Subject: Re: Abolishing the death penalty
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Daniel A. Dorry "Esq." writes
> The American philosopher Mark Taylor offers an interesting insight into
> why we might believe that capital (and for that matter, corporal)
> punishment offers an effective deterrent: it is the chosen means of
> social control for the criminals themselves.
and then he goes on to suggest that we imitate them.
Considerations of morality and humaneness aside, what Dorry and Taylor
(who, BTW, if he is Mark Kline Taylor is a theologian (!)--there is no
such philosopher) ignore is that repeated studies have shown no
statistically significant differences in the murder rate exists between
states with similar laws and social structures (e.g. Wisconsin, which
has capital punishment, and Minnesota, which does not), but that the
homicide rate is far higher in the U.S., including states with capital
punishment than in Western Europe, which doesn't have it and where
(surprise) handguns are far less readily available. What this proves
is that capital punishment, as *actually practiced* in the U.S. has
no verifiable deterrent effect. Therefore, if it is to work in this
way, (and there is no guarantee that it would even then), capital
punishment would have to be administered not rarely but invariably
to a convicted homicide, thus increasing the executions per year in
every state about 100 times, and cutting the time between conviction
and execution by the same factor. And if we were to exhibit the same
ruthlessness as criminals, we might as well dispense with trials,
along with the presumption of innocence, of course. In other words,
we would have Naziism.
Folklore has it that the way to tell whether someone is sane or not
is to put him in a flooding room with a mop. If he starts mopping
the floor without turning off the tap, he is insane. The newly
elected republican congressional leaders seem bent on a similar
course: more money for prisons, the war on drugs, military ("defense")
projects, less, perhaps no money for the root causes of crime--poverty,
racism and social injustice. Imagine what could be accomplished if
priorities were reversed. Even Lyndon Johnson's very modest "war
on poverty" brought the lowest poverty rate in U.S. history until
it was dismantled (a victim of the Vietnam war) in 1973. Both poverty
and crime have increased dramatically since then, the rich have got
richer, and the disparity between rich and poor has increased eight-
fold. And guess who gets the blame? "Immigrants", the poor, the
homeless (whose numbers have sky-rocketed) and "criminals" (read
Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities).
I applaud the Radical Party's efforts to abolish capital punishment, a
worthy goal. But we cannot stop there. Capital punishment and the
current blame-the-victim mentality now abroad are just symptoms of a
deeper problem, not the cause. It is up to us Americans to rediscover
our humanity and decent impulses and to act on them. At the time I
first hear "born again Christians" acting like Christians, and not
ignoring inconvenient teachings such as "sell all thou hast and give
to the poor", "it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's
eye than for a rich man to attain heaven", or "blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth", we'll be on the way to recovery.
I fear it may be long in coming.
--Craig Harrison, San Francisco
