Debate Thread

This study says that the death penalty actually costs more on average than life imprisonment.
Also, by castrating rapists/child molestors/etc, you might discourage some potential offenders from doing anything, but if someone is sick enough in the head to plan out how to Snuggle kittens with someone/molest a kid, then, under the whole "castration as punishment" thing, then they'll just decide "Well I'll have to be really careful and not leave any witnesses," which would probably lead to the deaths of the children they molest.
Or, what's also likely is that since sex crimes tend to be committed by people the victim knows (Family, close family friends,) and if you were close to Uncle Diddle, then if you learned that he molested another family member, then no matter how angry you got at him, chances are you still wouldn't want to necessarily send him to his death/castration.

Dewmann wrote:This study says that the death penalty actually costs more on average than life imprisonment.
Also, by castrating rapists/child molestors/etc, you might discourage some potential offenders from doing anything, but if someone is sick enough in the head to plan out how to Snuggle kittens with someone/molest a kid, then, under the whole "castration as punishment" thing, then they'll just decide "Well I'll have to be really careful and not leave any witnesses," which would probably lead to the deaths of the children they molest.
Or, what's also likely is that since sex crimes tend to be committed by people the victim knows (Family, close family friends,) and if you were close to Uncle Diddle, then if you learned that he molested another family member, then no matter how angry you got at him, chances are you still wouldn't want to necessarily send him to his death/castration.

That's because most of those who are going to be killed are kept alive for years and years at a time, which I think is ridiculous. If someone is sentenced to death, they should be killed within the week.

As for the article, I would like to see exactly what studies show that. They list no sources. It's not a study, it's an article that appears to be clearly biased against the death penalty, seeing as they did not represent those in support of it in the slightest.


I think if someone is deranged enough to kill a child, they would do it regardless of what the punishment is.


Well, I guess, by the law, that would make you an accomplice. Probably. But that's not really an issue. If you found out your child got molested, and you knew who did it, and you didn't do anything about it, then that's not the State's problem.

I don't get how you can't see the downside of going to jail for life. I could not even imagine living in one place my whole life, let alone living in shitty conditions under lock and key, where everyone around you is constantly seething with hatred. I don't know if y'all have ever gone even to county jail, but it is incredibly shitty.
If we don't treat our prisoners humanely, like giving them fair trials and the right to live, then we start deciding who gets to live and who gets to die, and sooner or later it becomes easier to let everyone die.
I think before we start on issues like the death penalty for sex offenders(for many people Snuggle kittens with is justifiable under their moral code) we have to catch more of them. More sexual assaults go unreported than go before the law, because the victims don't come forward, either because they are too ashamed or feel nothing will be done about it.
Also, if you're going to say things like "people will kill children regardless of the punishment", it does no good to make stricter punishments. After all, people are not hung for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen- so if the law doesn't discourage crime, then there is no point to it.

Here is the link to the study. I don't know how The Economist works but I assume there were no citations in Dew's link because it was copied directly from their print edition.
I haven't read the details of the study because I'm not interested in it.

My morals are ambiguous, at best, but I might go with Zebra to even it out, if it keeps up like this.

Lady Stardust wrote:I don't get how you can't see the downside of going to jail for life. I could not even imagine living in one place my whole life, let alone living in shitty conditions under lock and key, where everyone around you is constantly seething with hatred. I don't know if y'all have ever gone even to county jail, but it is incredibly shitty.
If we don't treat our prisoners humanely, like giving them fair trials and the right to live, then we start deciding who gets to live and who gets to die, and sooner or later it becomes easier to let everyone die.
I think before we start on issues like the death penalty for sex offenders(for many people Snuggle kittens with is justifiable under their moral code) we have to catch more of them. More sexual assaults go unreported than go before the law, because the victims don't come forward, either because they are too ashamed or feel nothing will be done about it.
Also, if you're going to say things like "people will kill children regardless of the punishment", it does no good to make stricter punishments. After all, people are not hung for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen- so if the law doesn't discourage crime, then there is no point to it.

I didn't say it would be a good life, but life is always better than death. And for someone who rapes and then kills children, they simply do not deserve life. You may say, "Who are you to decide who lives and who dies?"

Who are we to decide who sleeps with who? Who are we to tell someone they can't go find some eight year old and sex her up? Who are we to decide that someone can't just walk up and take everything out of your house?

I don't think sexual offenders should be killed, but I do think they should be castrated.

If someone is going to kill a child, and he has his mind set on doing it, then he is going to do it, regardless of what the punishment is.

But for most people, if they know they're going to get killed for doing something, they probably will not do it. It would deter those who have the capability to do so.


As for costs, there are a few ways you can cut those. For one thing, there's no reason for a person to be on Death Row for 30 years. That is just ridiculous. If someone is given the death penalty, it should be carried out within the week.

The study says that, on average, the cost of jailing someone who is sentence to death is more than someone who isn't, which I find to be rather odd, myself. As a matter of fact, that doesn't make any sense.

Top Hat Zebra wrote:

I don't think sexual offenders should be killed, but I do think they should be castrated.

If someone is going to kill a child, and he has his mind set on doing it, then he is going to do it, regardless of what the punishment is.

But for most people, if they know they're going to get killed for doing something, they probably will not do it. It would deter those who have the capability to do so.

Are you assuming that most people would molest or kill children if given the chance to do so with little to no consequences? Because if so, I'm just going to call bullshit on that right now.

And for those who would, my argument is that since they have their mind set on doing it, no matter what the punishment is, then what does it matter how harsh the punishment is? They'll just end up doing it anyway, like you say, so the only reason to castrate them would be for some sense of justice, which brings us into an entirely new debate on morals.

Dewmann wrote:

Top Hat Zebra wrote:

I don't think sexual offenders should be killed, but I do think they should be castrated.

If someone is going to kill a child, and he has his mind set on doing it, then he is going to do it, regardless of what the punishment is.

But for most people, if they know they're going to get killed for doing something, they probably will not do it. It would deter those who have the capability to do so.

Are you assuming that most people would molest or kill children if given the chance to do so with little to no consequences? Because if so, I'm just going to call bullshit on that right now.

And for those who would, my argument is that since they have their mind set on doing it, no matter what the punishment is, then what does it matter how harsh the punishment is? They'll just end up doing it anyway, like you say, so the only reason to castrate them would be for some sense of justice, which brings us into an entirely new debate on morals.

The mental capability, not actual capability.

Anyone could kill a child. They're, like, so soft and squishy and not durable.

I do think that MORE people would kill and molest children, were the only consequnce a warning, or fine, or something. But that's the same with all laws.


Because those people serve as an example. If someone is intent on speeding, no matter what, then he's going to do so. And if other people just see him getting pulled over and warned, then they're not going to feel very inclined to not speed.

But if we instead shot his tires out and then removed his engine and made him power the car with bicycle pedals, other people might not be so tempted to test the law.

(That's a silly metaphore, by the way. BUT SERIOUSLY GUYS LET'S START DOING THAT.)

If a man rapes a child, and then you cut his dick off, other guys who are looking at children and thinking how tight they must feel, probably aren't going to act on those thoughts with the threat of castration looming over them.




But that really isn't the point. I wasn't talking about raping and castration, I was talking about murder and the death penalty. I was just using Snuggle kittens with and castration as a comparison. I wouldn't want to kill a rapist, because that's not fitting to his crime.

I dunno, dude, you turned this debate over to a discussion of the penalty for sex offenders.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll be able to realize that nothing you do actually matters. The second as we know it is the amount of time it takes a Cesium-17 atom to vibrate a certain million number of times. It is as arbitrary as the actions we believe to be borne out of free will.

Lady Stardust wrote:Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll be able to realize that nothing you do actually matters. The second as we know it is the amount of time it takes a Cesium-17 atom to vibrate a certain million number of times. It is as arbitrary as the actions we believe to be borne out of free will.

That's the second time someone said that, so I guess it's quoting something...

Im going to assume the rest is a quote too, so I'll not write a rebuttle.

*rebuttal, and nice quote, Ziggy. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. []

Zebra wrote:Im going to assume the rest is a quote too, so I'll not write a rebuttle.

I have no such restrictions. FOR SCIENCE!

Lady Stardust wrote:Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll be able to realize that nothing you do actually matters. The second as we know it is the amount of time it takes a Cesium-17 atom to vibrate a certain million number of times. It is as arbitrary as the actions we believe to be borne out of free will.

Isn't that like saying distance is an illusion because we quantify it with a constant as well?

Gorgro wrote:

Lady Stardust wrote:Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll be able to realize that nothing you do actually matters. The second as we know it is the amount of time it takes a Cesium-17 atom to vibrate a certain million number of times. It is as arbitrary as the actions we believe to be borne out of free will.

Isn't that like saying distance is an illusion because we quantify it with a constant as well?

Spot on comparison, Gorgro; if someone is going by that line of thinking, can anything be truly defined?

Sort of. I was asking my dad if Math was an illusion too, but he said no, because we can physically collect, and see things that math effects.


I mean, I can have a loaf of bread, or four loaves of bread, regardless of whether the concept of math is invented.


But to him, it's impossible to have a minute old peice of bread, or a four minute old peice of bread, because if we never invented the concept of time, then it simply would not exist.


Which, I can sort of see, maybe. I mean, "Minutes" won't happen, but the same amount of time will have passed, regardless of if we observe and name it. It's like saying trees don't fall down unless we see or hear them.



I think what he's trying to say, with his limited speaking skills, is that Time will exist, as a thing, but it simply will not be measured. He only accepts that time is a measurement, not a... Thing. He thinks there IS something there, but he doesn't call it time, because he hates being reasonable.


I think time is observable regardless of if we have something to call it. We can see things grow, and we can see things change, and we can see that something has to happen between those two events for them to... Well, happen. It's exactly the same with math. Regardless of what we choose to call it (Or even if we call it nothing) math will exist, in some function or another, simply by the fact that there will always be numbers of things, even if we don't know them as such. Just because we do not observe something, does not mean it doesn't exist.

If we're not observing something, it might cease to exist. We don't know that it still does exist if we're not observing it. So if that's the case then time, math and existence is all an illusion.

If we stop observing the small severely autistic boy with a snow globe he might write a sprawling soap opera about a hospital.

Lady Stardust wrote:If we're not observing something, it might cease to exist. We don't know that it still does exist if we're not observing it. So if that's the case then time, math and existence is all an illusion.

Thinking like that is completely illogical, though. Just because we don't observe something happening doesn't mean it won't happen.

Again, go back to the tree in the woods. If no one sees it fall, that doesn't mean it won't fall.

We can go in before it falls and see it standing, and then leave, and come back later, and it has fallen. Obviously, it did not cease to exist because we didn't observe it. Going by this logic, the universe would not exist, because nothing can exist until we observe it, and humans didn't exist until billions and billions of years after the universe was created.

Top Hat Zebra wrote:

That's because most of those who are going to be killed are kept alive for years and years at a time, which I think is ridiculous. If someone is sentenced to death, they should be killed within the week.

Part of the reason they live so long is all the appeals and bringing it beyond any form of reasonable doubt.
As a society, it's really really bad to punish the wrong people; this goes double if you can't do anything for them after.

EDIT: Note that this is not a contribution to the debate.
It is a point of information.

Israel is about to break into a ground war against the state of Palestine. Thoughts?

Personally, I'm worried about Israel's WMDs, particularly their nukes. I don't think they'd irradiate what they're trying to reclaim (the old don't shit where you eat axiom), but if a terrorist group decides to get retribution then there's a whole new story.

Israel is going to win, and then some other stuff will happen, and then it will be over.


Seriously, it's not even that big of a deal. Israel could sorta just win the war by continuing the bombardment. The Hamas have no chance at all.

I believe that the easiest way to end the conflict is for Isreal to stop attacking Palistine. I predict that if they do that, Hamas will stop firing rockets within a few days, with probably under 50 dead.

However, this conflict started when Isreal assasinated a Hamas leader, so, I think that Isreal actually wanted to start this conflict.Hamas might be considered unreasonable (which in turn might be considered reasonable due to the situation they are in), but they are also quite predictable.
reasons to start this conflict could be the coming elections in Isreal, so the current government could show off its strength (come to think of it, many of these conflicts have started around election time). Another possibility is to hinder Palistines attempt to be recognised as a nation by the UN.

About the nukes, Isreal will never use them on Palistine, becouse it is to close so fallout could damage Isreal itself. The nukes are probably aimed ad Iran

From what I understand, the Hamas started the attacks, by firing rockets into Israel.


That's what all the media said, anyway.

But, you know, no telling if what they say is the truth.

All of these situations are completely crazy.

Civilians are gonna die, the UN isn't going to do jack shit until it's too late and the Palestinians are basically fucked.

Civilians are going to die, period. Warfare is not how it used to be. Armies don't meet on a battlefield and fight it out away from bystanders, anymore.


The thing that annoys me is that people are condemning Israel's drone strikes, as if a robot doing the bombing is somehow worse than a group of people going in there and just shooting the target.

So, I like how the ceasefire barely got mentioned on my news thing.


You would think that would at least be one of the headlines...