Okay all you left wingers, explain this.

[Andrewr05]

Are there not some truly screwed up people out there?

 

In my opinion there are A LOT of people who I'd prefer sentenced to a firing squad rather than sit in jail costing us money.

[SpeedCrazy]

Death penalty opponents do not have a viable solution either is my point. There are costs for both alternatives that the taxpayers have to pay for.  

+1 Again. And my problem is not really with whether we kill them or incarcerate them, though i am a proponent of the death penalty, but that we ought to be doing more to reduce this cost to society. Most death row criminals have already cost society more than they are prepared to pay, whether that is a life a rape whatever, so we should do our best not to charge them anymore.

The way im looking at it i writing this is like this: suppose i borrow a million dollars, i buy some stuff and loan about half of it out to someone else. Now this guy buys some fancy toys and then defaults, what i ought to do is send in the repo man(whatever form that make take in the legal system i am under), but what we are doing is defaulting on our loan instead. What kind of sense does that make? The criminal has caused society to give up something of value, and then the government asks society to give up even more to "look after"(incarcerate or execute) the thief. That cost exists whether we have the death penalty or not, it is unfortunately unavoidable, but we ought to try as hard as we can to make it as small as possible.

Hope that makes some sense, i've had four hours sleep in the last 48.

Edited March 17, 2013 by SpeedCrazy