Gazza

I don't believe that any civilised state should kill people, whatever the reason. And certainly not in my name as a tax payer and voter.

Wolfgang

I am not thrilled about paying taxes to house and clothe murderers either, and as voters there is fat chance we will ever get to vote on this issue.

Steve Crook

Would you rather murder them?
Then someone would have to murder you, until there was nobody left

Steve

Gazza

But Wolfgang, a civilised society - which we are, despite how it may seem at times - has to deal with its wrong doers in a civilised way. State sanctioned murder can never be civilised.

Wolfgang

I think we should do what China does and use their body parts for organ transplants: Kidneys, heart, lungs, liver, corneas - that is five persons lives that can be salvaged from one murderer. Is it really civilised to spare murderers and let good persons die?

batman

A recipe for disaster ... have you not seen Frankenstein or The Hands of Orlac!

Bats.

Bat-Quiz 13 is up and running in the competition thread - 24/8/8.

Gazza

Ah . . . China. Such a good role model.

Fareham_Bee

They did away with state sanctioned murder for good reasons Wolfgang and thankfully we will never go back to it.
You keep hearing how it is a deterrant, didn't stop Hindley and Brady did it? You keep hearing how if one innocent is executed to stop ten murderers killing it is worth it. Do you want to be the innocent? Would that be worth it? What about if someone killed Mrs FB and an innocent was hung or whatever? I would then not only have her death to haunt me, but an innocents death too.
Pierrpont himself said that it solved nothing,

Wolfgang

Statistics speak for themselves: From 1900 up until capital punishment is abolished murder rates declined - presumably as detection methods become more sophisticated. Since then murder rate has more than doubled:

http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib...9/rp99-111.pdf

Steve Crook

And what do those statistics say when they speak for themselves?

Those figures don't say anything about capital punishment. If you want to claim that as a reason for the very small change in total numbers (a large percentage increase but starting from a very low baseline so even at its peak still a very low number) then that's up to you.

That paper was published in 1999. The figures for the last 2 years reported by it show homicides falling. Have they gone up again or are they continuing to fall?
Have those rises and falls got anything to do with capital punishment? The figures don't say.

Steve

Marky B

I no longer support the use of the death penalty,but I still believe that if a person has commited a premeditated murder,then they should go into prison on two legs and come out in a coffin:life should mean life.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

Wolfgang

Those statistics are pretty convincing - you have steady decline in murder rate per one million (so you can multiply those stats by 50 in which case you are dealing with safe data size) until 1965. Basically what those stats say is that you have roughly 500 murders in 1900 going down to 300 in 1960. Starting in 1965 they increase steadily to over 700 in 30 years. You do not need chi-square tables to tell you these are statistically significant variations, and that rising murder rate correlates with abolition of capital punishment. Whether you agree with capital punishment or not on moral grounds, those statistics alone are compelling that it is successful deterrant.

penfold

What it may also mean is that juries are happier to convict if the death sentence is taken out of the equation....perhaps more notice would be taken of reasonable doubt if the person you're discussing over a cuppa in the jury room was about to be killed on your say-so.......
I understand they still have capital punishment in the States...is it an effective deterrent there ???

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Steve Crook

Go back to your statistics text book
I wasn't saying that there was no variation, I was disputing your assumption that it was solely due to the abolition of the death penalty. There is no evidence for that in those figures.

But even when it was in force, the death penalty wasn't much of a deterrent. Most murders either took place in the heat of the moment when nobody was thinking about the consequences or they took place during criminal acts - and no criminal goes out on a job thinking they are going to get caught.

Steve

Fellwanderer

If it was a successful deterrent then there should have been zero murders during the period from 1900 to the abolition of hanging.

Hanging is no more than state-sponsored murder.

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life