If I could show you a ‘massive amount of evidence’ that deterrence does not work, would you reconsider?
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articl...
The problem I have with the death penalty is not that these people deserve to die. Many of those condemned to death certainly do deserve to die. The problem is that many of them certainly don’t deserve to die and some of them are almost certainly innocent, and a few have even been proven to have been innocent. All in service of a justification that holds no water anyway. It’s a form of punishment that leads down a slippery slope into deeply immoral territory and has twisted the US justice system into contortions.
So while some criminals do deserve death, I’m willing to accept merely locking them up for the rest of their natural lives instead. Sometimes it turns out those condemned to death didn’t deserve it after all and the use of such a divisive and irreversible sanction makes getting to the truth in such cases very difficult.
Can we try to focus on intellectual gratification? It's better to teach each other about the world.
100% agree with you. Let me try: they are some people who do horrible, horrible things. Unless they are punished severely, other bad people might not fear the consequences. Death or life in jail is an ongoing discussion among different people