Capital Punishment - For or Against?
This post is not pretty.
I am tired, so tired of the crime in this country.
Less than a week of the Sate of Emergency being lifted, I learned from the tv news this evening that the husband of a friend of mine was murdered in his own home yesterday in broad daylight. The rest of the family were tied up and beaten. I'm not an advocate of capital punishment but I am seriously beginning to wonder if I have the right attitude. Add to that another couple I know well who live in the same area, being attacked by intruders whilst sleeping at 2am even though the downstairs of their home is burglar proofed. I have attended too many funerals of people I know who have lost their lives brutally and some I couldn't attend because it was too overwhelming.
God help this country where life has become so cheap, where we allow criminals to rule and literally get away with murder, where school children carry knives, where innocent people are losing their lives, where people believe the world owes them a living so take instead of earn, where corruption is rife, where we live behind barbed wire, burglar bars and gated communities with guards at the gates, where rapes are every day occurrences, where one doesn't feel safe in an open car park and where people who care and those who are affected are crying for justice and getting no answers.
I used to be such an advocate of the repeal of the death penalty. I even convinced a friend who later became governor of a midwest state as to the horrors of capital penalty.
ReplyDeleteAll that said I now find myself firmly behind some crimes having a speeding and mandatory death penalty. Violent rape, pedophilia, and premeditated murder definitely.
The French thought the guillotine was a retardant to crime - before they moved it behind the prison walls. Ergo they ought to have the executions at half time at football or soccer games.
I believe your answer to your own question is in your words. In hearing recently about the latest parole hearing for Charles Manson, I wondered why in hell have we preserved his worthless life for all these years? What is the noble purpose? How does that make us better individuals or a better society?
ReplyDeleteThe truth is, there is NO reason. It doesn't qualify our goodness to preserve evil. Not at all, not ever.
Rick
NO ... your post wasn't pretty. But I am glad you wrote it. I am glad that I read it. I do not know about Trinidad & Tobago and corruption. Sociopaths, psychopaths, repeat rapists and pedophiles aside need to be locked up in a place for the criminally insane; I once believed in capital punishment. I may soon again.
ReplyDeleteThere is massive creme here in the US. I believe much of it is a result of corruption. I believe that if we cared enough we would love our neighbor enough to ensure that our neighbor had a job and that the children would have equal assess to a good education. But we don't care about our neighbor enough to live where they live and ensure that these things happen. Instead we insure that there is not enough money for those in need by giving banks and financial institutions free reign to take everything away from everyone, gamble on it unwisely as if in a poker game, losing billions, giving nothing in return ... so that there is no money left out side of financial institution's director's pockets. That is the first level of trickle down corruption. This creates generations of children who have nothing, who learn to fend for themselves, who in tern learn that criminalization by them as adults of any institution is the way to go.
A dear friend here grew up in Trinidad, and would not go back to live if you paid her because of the crime. However, I doubt that capital punishment would make a difference. The most powerful disincentive to crime is the chance of getting caught, not the severity of the sentence. To those who trot out the likes of Charles Manson, and here in Canada Clifford Olson, as arguments for the death penalty, I come back with Donald Marshall and many others who spent years behind bars for murders they did not commit.
ReplyDeleteKill 'em all I say, God will send the righteous to heaven!!!
ReplyDeleteHi Bee, How interesting that I should be writing about this (well, more of a mention) today and then happen to find what you wrote here two years ago. I am against capital punishment but it runs along with my whole belief on the sacredness of life. I know I am very much in the minority about this and I'm alright with that. I completely understand the feeling of wanting someone to experience the full punishment of the law for heinous crimes. I have felt it and thought it. But, in the end, I'm more a throw the key away person.
ReplyDeleteI have just seen this Annie. Two years on it is no better.
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