Death Penalty
The death penalty is a divisive topic. There are always lots of strong opinions voiced about it. Recently the attempted execution of Michael Morales has been repeatedly delayed… Several news sources (pick your favorite, they're everywhere) have been rife with reporting about the family of the victim.
Whenever some death row inmate is about to be executed, for some reason the media always trots out "family of the victim". While I understand that those closest to victims of violent crime are likely to have the strongest emotional response, I don't see why society at large should care how they feel. Social matters should be a function of social cost/benefit on a large scale, not how some mother and father in Podunk County feel about the matter.
Further, I fail to see how the Justice system and my tax dollars paying for police, district attorneys, judges, etc. serve to improve society as a whole if we focus on some poor family getting closure. Let me be crystal clear, our tax dollars are not and should not be spent toward making any particular person or family happy, safe, or vindicated. They are collected from us collectively and should be spent on us collectively. Crimes are established based on social cost, not personal cost. We as members of society can sympathize with the family of victims but everyone should understand that our justice system serves the whole society not any particular sub-group.
The difference here is Focus. If we focus on the victims, no, the death penalty is not worthwhile because we don't really want to pay millions of dollars to make one family feel better. Your daughter is dead. She'll be dead no matter how much we spend so it's hardly worth it to go to the effort to kill some convicted murder. Life goes on and you get a book deal. Go cry on someone else's shoulder. On the other hand, if we focus on the social cost/benefit we can try to use our penal system as a means to discourage future crime. Other daughters are alive. Their risk of being victimized is a function of how well we discourage crime. If we discourage crime well enough, then these other innocent people will never be harmed. Now that IS something worth killing a murderer for…
Whenever some death row inmate is about to be executed, for some reason the media always trots out "family of the victim". While I understand that those closest to victims of violent crime are likely to have the strongest emotional response, I don't see why society at large should care how they feel. Social matters should be a function of social cost/benefit on a large scale, not how some mother and father in Podunk County feel about the matter.
Further, I fail to see how the Justice system and my tax dollars paying for police, district attorneys, judges, etc. serve to improve society as a whole if we focus on some poor family getting closure. Let me be crystal clear, our tax dollars are not and should not be spent toward making any particular person or family happy, safe, or vindicated. They are collected from us collectively and should be spent on us collectively. Crimes are established based on social cost, not personal cost. We as members of society can sympathize with the family of victims but everyone should understand that our justice system serves the whole society not any particular sub-group.
The difference here is Focus. If we focus on the victims, no, the death penalty is not worthwhile because we don't really want to pay millions of dollars to make one family feel better. Your daughter is dead. She'll be dead no matter how much we spend so it's hardly worth it to go to the effort to kill some convicted murder. Life goes on and you get a book deal. Go cry on someone else's shoulder. On the other hand, if we focus on the social cost/benefit we can try to use our penal system as a means to discourage future crime. Other daughters are alive. Their risk of being victimized is a function of how well we discourage crime. If we discourage crime well enough, then these other innocent people will never be harmed. Now that IS something worth killing a murderer for…
posted by Minotaur at 7:05 PM
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