rwm

This is not a flame war...

It's crazy what the world's come to (I know its been like this a long time):

I was reading the paper this weekend (never get time to do that) - I found a few things extremely disturbing:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nat...,5480271.story

and the fact that in South Africa barking dogs now face a death sentence. I don't understand it, that's the most selfish thing like ever...

Although dog is a creature, it has just as much right as a person. Sure, you can get dogs that aren't controlled by the owners, yes, but just because the dog keeps barking, shouldn't justify the act of putting it down. What about us, most of us are just as noisy, we play the TV loud, stuff like that. It's just wrong in my opinion.

I feel that any person who murders (or any other serious crime - such as rape) with intent should be shot immediately. I suppose there are many different feelings on this, like the fact that the person should be helped. But I feel that by giving the person their rights - it's just not acceptable given their crime. If you just lock them up in jail for life, you just keep increasing the prisons.

Also, if the person should be given their rights, and they be locked up for life, then it would require that they have absolutely NO privileges, such as watching TV, listening to the radio. Their life should be made hell...

But above all, I favour the death sentence, and immediately. Sorry, I may seem harsh, but I strongly feel that this is the only way to resolve the issue.

Duck

Here in the UK we don't do punishment, instead we offer people cash incentives for good behavior.

I'm in favour of capital punishment for serious crimes too.

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DaWei

When did they do away with prisons in the UK? How much do you get paid not to crash car bombs into an airport?

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Duck

The last prison was shutdown last year. Ok, I'm exaggerating slightly, but it is(*) a conservative party policy to give council house tenants proportional ownership of their house/flat in they don't behave in an anti-social/destructive manor.

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rwm

It's rotten, think about it, prisons are populated with all variety of criminals, from minor (such as shop theft) and up to mass murderers. Do you actually think it's good to mix them? I don't think so, I feel there should be a limit to who gets put in prision and who get's executed.

Locking up the criminals on a *minor* sentence and pretty much taking their life away for the term of their sentence seems a good way to punish them, but for the really bad criminals, i'm in favour of execution. I don't see how allowing them (any criminal) to watch TV or listen to the radio is doing any good. They should only offer education as form of entertainment, that way hopefully many would leave and get a job and leave their old habits behind. Of course, you could argue that many of these criminals have nothing, so they steal or whatever just to get by. That leads to the problem of charity.

Thinking about it, if the law was more barbaric, and say for example that criminals should get the same treatment back (meaning what they did to others, they should get back) - then is a quick and speedy execution justified?

Personally i'm totally not in favour of anyone suffering, but sometimes I really wonder if that would work. With the death sentence, there would be a whole lot less suffering going on in this world.

Here in South Africa, you should see the state of the prisons - 40 to a cell. I can't even imagine what it must be like in there... I read in the paper once, a 13 year old boy has been locked up for murder. 13? It's unbelievable.

Still, even though today is a mess, I suppose the quality of life, overall, is a sight better than old days...

Arevos

I don't share this opinion, and I doubt many others do, either. If a thousand dogs had to be slaughtered to save one human being's life, that's an acceptable cost. A human being's life is of immeasurable importance.

Uncontrollable barking is probably not enough to warrant a dog being put down, but then retraining a dog not to constantly bark is rather expensive.

What if the person is wrongly convicted? Does a reduction in prison population justify killing a small number of innocent people?

rwm

Sure, you are entitled to your own opinion. I'm quite sure other's feel both ways.

I was actually referring to the fact that if there is no doubt that the person is guilty then...

grumpy

This is not something I really agree with, but then I also don't subscribe to the view that a human being is somehow infinitely more entitled to live than any other life form.
Training a dog to do anything (assuming a dog is capable) is not that difficult or expensive, although it does require time, discipline, and patience.

The most common reasons that dogs bark continually are that they have been socially isolated (little contact with other dogs or people, which is distressing for any pack animal) or confined for significant periods of time, or that they have been trained to. Barking becomes something to pass the time, and eventually becomes a habit. Prevention (by spending time with the dog playing or exercising, having more than one dog, and simply keeping the dog fit and healthy) is actually much easier than training a dog to stop barking. However, dogs respond to attention and rewards and can therefore be retrained if they develop a bad habit.
I'm actually in favour of the death sentence, but my reasoning has nothing to do with reducing prison populations. My logic is that consequences need to be sufficient to discourage unwanted actions and that severe actions therefore require severe consequences.

This means that crimes with minor impacts (according to accepted values in society) need to be associated with minor consequences. But it also means that crimes with major impacts need to be associated with major consequences.

And, yes, I would be willing to accept that, in some cases, people may be convicted wrongly. With a robust legal system that is based on rules of evidence to establish guilt, that is relatively unlikely -- in fact, the probability of a guilty person getting off will often exceed the probability of an innocent person being convicted and being subject to severe consequences.

rwm

I totally agree with everything Grumpy has to say.

rwm

Take this prison for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollsmoor_Prison

Something has to be done, execution is a good way to start.