from them. Should we outlaw the grill, too, because it makes them hot? I voted to outlaw smoking because not smoking is not an imposition on other people, while smokers can't control the products of their behavior, which removes choice from others.)
The stronger argument is that $50,000.00 per inmate per year burden placed on the very society from which the criminal is removed. I can't tell you how I resent being ****** to support these men and women, disenfranchised from society, damaging and killing innocents, but hypocritically hiding behind the very laws they detest when the time comes for "criminal justice" to shield them. You don't encapsulate a cancer and keep it alive. You terminate it.
Capital punishment is the only answer for taking a life, because it is an unforgivable offense. The state can't forgive it, family, friends or loved ones can't forgive it. Only the victim of a crime of any kind can forgive the perpetrator of the crime against them. And the victim is dead. No forgiveness possible.
So let the lights flicker and dim. Let the chemicals flow. I'd gladly volunteer to push whatever button they use to get the job done.