top 6 most blood-thirsty countries

why should prisoners even get a salary for working? It costs taxpayers money to keep them in jail, they should be owing money to the government to repay their debt.

 

Because that's called slave labor and we don't do that anymore.
We also don't want to give the state financial incinitive to lock more people away.

 

The state already has incentive to create ever more "crimes" for which to lock up citizens, shane. The Prison system is a multi billion dollar industry in itself.

 

so prisoners = slaves and the state = slave masters? right.

 

No, I was replying to your post.

Prisoners forced work for no wage for a corporation or the state = slave labor.

You still haven't replyed to my response to why the U.S. should be in the business of executions.

You have a bad habit of making a point and then ignoring my counterpoints.

 

wtf, this is my third post in this thread and you've responded to me Once before this and said this:

"
Because that's called slave labor and we don't do that anymore.
We also don't want to give the state financial incinitive to lock more people away."

there was no talk of executions.


Prisoners cost the taxpayers money from trial-jail-probation. They should have to repay society for their costs, taking their wage to repay their debt is not slave labor.

 

This whole thread is about executions.

From http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour

Prison labour

Convict or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. Convicts subjected to forced labour have often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of the social stigma attached to people regarded as "common criminals". In some countries and historical periods, however, prison labour has been forced upon people who have been: victims of prejudice, convicted of political crimes, convicted of "victimless crimes", or people who committed theft or related offences because they lacked any other means of subsistence — categories of people for whom compassion is typically called. The British penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868 are probably the best examples of convict labour, as described above: during that period, Australia received thousands of convict labourers, many of whom had received harsh sentences for minor misdemeanours in Britain or Ireland.

• Sometimes authorities turn prison labour into an industry, as on a prison farm, where the pursuit of income (profit may be minor after expenses such as on security) from their productive labor may even overtake the preoccupation with punishment and/or reeducation as such of the prisoners, who are in risk of being exploited as slave-like cheap labor

Labour camps

Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of political prisoners and other persecuted people in labour camps, especially during the 20th century.

The best-known example of this is the concentration camp system run by Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II. Nazi camps served for variety of purposes, most notorious being extermination camps and labor camps.

For much of the history of the Soviet Union and other Communist states, political opponents, enemies of these governments were often sentenced to forced labour camps. The Soviet Gulag camps were the continuation of the punitive labour system of Imperial Russia known as katorga.

Millions of people were exploited and killed by hard labor and bad living conditions in Nazi and Soviet labour camps.

 

so?

You think the taxpayer should pay the way of a prisoner? He is costing society money, why should we have to pay for him? Please, answer me this.


As for the death penalty? I believe it is our right to have the death penalty. HOWEVER, i dont agree with imposing the death penalty unless we are 100% sure the person did it, and then only in extreme cases. The legal system is flawed and mistakes do happen; for this reason i think we should cut back on executions big time.

'sides, if they're alive they can pay off their debt

 

We shouldn't have to.
The state using prisoners for cheap labor is not the answer though.

And how do we come to a 100% certainty?

 

a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence..video, dna, eyewitnesses, confession..caught in the act?

Are you saying there is always doubt in a crime?

 

Notice which countries we have this in common with:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageeath_Penalty_World_Map.png

Blue: Abolished for all crimes

Green: Abolished for all but exceptions (crimes committed in times of war)

Orange: Abolished in practice

Red: Legal form of punishment

 

Unless you have a time machine.
Regardless, guilt is a secondary issue.
The main issue is whether the state should be able to sentence a person to death, regardless of the crime or circumstance.

 

well, if thats the issue..who says the state can take away a person's liberty and hold them in jail? Not only are they taking away that one persons liberty, they are robbing everyone else in the process to do it!

A convicted person loses his rights, thats why.

 

This should save us both some time:



http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty#Arguments_against


Some of the major arguments used by those opposed to the death penalty include:

• The death penalty is killing. All killing is wrong, therefore the death penalty is wrong. According to Victor Hugo: «Que dit la loi? Tu ne tueras pas! Comment le dit-elle? En tuant!» ("What does the law say? You will not kill! How does it say it? By killing!").
• The death penalty is a violation of human rights primarily Article 3 and Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some assert that it violates the "natural rights" laid out by 17th-century English philosopher John Locke who set out many of the foundations of American law. The American Declaration of Independence also includes the "right to life" as the first listed of the natural rights. While those against capital punishment might claim this as an irrevocable right, proponents may claim that, as protection from abuse is the basis of such rights, that the right was forfeit by the seriousness of the crimes.
• Torture and cruelty are wrong. Some executions are botched, lethal injection in the US having the highest rate according to Amnesty International. This is often due to the fact that qualified medical professionals are prohibited from taking part. This leads to unqualified staff often taking extreme measures such as cutting into the arms of prisoners when they have been unable to locate a vein in lethal injection procedures. This undoubtedly causes those executed to suffer extended pain. Even those who die instantly suffer prolonged mental anguish leading up to the execution. Other procedures, including the electric chair, cyanide gas chamber and hanging are rarely fast or effective processes and are not designed to minimize pain and suffering.
• Criminal proceedings are fallible. Some people facing the death penalty have been exonerated, sometimes only minutes before their scheduled execution. Others have been executed before evidence clearing them is discovered. While criminal trials not involving the death penalty can also involve mistakes, there is at least the opportunity for those mistakes to be corrected. This has been particularly relevant in cases where new forensic methods (such as DNA) have become available. Since 1973, 119 people in 25 US states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.
• Within US court proceedings some low-income defendants end up being represented by court-appointed attorneys whose credentials are distinctly mediocre. Opponents argue that the prosecution has an unfair advantage. However, in recent years some death-penalty advocates have publicly supported the idea of using the French inquisitorial system in capital cases, instead of the adversarial proceedings currently followed in virtually all US courts today, thus addressing this issue. In addition, some states that have the death penalty – most notably New York – have established an office of "Capital Defender," either appointed by the state's governor or popularly elected (this system has since become obsolete in the particular state in question as capital punishment was declared unconstitutional in 2004, see List of individuals executed in New York).
• In the US the race of the person to be executed can also affect the likelihood of the sentence they receive. Death-penalty advocates counter this by pointing out that most murders where the killer and victim are of the same race tend to be "crimes of passion" while inter-racial murders are usually "felony murders"; that is, murders which were perpetrated during the commission of some other felony (most commonly either armed robbery or forcible rape), the point being that juries are more likely to impose the death penalty in cases where the offender has killed a total stranger than in those where some deep-seated, personal revenge motive may be present. A recent study showed that just 44% of Black Americans support the death penalty. [10]
• It can encourage police misconduct. For example, the documentary film The Thin Blue Line describes a case in the late 1970s in which an innocent man, Randall Adams, was framed by the Dallas County police department for the murder of a police officer because they knew the more likely suspect, David Harris, was still a minor and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
• The death penalty is not a deterrent; in the US recent studies do not support the view that capital punishment acts as a deterrent. [11]. It is also argued that anyone who would be deterred by the death penalty would already have been deterred by life in prison, and people that are not deterred by that would not be stopped by any punishment. This argument is typically supported by claims that those states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime. A stronger variant of this argument suggests that criminals who believe they will face the death penalty are more likely to use violence or murder to avoid capture, and that therefore the death penalty might theoretically even increase the rate of violent crime. [12].
• The death penalty brutalises society, by sending out the message that killing people is the right thing to do in some circumstances.
• The death penalty can be turned into a brutal spectator sport, akin to the Roman Colosseum, when audiences are allowed to watch and possibly revel in the death of others, also allowing those people to feel as though they are not morally incriminated by supporting death, because it is death for a "just cause". This psychologically creates a false reality where they are in no ways responsible for a killing, and undermines the idea that killing people/murder should not be celebrated. Witnesses to public death penalties can also descend into fanaticism.
• It is claimed that the death penalty psychologically harms the executioners, in some cases contributing to "Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress", and that even when this does not occur, killing a helpless person in a situation in which the executioner is not in danger may harm the executioner in other ways, such as decreasing his or her sense of the value of life. The suggested conclusion is that when capital punishment is not absolutely necessary to defend society, society has no right to ask executioners to risk their own mental health in such a way.
• It denies the possibility of rehabilitation. Some hold that a judicial system should have the role of educating and reforming those found guilty of crimes. If one is executed he will never have been educated and made a better person. A Christian variant of this argument would be that no one can place themselves beyond salvation, so society should never give up hope of rehabilitation.
• It is argued that in many countries there is greater public support for alternatives or simply public opposition to the death penalty. An International Gallup poll undertaken in 2000 found that 60% of western Europeans opposed the death penalty. In France, a TNS Sofres poll revealed that twenty years after abolition of capital punishment, 49% of respondents opposed reintroduction of the policy compared with 44% who wanted to reinstate capital punishment. In 2000, a poll in Germany found the percentage of West Germans in favour of capital punishment at just 23% the lowest level in Europe. For East Germans, polling found that just 37% of respondents were in favour of capital punishment in 2000. (Financial Times, August 22, 2003) A recent US study found that 41% of the public voted in favor of capital punishment, whilst a higher percentage of 44% voted against the death penalty when voters were offered alternative sentences. The most popular alternative to capital punishment being "life without parole plus restitution to the families of murder victims". [13]
• Capital punishment has been used politically to silence dissidents, minority religions (see Falun Gong) and activists. A major exponent of this is the People's Republic of China from which there are many reports of the death penalty being used for politically motivated ends. [14]
• Capital punishment may actually cost more money than life in prison due to the extra costs of the courts such as mistrials, appeals, and extra supervisions. Additionally, many (if not a majority) of death sentences are overturned on appeal. So the cost is incurred, regardlesss of the result. [15]

 

that is probably my biggest reason for wanting to do away with the death penalty. People who sit outside of jails and hold carnivals while someone is being killed are sick sick individuals and not a culture i want for this country.

 

Thats james for you.. US is not actually the NO. 1