Pros and Cons -Issues

Pros and Cons -Issues




No other country has as many people in
prisons and jails. One in 100 Adults Behind
Bars (Pew Report)
National prison population tripled from 1987
to 2007. Currently 2.3 million Americans in
prisons and jails
Cost of prisoner: $25K per year; $65K
investment per bed
•About 1 in every 15 persons will serve time
in prison during their lifetime.
 •Almost
1/3 of African Americans
will serve time in prison during
their lifetimes; 17% of Hispanic
males, 5.9% of white males.
 •Men are ten times more likely to
go to prison than women. Source:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cri
moff.htm#lifetime









•Highest inmate count: 5% of the world’s
population, almost 25% of its prisoners;
•Punitive Damages: usually not awarded in
foreign civil courts;
•Bail for profit;
•Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers’
•Sentencing adolescents as adults and
sentencing them to life;
•Using partisan expert witnesses;
•Rejecting all evidence if police err;
•Freedom for offensive speech;
•Electing judges.
 Autonomy
and Rights
 Human Dignity
 Beneficence and NonMalficence
 Justice and Fairness

“Laws designed to temper human
conduct should not embrace a savage
example. To me it is an absurdity that
the law which expresses the common
will and detests and punishes
homicide should itself commit one.”Casare di Beccaria (1764)
 Punishment=
“A harm
inflicted by a person in a
position of authority upon
another person who is
judged to have violated a
rule.
 Two
ways of justifying
punishment
 Backward-looking: retribution
for a past wrong, the lex
talionis
 Forward-looking:
deterrence
against future crimes




Lex talionis, “an eye for an eye,” “a tooth for a
tooth”
Core concept: the offender should suffer at
least equally to the victim
Is the lex talionis restricted by prohibitions
against cruelty, etc.
Distinguish between whether the offender
deserves the punishment and whether we
would be demeaned by punishing in that way.
Critics of retributivism have argued
that it is just revenge dressed up in
nice clothing. Replies:
 Yes, it is revenge, but that’s ok
 No, retribution is about something
more than revenge: about balancing
the scales of justice, about
safeguarding the rights of victims, and
about changing perpetrators.



Fundamental metaphor: an underlying
balance which must, if upset, be put back in
order. Punishment is seen as resetting the
moral balance by punishing the offense
Punishment of elderly Nazis
Victims, some retributivists argue,
have a right to see the perpetrators
suffer their just desserts
 Example: families of victims at
executions

Some retributivists, especially in the Kantian
tradition, argue that punishment should have
certain effects on the perpetrators, including
insight into their crime, including compassion
for victim
 Will “wipe the slate clean”

 Does
 Lex
it really justify punishment?
talionis offers little guidance
in specific cases of punishment.
 Can lead in particular cases to
punishments that are cruel and
that have no morally good effects
Crime is a disease- psychological and
social problems of the individuals.
 Is the death penalty as act of giving up
hope on the possibility of salvation in
this life for the murderer?
 Should we give up hope in some
cases?

 Some
have objected that prisons
are training schools for prisoners.
 May conflict with demands of
retribution.
 May result in longer sentences in
some cases, much shorter in
others.
 May be very costly to administer
Both opponents and defenders of the
death penalty appeal to the sanctity of
life
 Opponents say life is sacred and no
one should take it (Catholic Bishops)
 Advocates say that the way to honor
the sanctity of life is to execute those
who have so violated its sanctity by
murdering someone


“Death penalty should be abolished as
a manifestation of our belief in the
unique worth and dignity of each
person, a creature made in the image
of God. Such an act is most
consistent with the example of Jesus
who both taught and practiced the
forgiveness of justice.”
 Many
justify punishment as an
institution by its deterrent effect
 Deters the convicted criminal
from committing the same crime
again
 Deters others from committing
that crime

The deterrence argument has two premises:
◦ Empirical Premise: Punishment deters
crime.
◦ Normative Premise: Reducing crime is
good.

Conclusion: Punishment is good.
Does the death penalty deter?
 That particular criminal
 Other possible criminals
 Some researchers have argued that
the death penalty saves 7-8 innocent
lives a year.
 Do capital punishment states have
lower rate of capital crimes?

 Common
sense says that the
death penalty is worse to an
offender than life in prison.
 Questions:
◦ Do criminals think they will be
punished?
◦ Does this establish a climate of
brutalization?
 If
capital punishment is justified
in terms of deterrence, then
should we do whatever we can to
increase their deterrent effect,
including:
◦ execute more swiftly?
◦ televise executions?
 “Punishment
arises out of the
demand for justice; justice is
demanded by angry, morally
indignant men; its purpose is to
satisfy the moral indignation and
thereby promote law
abidingness.”



We bet on CP- CP works: some murderers die
and some innocents are saved. CP Doesn’t
Work: Some murderers die for no purpose.
We bet against CP- CP works: Some
murderers live and some innocents die. CP
Doesn’t work: Murderers live and the lives of
others are unaffected.
Lets sum-A murderer saved= +5; A murderer
executed= -5; An innocent saved= +10; An
innocent murdered= -10.


Suppose that for each execution only two
innocents are spared, then the outcome is:
a. -5 + 20= +15
◦
◦
◦
If
b. – 5
c. +5-20= -15
d. + 5
bet on CP, a+ b obtain= +10; If bet against CP, c
+ d obtain = -10. To execute convicted murderers
would be a good bet; to abolish the death penalty
would be a bad debt- we unnecessarily put the
innocent at risk.













The Innocence Project (157 exonerated):
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
•Sources of Mistakes:
2 DNA Inclusions at Time of Trial
6 Other Forensic Inclusions
15 False Confessions 16Informants / Snitches
17 False Witness Testimony
21 Microscopic Hair Comparison Matches
23 Bad Lawyering
26 Defective or Fraudulent Science
34 Prosecutorial Misconduct
38 Police Misconduct
40 Serology Inclusion
61 Mistaken ID
 Possible
racial bias on basis of:
 Race of perpetrator
 Race of victim
 Subtle bias in terms of how
offenders are charged, how the
prosecution proceeds, etc.
 Mexican
nationals were often
denied access to consular aid.
 Many other countries, including
Mexico, do not have the death
penalty



Statements from Doctors and Medical Organizations
•Curfman, et al;, “Physicians and Execution,” New
England Journal of Medicine, January 24, 2008Video
•Breach of Trust: Physician Participation in Executions
in the United States. This report, published jointly by
Physicians for Human Rights, the American College of
Physicians, the National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty, and Human Rights Watch in 1994,
deals with the ethical issues involved with physician
participation in capital punishment. PDF
In many places in the United States, children had been tried as
adults even though they are less than 18.
 In Florida, a 14 year old boy was given a sentence of life
without parole for killing a 6 year old girl when he was 12
years old. On March 1, 2005 the Supreme Court abolished the
death penalty for crimes committed when the offender was
less than 18 years old in Roper v. Simmons. This affected
persons on death row:
• Texas: 29• Alabama: 14• Mississippi: 5• Ariz., La., N.C.: 4
each• Fla., S.C.: 3 each• Ga., Pa.: 2 each• Nev., Va.: 1
 The younger the perpetrator, the greater the reason for trying
to rehabilitate rather than simply punish.