| Dunban67 said: i am for the death penalty but as it exist in the US it does not work to prevent crime but it does work well as a negotiating tool for prosecuters The main reason the death penalty does not work as a deterent today is it takes so many years between being sentenced and actual administering and relative to the number of crimes comitted that are eligible for the death penalty, it is quite rare and infrequent that it is actually used Honestly public hanging would work far better as a deterent- |
Psychologists tell us... and it makes a tonne of sense... that the death penalty is not any kind of deterrent to the kinds of crimes that prosecutors seek the death penalty for.
Most crimes where the proesecution asks for the suspect to be put to death are for crimes of desperation, or crimes of passion. You kill your partner in a fit of rage, you do a violent crime (and someone gets hurt) because you're desperately poor, etc. For those kinds of crimes, generally *no* punishment could be any kind of deterrent, because the person is not acting in a cold and calculated fashion, they're acting out of passionate impulsiveness. And if they *are* doing that kind of crime in a cold and calculating way, then they're likely a sociopath and that's another kind of criminal where no punishment is going to act as any kind of real deterrent.
Public hangings, if anything, might embolden some potential criminals because they're lonely and/or wrong in the head and may appreciate the notoriety of their anticipated punishment.
