Fear is the only real deterrent. — Blue Lux

In this you've either said too much to be contained in such a small phrase, or hardy anything at all. Some fear deters some people from some things is in my opinion more accurate.

I suspect also that some people are not deterred from anything, by anything. It appears, then, that one-size-fits-all won't do.

The state's proper business is justice, not anger or vengeance - although it does seem to me that in rare and very unusual cases the state could argue punishment-as-policy. I think this actually exists in many states where capital punishment is reserved for very specific crimes. At a distance, this seems reasonable, but smart people argue against even this, and there views must not be dismissed out-of-hand.

Finally, I think a criminal who knows his fate is more likely to be more dangerous. The fellow with 50 hostages who murders one - what happens with him?

well what if someone raped a child and then murdered them? — Blue Lux

No, not then. Neither for Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Fred and Mary West.

Such arguments are based purely on a lust for revenge, and giving in to that lust strips us of all that is good in our humanity.

I can see from your posts above that you hold the views you wrote very strongly, and I am unlikely to persuade you. It seems there are many in the USA, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines that feel that way. I am fortunate to live in what I consider to be a more free and enlightened country, where the majority do not feel that way. It is not an overwhelming majority, and it is always possible for the lust for revenge to gather popular momentum, especially in this time of populist demagogues. All I can do is hope that doesn't happen here, and put in my arguments when I can to try to stop that happening.

Such arguments are based purely on a lust for revenge, and giving in to that lust strips us of all that is good in our humanity. — andrewk

But that's not true, because there is a concept of the victims having justice. That's part of the reason for sentencing perpetrators. It's not just to remove them from society. It's to punish them.

If someone found his or her spouse in flagrante delictio and in rage kills the interloper on the spot, they are likely to receive a long prison sentence to keep them out of society -- even though (if memory serves me) they are quite unlikely to murder anyone else. There quite infrequent recidivism doesn't mean they should not be punished -- just that a long term (at public expense) is probably quite unproductive.

Thieves, on the other hand, tend to reoffend -- likely because they will not find prison rehabilitative, and will end up back in the community and circumstances where they started.

But that's not true, because there is a concept of the victims having justice. — Marchesk

I acknowledge that forms part of the arguments of the less belligerent advocates of capital punishment - the ones that don't keep referring to child rapists. But most arguments for capital punishment that I encounter are of the latter kind, and are deeply rooted in a desire to harm.

I don't accept the justice-based arguments because I value compassion over justice, and also because, as Socrates pointed out so long ago, nobody seems to be able to agree on what justice is.

Humans are brutal. Get over it. Brutal people deserve brutal consequences. Simple. There are simply too many people in the world. There is no room for these people.

I don't accept the justice-based arguments because I value compassion over justice, and also because, — andrewk

But compassion for whom? The perpetrator or the victims?

and also because, as Socrates pointed out so long ago, nobody seems to be able to agree on what justice is. — andrewk

There does seem to be a mostly universal desire to punish offenders who break the rules. Studies have been done on people cheating in a game where other players will go out of their way to punish the cheaters, even if it costs them.

Humanity is an ideal. The reality is that the world is harsh and brutal. There is no room for idealism. If a person, by whatever means, commits and atrocity... They should therefore have no rights.

The reasons civilized, humane people object to public hangings, drawing and quartering, skinning alive, burning at the strake, chopping off hands/tongues/penises and anything liable to a clever, are four-fold:

First, performing torture unto death is an inherently dehumanizing, degrading experience for the person elected to perform the task.

Second, legislating torture unto death dehumanizes and degrades both the legislators and their electors

Third, viewing a torture unto death (these sorts of things have always been popular where allowed), is dehumanizing and degrading to the observer,

fourth, being tortured unto death is dehumanizing and degrading to the subject.

Everyone involved in torture unto death, either directly or as indirectly as merely approving of this kind of punishment is contaminated by the retrograde act of ancient tribal justice.

All this applies to torture short of death, as well.

Look, we're making some progress. Many in the world disapprove of female clitorectomy, female disinfibulation (scaring the vagina shut prior to marriage), and male circumcision. Foot binding in china was ended... about a century ago. There are laws in many countries (particularly in the West) against torturing people to extract information. There are strong objections to putting prisoners in solitary confinement for periods longer than... 3 days, is it? (Some prisoners have been kept in solitary for months or years.) Most countries in the west have patient protection through informed consent. #MeToo gets people fired for unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment. Transexuals, Transgendered people, and homosexuals have legal protection. Et cetera.

If being hanged, electrocuted, drugged, gassed, shot, or strangled doesn't prevent people from committing capital crimes, I don't think making this even more grotesque will do the trick.

We have to accept that a certain number of slight, moderate, and very bad criminal acts will occur in society. they will range from shoplifting to serial murder and serial rape. The best we can do is try to prevent crime (we really don't try very hard in that area), rehabilitate criminals (we flat-out fail in most cases) and separate dangerous people from society (right now we separate way, way too many ordinary criminals from society -- at huge expense with no benefit to anyone except the prison business of states and private industry).

1. There could be machines that do it instead of a person.

2. No it doesn't lol. Again. Humanity is an illusion.

3. Doesn't have to be in public. It would be better if they were alone.

4. They dehumanized themselves. That is radical responsibility.

Humanity is an ideal. The reality is that the world is harsh and brutal. There is no room for idealism. If a person, by whatever means, commits and atrocity... They should therefore have no rights. — Blue Lux

We disagree fundamentally on that. There seems no more that can be said on either side in relation to that.

But compassion for whom? The perpetrator or the victims? — Marchesk

Compassion is empathising with and seeking to end or ameliorate the suffering of others. The time to apply compassion to a victim is before they are harmed, to prevent the harm. If they survive the harm it is to help them heal. Once they are killed it is too late.

Lol you absolutely have no care for the sufferer who was raped and murdered, or sold into prostitution and then murdered.

Justice? Humanity?

Rofl, the determinants and the foundation of the whole situation is absolutely devoid of ethics, so how could there be an ethical solution? Screw an "ethical solution" the sake of some philosophical pontification on 'humanity,' with regard to this.

you absolutely have no care for the sufferer who was raped and murdered, or sold into prostitution and then murdered. — Blue Lux

You had better stick to speaking for yourself. It only harms your case to make angry, erroneous assertions about what others feel or believe.

Justice is institutionalised revenge. We as individuals gave the monopoly to punish to the state to prevent constant bloodfeuds and the disordering effects that has on a society.

I think those arguing that justice should never be about revenge are missing an important function justice has in society.

Angry?

And the thousands upon thousands of innocent children that die every year from preventable causes is somehow justified or accounted for? And the perpetrators or the people responsible should be treated with dignity, to 'protect' our humanity?

Humanity is based upon lies. Lies have been told for generations and have manipulated humanity.
Protecting humanity is protecting the basically baseless.

and do you believe in a God that accounts for, mitigates, assuages and absolves the terrible things humans do, lest 'humanity' becomes 'evil?'

To the extent that I understand your question - which is partially at best - No I don't.

Then the only absolution is based upon the responsibility of humans!-- to protect humans and refuse an atrocity becoming blatantly unaccounted for.

What I mean by unaccounted for is this.

If a person is raped and murdered. This must be accounted for by a refusal. This refusal is that of reciprocation. The refusal to let that death and terrible event fade away in vain.
Obviously it can never be erased.
But an ethical reaction should be to at least try. To at least try the hardest to erase it. Although it is impossible.

If a person, by whatever means, commits an atrocity... They should therefore have no rights — Blue Lux

You are, no doubt, aware that in a number of countries (Nigeria, for example) homosexual sex is a capital crime. It's a capital crime, punished by cruel and unusual methods elsewhere too. Homosexuals are considered abominations by some people, so... are they justified in burning us at the stake?

1. There could be machines that do it instead of a person. — Blue Lux

Execution machines? Is this the best idea you can come up with?

Humanity is an illusion. — Blue Lux

I said "bullshit" when Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society, and I say "bullshit" when you say there is no such thing as humanity.

4. They dehumanized themselves. That is radical responsibility. — Blue Lux

Yes. Child rapists, serial murderers, mass murderers, and others defile themselves by their heinous acts, dehumanize themselves and alienate the rest of humanity from themselves, etc. We are well advised to avoid the same to ourselves by giving in to blood lust, by listening in to the screams of the tortured, etc.

We know full well how we operate: People have greatly enjoyed watching lynchings which involved castrations, penis removals, burnings alive, and so forth -- not in the medieval period, but within the lifetimes of living people.

But look: There isn't a wide gulf separating any human being from a murderer, a rapist, a bomber, etc. The difference is somewhat in kind, certainly, but mostly the difference is in degree. That's why we can contemplate cutting off the penis (without anesthesia, I suppose) of someone who committed rape. That is why we can imagine disemboweling someone who committed murder. Not only can we imagine it, there would probably be plenty of applicants for the job.

Staying human isn't a passive act. We have to work at, mostly by expending considerable energy in suppressing our worst urges.

You are basically saying, again, that the abject, terrible screams and agonies of rape/murder victims do not matter, and we should focus more on maintaining this ideal of a humanity that does not resort to evil. Evil does not exist.

A rapist deserves to have his penis cut off. IDGAF what you say.
My partner was raped as a child. You don't know what that does to a person!
Vengeance!
The guy got away with it.

To call homosexuality a crime is brainless. [Remainder of post removed by Mod]

Please tell me... What is humanity?

If humanity is constituted by the behavior and actions of humans... Humanity is diseased!

And who decides who's brutal? Do you wish to revert to a Hobbesian version of a retributory life that's "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?" It's often forgot, and in many cses understandably so, that justice is for all and every one of us, even if some of us sometimes don't like its product. In every case, the alternative is worse.

You are basically saying, again, that the abject, terrible screams and agonies of rape/murder victims do not matter, and we should focus more on maintaining this ideal of a humanity that does not resort to evil. Evil does not exist. — Blue Lux

No one here has suggested that the suffering of murder and rape victims does not matter. If it didn't matter, there would be no laws against either of those acts, and no punishment either. Obviously, they matter. Equally obvious is that evil most certainly does exist.

That your partner was raped as a child is an evil; that someone was prepared to rape him as a child is an evil. But evil is not undone by more evil. We needn't get into theology here. Just as a practical matter, the evil done to your partner would not be undone by anything that was done to the rapist.

↪Bitter Crank To call homosexuality a crime is brainless. Trump might have been right in saying that countries like that are sh#tholes countries full of absolutely ignorant, mongoloid-like people. — Blue Lux

Lots of countries are shitholes, no doubt about it. Of course it is stupid to call homosexuality a crime -- though the mongoloid idiot people in the US, Germany, UK, and other imbecilic places decriminalized homosexuality only recently. I know a few elderly people who were subjected to brutal medical treatment--frontal lobotomy--for being homosexual--never mind acting on it.

If humanity is constituted by the behavior and actions of humans... Humanity is diseased! — Blue Lux

You may have heard of original sin, perhaps? That man is incapable of not sinning? That the Fall left us depraved? I don't subscribe to original sin theology, but it's one theological theory that seems to have plenty of historical validation. We need not fear walking through the valley of death, because we are the meanest sons of bitches in the valley.

I am not diseased and I know many people whom are not. Humanity is an illusion. That is what I am saying.

There is no totality of humanity. There couldn't be anyway, more people are born every day and every second and people die every day and every second. There is only the totality of the psyche. And the psyche has intense darkness. And this has to be integrated into consciousness lest people reject their being as human and not some divine creature, which is a myth. The only reconciliation of this is in art.

It is obvious who is brutal. Really? :starstruck:

Obvious? To whom? It's the judge you have to worry about. Or are you certain that everyone who in your opinion should know, does in fact know and act upon that knowledge?

the totality of the psyche — Blue Lux

Ahhhhh, I see. "Totality of the psyche". Yes, totality of the psyche is the very model of limpid clarity, compared to that murky clunker "humanity".

Raping and murdering someone is brutal :starstruck:

Ughhhh. Of course.

The totality of the psyche constitutes all of the impulses, desires and inclinations of mankind. The totality of the psyche is apprehendable.
Humanity is an objective ideal about what humanity is. There is no definition of humanity. There is only ambiguity in talking about humanity. People hate this. Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity (Freud).