Leicestershire Police Authority duo call for capital punishment

[Trav Le Bleu]

I swear I could kill someone to be able to think of something to contribute to this argument.

[Alexikokopops]

thanks , I think I see what you are getting at

So basically , if a statistic backs up an assertion , then use it , but if it seems to contradict , then claim that it’s not necessarily the cause and effect , and that a million other unspecified factors that have simultaneously happened in the intervening years are the real culprits .

So it seems if someone has a predetermined unshakable opinion then statistics mean nothing

No, not really. I'm saying that if I saw this kind of relationship between two things at work (in a marketing campaign for example) I would say "there are strong indications that", but would put in the caveat that there could be some unknown factor having an effect that we haven't accounted for. I wouldn't feel completely comfortable saying it's a definite cause unless I sorted out some kind of test with a pilot and control group.

Since we're on the topic of the death penalty, I'm not actually against it because of the deterrent thing. The whole idea just makes me feel uncomfortable really, so it's more the morality grounds. You are right in saying that there are definite strong indications, looking at those figures you linked, that it has an effect as a deterrent. All I was really saying was that in this case (and it would be the same whatever the subject was) there's more to it than just saying "stats proves it" (not that I'm saying you were saying that ).

[Zingari]

No, not really. I'm saying that if I saw this kind of relationship between two things at work (in a marketing campaign for example) I would say "there are strong indications that", but would put in the caveat that there could be some unknown factor having an effect that we haven't accounted for. I wouldn't feel completely comfortable saying it's a definite cause unless I sorted out some kind of test with a pilot and control group.

Since we're on the topic of the death penalty, I'm not actually against it because of the deterrent thing. The whole idea just makes me feel uncomfortable really, so it's more the morality grounds. You are right in saying that there are definite strong indications, looking at those figures you linked, that it has an effect as a deterrent. All I was really saying was that in this case (and it would be the same whatever the subject was) there's more to it than just saying "stats proves it" (not that I'm saying you were saying that ).

Yes indeed , I can quite understand anyone who is against the death penalty on moral grounds , but I struggle with the angry brigade who are audacious enough to keep insisting that there can be absolutely no possibility of a deterrent factor , and that anyone who entertains the idea is some sort of moron .

But, hypothetically , if there is a deterrent factor , then we as a society must accept that more innocent people are losing their lives than would do if the death penalty was still in use , therefore are we just as morally compromised by our inaction , as we would be by actively using the deterrent ? This is a genuine question not rhetorical and i genuinely am interested in other views .

I also heard recently that there was 60 or so murders committed in the UK ( i'm not sure of the exact numbers or timescale as heard this on the car radio and did not catch all the details ) by murderers who had been released early from prison . Are we not in some way responsible for these tragic losses too ?

Thanks for your replies anyway , they don't make me feel like an ill educated fool , even though it's probably quite clear that I'm not in any way academic

[Shrenchel]

Am I the only one who would MUCH rather get executed than spend most of my life in a cat A prison? Seems like an easy way out for the fvckers really rather than a harsher punishment.

[Daggers]

Am I the only one who would MUCH rather get executed than spend most of my life in a cat A prison?

I'm sure a third way of 'neither of the above' is the preferred option for many.

[Bilo]

Am I the only one who would MUCH rather get executed than spend most of my life in a cat A prison? Seems like an easy way out for the fvckers really rather than a harsher punishment.

Bollocks would you.

Prisons are like hotels these days. Being stabbed in the throat with a sharpened toothbrush in the morning and being fisted in the showers at night with matey boy using only spit for lubricant is exactly what I expect from a weekend away.

[FoxyPV]

Being stabbed in the throat with a sharpened toothbrush pork sword in the morning and being fisted in the showers at night with matey boy using only spit for lubricant is exactly what I expect from a weekend away

If you go down to the Garage in Belfast you'll get exactly that on any given day.

[Nick]

If you go down to the Garage in Belfast you'll get exactly that on any given day.

Do you have a postcode I can put into my Sat Nav please ?

[Zingari]

Do you have a postcode I can put into my Sat Nav please ?

BU66 3RS

[Bilo]

The death penalty debate refuses to die – a bit like 17-year-old Willie Francis, who in 1946 was strapped into a chair at Louisiana State Penitentiary and electrocuted, only to wind up screaming for mercy from within his leather hood, selfishly upsetting several onlookers in the process.

The United Kingdom hasn't hanged anyone since 1964, when Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were simultaneously sent to the gallows, in an audacious end-of-season finale. In the intervening years, the capital punishment argument has resurfaced now and then, usually in the wake of an especially harrowing murder trial, when the mob's a bit twitchy. But it has always been a bit of a non-debate.

Proponents of the death penalty – "nooselovers" or "danglefans", as they like to be known – often come across as a bit old-fashioned, as though they're opposed to progress in all its forms, and might as well be arguing in favour of fewer crisp flavours and slower Wi-Fi. This fusty impression isn't helped when every news article about hanging is illustrated with vintage black and white photographs of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, as if tying a rope around someone's neck and dropping them through a trapdoor in the hope of causing a fatal bilateral fracture of the C2 vertebrae is the kind of behaviour that belongs in the past.

But now the debate has returned with an exciting new technological twist: thanks to the government's exciting e-petition initiative in which any motion attracting over 100,000 signatories becomes eligible for debate in the House of Commons, the danglefans are suddenly on the cutting edge of populist online activism. Or rather they would be, if they were proposing a suitably cutting-edge method of execution. Instead, it's just a load of vague blah about reinstating "the death penalty". What sort of death penalty? The gallows? The chair? The gas chamber? Come on, this is the internet. The least you could do is rustle up a Flash animation depicting precisely how you want these people to be killed. You could even make it interactive: maybe have a fun preamble in which we shake the prisoner's hand in order to guess his weight and adjust the length of the rope accordingly. Or a bit where we get to pull a leather hood over the screaming head of a petrified teenager with learning difficulties, then pull the switch and hear his kidneys boil.

Of course, anyone proposing the use of the noose or the chair is guilty of moral cowardice anyway. Capital punishment is supposed to act as a deterrent, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on crime statistics. This is because most current executions a) employ methods that are as quick and efficient as possible and b) take place behind closed doors – almost as though the people doing it are ashamed of themselves.

What sort of half-arsed half-measure is that? Cold logic dictates that the only way to turn capital punishment into an effective deterrent is to make each killing as drawn-out and public as possible. Maximum agony, maximum publicity. Anything less is a cop-out – and death penalty supporters should have the stones to say so. Stop this placatory talk about breaking people's necks gently with rope. Go the whole hog.

Don't campaign to bring back the gallows – campaign to bring back the saw. The medieval saw. Raise the prisoner by his feet and then saw through him vertically, starting at his arsecrack and ending at his scalp. Suspending him upside down ensures a constant supply of blood to his brain, so he'll remain conscious throughout and provide all manner of usefully lurid screams. In fact with any luck he'll carry on screaming even as his throat is sawn in half, thereby creating a pleasing stereo effect for viewers with home cinema systems. Did I mention the viewers? This is all broadcast live on television, in HD (and even 3D) where available. Maximum agony, maximum publicity.

Not that the broadcast should pander to ghoulish onlookers. It should pander to ghoulish participants. This is the 21st century: public executions can and should be as interactive as possible. So this death-by-vertical-sawing isn't just broadcast live, but broadcast live from the perspective of a camera with a crossbow attached. Viewers at home control the gunsights by tweeting directions such as "Left", "Right", "Up a bit", "Fire", and so on – a bit like ye olde gameshow The Golden Shot, but with approximately 100% more footage of shrieking bisected carcass being shot in the eye with a bolt smeared with excrement. A shot in the eye, incidentally, will win you 5,000 Nectar points and a congratulatory tweet from Paddy McGuinness.

Obviously, not everyone would voluntarily tune in to watch a broadcast that graphic, which is why highlights of each execution would be randomly spliced into other popular programmes – everything from Top Gear to Rastamouse. It would also be compulsory viewing at every school in the land. And children who try to evade its salutary message by closing their eyes will have still images of the precise moment of death beamed directly into their mind's eye using Apple's AirPlay system, as soon as we can establish some means of doing that.

Maximum agony, maximum publicity. It's the only way. It's saw or nothing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/bring-back-the-saw-instead?CMP=NECNETTXT766

Oh Charlie Brooker, you're a chap.

[Nick]

The death penalty debate refuses to die – a bit like 17-year-old Willie Francis, who in 1946 was strapped into a chair at Louisiana State Penitentiary and electrocuted, only to wind up screaming for mercy from within his leather hood, selfishly upsetting several onlookers in the process.

The United Kingdom hasn't hanged anyone since 1964, when Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were simultaneously sent to the gallows, in an audacious end-of-season finale. In the intervening years, the capital punishment argument has resurfaced now and then, usually in the wake of an especially harrowing murder trial, when the mob's a bit twitchy. But it has always been a bit of a non-debate.

Proponents of the death penalty – "nooselovers" or "danglefans", as they like to be known – often come across as a bit old-fashioned, as though they're opposed to progress in all its forms, and might as well be arguing in favour of fewer crisp flavours and slower Wi-Fi. This fusty impression isn't helped when every news article about hanging is illustrated with vintage black and white photographs of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, as if tying a rope around someone's neck and dropping them through a trapdoor in the hope of causing a fatal bilateral fracture of the C2 vertebrae is the kind of behaviour that belongs in the past.

But now the debate has returned with an exciting new technological twist: thanks to the government's exciting e-petition initiative in which any motion attracting over 100,000 signatories becomes eligible for debate in the House of Commons, the danglefans are suddenly on the cutting edge of populist online activism. Or rather they would be, if they were proposing a suitably cutting-edge method of execution. Instead, it's just a load of vague blah about reinstating "the death penalty". What sort of death penalty? The gallows? The chair? The gas chamber? Come on, this is the internet. The least you could do is rustle up a Flash animation depicting precisely how you want these people to be killed. You could even make it interactive: maybe have a fun preamble in which we shake the prisoner's hand in order to guess his weight and adjust the length of the rope accordingly. Or a bit where we get to pull a leather hood over the screaming head of a petrified teenager with learning difficulties, then pull the switch and hear his kidneys boil.

Of course, anyone proposing the use of the noose or the chair is guilty of moral cowardice anyway. Capital punishment is supposed to act as a deterrent, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on crime statistics. This is because most current executions a) employ methods that are as quick and efficient as possible and b) take place behind closed doors – almost as though the people doing it are ashamed of themselves.

What sort of half-arsed half-measure is that? Cold logic dictates that the only way to turn capital punishment into an effective deterrent is to make each killing as drawn-out and public as possible. Maximum agony, maximum publicity. Anything less is a cop-out – and death penalty supporters should have the stones to say so. Stop this placatory talk about breaking people's necks gently with rope. Go the whole hog.

Don't campaign to bring back the gallows – campaign to bring back the saw. The medieval saw. Raise the prisoner by his feet and then saw through him vertically, starting at his arsecrack and ending at his scalp. Suspending him upside down ensures a constant supply of blood to his brain, so he'll remain conscious throughout and provide all manner of usefully lurid screams. In fact with any luck he'll carry on screaming even as his throat is sawn in half, thereby creating a pleasing stereo effect for viewers with home cinema systems. Did I mention the viewers? This is all broadcast live on television, in HD (and even 3D) where available. Maximum agony, maximum publicity.

Not that the broadcast should pander to ghoulish onlookers. It should pander to ghoulish participants. This is the 21st century: public executions can and should be as interactive as possible. So this death-by-vertical-sawing isn't just broadcast live, but broadcast live from the perspective of a camera with a crossbow attached. Viewers at home control the gunsights by tweeting directions such as "Left", "Right", "Up a bit", "Fire", and so on – a bit like ye olde gameshow The Golden Shot, but with approximately 100% more footage of shrieking bisected carcass being shot in the eye with a bolt smeared with excrement. A shot in the eye, incidentally, will win you 5,000 Nectar points and a congratulatory tweet from Paddy McGuinness.

Obviously, not everyone would voluntarily tune in to watch a broadcast that graphic, which is why highlights of each execution would be randomly spliced into other popular programmes – everything from Top Gear to Rastamouse. It would also be compulsory viewing at every school in the land. And children who try to evade its salutary message by closing their eyes will have still images of the precise moment of death beamed directly into their mind's eye using Apple's AirPlay system, as soon as we can establish some means of doing that.

Maximum agony, maximum publicity. It's the only way. It's saw or nothing.

http://www.guardian....MP=NECNETTXT766

Oh Charlie Brooker, you're a chap.

Great article.

[Bellend Sebastian]

There are a lot of crisp flavours, aren't there?

You go to somewhere like Germany and they only have two

[Bilo]

Great article.

I do get the feeling that some of the views portrayed ironically more or less exactly fit in with Dangerous Tiger's train of thought though.

[davieG]

The death penalty debate refuses to die – a bit like 17-year-old Willie Francis, who in 1946 was strapped into a chair at Louisiana State Penitentiary and electrocuted, only to wind up screaming for mercy from within his leather hood, selfishly upsetting several onlookers in the process.

The United Kingdom hasn't hanged anyone since 1964, when Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were simultaneously sent to the gallows, in an audacious end-of-season finale. In the intervening years, the capital punishment argument has resurfaced now and then, usually in the wake of an especially harrowing murder trial, when the mob's a bit twitchy. But it has always been a bit of a non-debate.

Proponents of the death penalty – "nooselovers" or "danglefans", as they like to be known – often come across as a bit old-fashioned, as though they're opposed to progress in all its forms, and might as well be arguing in favour of fewer crisp flavours and slower Wi-Fi. This fusty impression isn't helped when every news article about hanging is illustrated with vintage black and white photographs of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, as if tying a rope around someone's neck and dropping them through a trapdoor in the hope of causing a fatal bilateral fracture of the C2 vertebrae is the kind of behaviour that belongs in the past.

But now the debate has returned with an exciting new technological twist: thanks to the government's exciting e-petition initiative in which any motion attracting over 100,000 signatories becomes eligible for debate in the House of Commons, the danglefans are suddenly on the cutting edge of populist online activism. Or rather they would be, if they were proposing a suitably cutting-edge method of execution. Instead, it's just a load of vague blah about reinstating "the death penalty". What sort of death penalty? The gallows? The chair? The gas chamber? Come on, this is the internet. The least you could do is rustle up a Flash animation depicting precisely how you want these people to be killed. You could even make it interactive: maybe have a fun preamble in which we shake the prisoner's hand in order to guess his weight and adjust the length of the rope accordingly. Or a bit where we get to pull a leather hood over the screaming head of a petrified teenager with learning difficulties, then pull the switch and hear his kidneys boil.

Of course, anyone proposing the use of the noose or the chair is guilty of moral cowardice anyway. Capital punishment is supposed to act as a deterrent, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on crime statistics. This is because most current executions a) employ methods that are as quick and efficient as possible and b) take place behind closed doors – almost as though the people doing it are ashamed of themselves.

What sort of half-arsed half-measure is that? Cold logic dictates that the only way to turn capital punishment into an effective deterrent is to make each killing as drawn-out and public as possible. Maximum agony, maximum publicity. Anything less is a cop-out – and death penalty supporters should have the stones to say so. Stop this placatory talk about breaking people's necks gently with rope. Go the whole hog.

Don't campaign to bring back the gallows – campaign to bring back the saw. The medieval saw. Raise the prisoner by his feet and then saw through him vertically, starting at his arsecrack and ending at his scalp. Suspending him upside down ensures a constant supply of blood to his brain, so he'll remain conscious throughout and provide all manner of usefully lurid screams. In fact with any luck he'll carry on screaming even as his throat is sawn in half, thereby creating a pleasing stereo effect for viewers with home cinema systems. Did I mention the viewers? This is all broadcast live on television, in HD (and even 3D) where available. Maximum agony, maximum publicity.

Not that the broadcast should pander to ghoulish onlookers. It should pander to ghoulish participants. This is the 21st century: public executions can and should be as interactive as possible. So this death-by-vertical-sawing isn't just broadcast live, but broadcast live from the perspective of a camera with a crossbow attached. Viewers at home control the gunsights by tweeting directions such as "Left", "Right", "Up a bit", "Fire", and so on – a bit like ye olde gameshow The Golden Shot, but with approximately 100% more footage of shrieking bisected carcass being shot in the eye with a bolt smeared with excrement. A shot in the eye, incidentally, will win you 5,000 Nectar points and a congratulatory tweet from Paddy McGuinness.

Obviously, not everyone would voluntarily tune in to watch a broadcast that graphic, which is why highlights of each execution would be randomly spliced into other popular programmes – everything from Top Gear to Rastamouse. It would also be compulsory viewing at every school in the land. And children who try to evade its salutary message by closing their eyes will have still images of the precise moment of death beamed directly into their mind's eye using Apple's AirPlay system, as soon as we can establish some means of doing that.

Maximum agony, maximum publicity. It's the only way. It's saw or nothing.

http://www.guardian....MP=NECNETTXT766

Oh Charlie Brooker, you're a chap.

That's convinced me. Where's that poll?

TV's so boring today all those repeats can they guarantee at least one a week? Oh hang on they'll be no murders by the end of the year how disappointing would that be, maybe we should have a Commission into how to increase the murder rate to keep the supply going.

[Nick]

That's convinced me. Where's that poll?

TV's so boring today all those repeats can they guarantee at least one a week? Oh hang on they'll be no murders by the end of the year how disappointing would that be, maybe we should have a Commission into how to increase the murder rate to keep the supply going.

[Bilo]

Maybe increase the number of penalties that can bring about a death sentence.

Saw the paedophiles in half from scrote to throat, that would definitely decrease the number of paediatricians and general paedophiliacs.

The bastards.

[Alexikokopops]

Yes indeed , I can quite understand anyone who is against the death penalty on moral grounds , but I struggle with the angry brigade who are audacious enough to keep insisting that there can be absolutely no possibility of a deterrent factor , and that anyone who entertains the idea is some sort of moron .

But, hypothetically , if there is a deterrent factor , then we as a society must accept that more innocent people are losing their lives than would do if the death penalty was still in use , therefore are we just as morally compromised by our inaction , as we would be by actively using the deterrent ? This is a genuine question not rhetorical and i genuinely am interested in other views .

I also heard recently that there was 60 or so murders committed in the UK ( i'm not sure of the exact numbers or timescale as heard this on the car radio and did not catch all the details ) by murderers who had been released early from prison . Are we not in some way responsible for these tragic losses too ?

Thanks for your replies anyway , they don't make me feel like an ill educated fool , even though it's probably quite clear that I'm not in any way academic

I think it probably would have been better if I'd just posted the last post at the beginning I think I did my usual thing of babbling.

Can we bring the death penalty in for mis-use of stats? I have a problem.

[Finnegan]

Maybe increase the number of penalties that can bring about a death sentence.

Saw the paedophiles in half from scrote to throat, that would definitely decrease the number of paediatricians and general paedophiliacs.

The bastards.

Alright Charlie Brooker.

[Daggers]

Alright Charlie Brooker.

Nice holiday?

[Zingari]

Nice holiday?

Has Finners been in prison ?

[Webbo]

Full version

(AP) Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey.

The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations — pointing out flaws in the justice system — has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago.

What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

PDF

[Rincewind]

The majority of murders are domestic related by a family member. Others like serial killers the culprit is deemed to have a mental problem Killers like bank robbers burglars are oppotunist and kill on the spur of the moment. Their main concern is not being caught. The death penalty would make little difference. With planned murders the culprits believe that they are committing the 'perfect crime' so being caught does not enter their mind Murders involving momentary loss of control and anger would still happen. There may be a few who will think twice but as most murders are spur of the mont that figure would be low.

[Rincewind]

There will always be paedofiles death or no death penalty. Although if one or two of them were to take their own lives in prison I would not weep for them.