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Originally Posted by SpectralJulianIsNotDead
The point in killing the criminal is to prevent them from killing you. Not to give them "justice" for their crimes.
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it's interesting that you should say this, because generally speaking, those are the two primary philosophical justifications for the institution of legal punishment in general -- called utilitarianism and retributivism, respectively. a lot of people have argued that retributivism, the one that says that punishment is justified because the criminal deserves it, smacks of a certain primeval lust for vengeance (as have some of you); i suspect that our western judeo-christian heritage, with its emphasis on "turning the other cheek" and mercy, has contributed greatly to this intuition. but i think there's a difference between punishing someone for revenge and punishing someone out of respect for general principles of justice, which demand that people not be allowed to simply get away with their crimes, and that their punishment in some relevant sense "fit" the severity of the crime.
that said, i think the death penalty can be meaningfully justified on both utilitarian and retributivist grounds. as noted, it does remove the threat to society (not that effective lifetime incarceration doesn't, but capital punishment does have the added bonus of eliminating society's financial burden that the criminal imposes -- but this too, i admit, is arguable). also, since retributivism requires that the severity of punishment not exceed the severity of the crime, and at least in homicide cases no execution that involves pain not exceeding that inflicted upon the victim is off-limits by this standard, capital punishment can therefore be justified on these grounds as well.
of course, i do make several caveats: there is the problem of convicting innocents, and for that reason i do believe that extreme caution should be carried out when sentencing people to die. people too often forget the principle, in the american court system at least, of "innocent until proven guilty," which requires that if the prosecution has not demonstrated the culpability of the accused beyond a "shadow of a doubt," the juror is obligated to acquit. also, i admit that the utilitarian and retributivist justifications for punishment are not without their problems; utilitarianism is subject to the "punishment of the innocent" example and retributivism is problematic as above. also, they seem to be mutually exclusive: the retributivist limit of "no punishment beyond what the criminal deserves" may not give to society the full extent of benefits that might accrue to it if greater punishment were carried out, and utilitarian punishment may likewise be too severe. so i think there are probably better justifications for punishment out there, but i don't know what they are.