- An encyclopedia of philosophy article on the death penalty.
- A large collection of resources on the ethics of capital punishment. I mean, wow.
- What's up with punishment in general? That's a big ethical issue.
- What about the financial cost of the death penalty? Although it's common sense to think that keeping a criminal in prison for life would cost more than putting her to death, some studies suggest that the opposite is true. The additional legal battles in death penalty cases may cost more than a life sentence.
- A nice article on measuring the reliability of the justice system. How often do courts convict the wrong person?
- I'll be mentioning "owning our ignorance" in class during our discussion of the death penalty. I like this issue so much that I've started a club about it!
Posts
Deterrence - Arguments & Rebuttals
ReplyDeleteThe following is Louis P. Pojman's arguement from "Deterence & the Death Penalty" in premise conclusion form, with applicable rebuttals from Jeffery Reiman's "Common Sense, The Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty, and the Best Bet Arguement" to follow:
Pojman argues that the death penalty should be retained in light of the "best bet" and "common sense" arguements outlined here. (as interpreted...by me...)
Common Sense:
(1)What people fear more will have a greater deterrent effect.
(2)People fear death more than any other humane punishment.
(3)The death penalty is a humane punishment.
(4)People will be more deterred by the death penalty than any other humane punishment.
(C)Because common sense dictates that it is a more effective detterent than imprisonment alone, we should retain the death penalty.
Best Bet:
(1)We don't know whether the death penalty is a uniquely effective deterrant.
(2)If we retain the death penalty, we may needlessly eradicated the lives of convicted murderers.
(3)If we abolish the death penalty, innocent people who would have otherwise not been killed may become future murder victims.
(4)It is better from a moral point of view to end the lives of convicted murderers than to risk the lives of potential innocent victims.
(C)Because it might save innocent lives, we should retain the death penalty.
Jeffrey Reimans argument:
ReplyDeleteCommon Sense rebutal:
(1)It does not follow that the more feared penalty will deter more than the less feared one, unless we know that the less feared penalty isn't fearful enough to deter everyone who could be detered.
(2)Due to the high level of risk of death involved in commiting a crime in today's society, it's hard to see why anyone who is not already detered by this more immediate risk of death would be more detered by the more distant risk of death after apprehension, conviction, and appeal.
(3)If there is a lesson about the wrongfulness of murder that is learned in a society that subjects murderers to the ultimate punishment (death), than the civilizing effect of not executing would also teach a lesson of the wrongfulness of murder.
(C) Because common sense does not dictate that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent than imprisonment, we should abolish the death penalty.
Best Bet rebuttal:
(1)the best bet arguement suggests that it is worse to fail to stop the killing of an innocent than to kill a murderer without a deterrent gain, so our best bet is to execute murderers.
(2)Unless there is a reason to expect the death penalty to be a superior deterrent to life in prison, the best bet arguement calls for the merest toying with human beings.
(C)To execute murderers because of the bare possibility that it might protect innocent lives without any evidence to suggest that it does is morally wrong
I suppose the thing do do now would be to examine the premises individually, formulating possible rebuttals and counter rebuttals to each, and then deciding whether to revise/remove/or defend, like we did in the exercise in class. First though, I want to make sure you guys all agree with the way I've interpreted the arguements, so even if you don't have anything to add right away, be sure to give a red/green light on what is already up.
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd chime in to say that those args look pretty decent!
ReplyDeleteThats a green light as far as i'm concerned...
ReplyDeleteSince Reimans arguement pretty much covers the first phase of rebuttals, I'm going to skip Pojman for now and look at how Reiman's premises hold up. I'll do number one for now and check back tommorow some time:
Common Sense
(p1)It does not follow that the more feared penalty will deter more than the less feared one, unless we know that the less feared penalty isn't fearful enough to deter everyone who could be detered.
analysis: I think this one's fairly strong, as it implies that there is a limit to deterrence beyond which additional fear can't add more deterrence. We could show this visually with a graph where the vertical axis is fear and the horizontal axis is deterrence that would look sorta like this:
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I also liked the example in the reading where as punishment for some hypothetical crime, when given a choice between 1000 years or an eternity in hell, the deterent effect would be the same for most people. Either way, hell is bad and the idea of 1000 years there is about as deterring as it gets. Can you think of a situation where 1000 years wouldn't be enough? ("Oh jeez, i was totally gonna go out and do some crimes, but now i don't know..1000 years would been ok, but this eternity thing really tips the scale.")
hmm... my graph didn't work...
ReplyDeleteIs the Death Penalty cruel and unusally punishment making it unconsitutional?
ReplyDeleteabolitionist perspective:
- does not matter how the death penalty is carried out the final result is still unconstitutional
- this penalty has allowed discretion where certain races are sentenced to the death penalty more than others
- rehabilitates criminals
- killing a person is till morally wrong
- what is the gulity was later recogized innocent?
retentionsit perspective:
- it reaffirms the dignity and worth or convict, gives them what they deserve
- some criminals are helpless and continue to commit crimes
- holding some criminals can put a danger to guards and other inmates
- death brings fear to criminals to decrease crime rate
- "Best Bet" arguement of if people did not have their lives threaten for committing certain crimes than the crime rate will increase
- certain crimes should have madatory death sentence
Rebuttal for Reiman's common sense (P1)
ReplyDeleteThe problem with premise 1 in reiman's common sense rebuttal is that even if it were granted that life in prison deter's most people and the death penalty is overkill in most cases, there is no way to prove or disprove that for some potential murderers, a life sentence would not deter but a death sentence would.
Counter: reiman's still ok so far, because he's careful with his wording...he says "UNLESS we know that the less feared penalty isn't fearful enough to deter everyone who could be detered." And he is correct as far as i can see, because we don't and probably can't know this.I think this one is defendable.
Analysis of Reiman's Common Sense Premise 2:
This is a good arguement, however, it doesn't account for murder's where the chance of the murderer being killed is low (for instance a man with a gun vs. an unarmed child in the middle of nowhere). We could defend a revised version, by adding the phrase "In many cases" to the begining.
(P3) this one's a bit tougher to break down, but i think we could defend it like this:
If actions of the state are setting an example by using death as a form of punishment, there saying that some crimes are so bad that we'll kill you if you commit them. The bad side of this is that it could be used to justify murder in the criminal mind("I feel you've seriously done me wrong, so I'm gonna do what the state would do, and punish you with death"). But if the state didn't execute, the example would be that it's always wrong to kill, as the result would be fewer murders. Granted, not all murders are based on punishing the victim, but a good percentage of them are (enough to damage Pojman's premise that executions deter by example, which is reiman's whole point).
Up Next : Reiman's take on the "Best Bet" arguement
If any of you guys wanna chat about this tonight...
ReplyDeleteMy phone: 609 439 2844
Analysis of Reiman's take on the "Best Bet" arguement:
ReplyDelete(P1)N/A (it was just a recap of Pojman's arg.)
(P2&Conclusion)I really can't think of how anyone could take issue with this...can you guys? Thought this would be harder, but it seems like Reimans right, standing alone without the common sense arguement to back it up, and therefore without evidence of a deterrent effect, the best bet arguement is weak.