A matter of life or death

There is an imbalance. It's an imbalance that bothers me a great deal.

I am a firm believer in the judicious use of the death penalty.

Let me start by offering up a number of reasons why some believe the death penalty is wrong:

It's barbaric and we're better than that

Are we?

Some clearly aren't, or people wouldn't be murdering each other in such numbers.

In many cases, the legal cost of sentencing -- and then latterly executing -- someone is overly expensive

Expense is a relative issue.

Abandoning a method of punishment because of the short-comings of the legal infrastructure is hardly a wise course of action.

But if it's the issue of expense that you find fault with, we'll be coming back to that in a moment.

There has to be a better way of dealing with murderers

I hear this yawn-inducing argument more than any other.

If there were, then the illusive saviour of penal reform has thus far eluded the best minds for hundreds of years.

There is no better way to deal with murderers. There are only degrees of more expensive ways of perpetual incarceration.

The death penalty isn’t a deterrent. In fact, in some of the states of America where the death penalty is permitted, the murder rates are often above the national average

There are two kinds of thinking are at work in the mind of killer. The first kind is the most common kind; the kind that don’t really think at all. The second kind is the worst of all; the kind that thinks the whole thing through from beginning to end.

The death penalty as a deterrent in either case is neither use nor ornament. But in my mind, that is to underestimate the reason for their execution. These people are worthless and their lives are an insult to the relatives of their victims.

The second point is -- superficially -- a good point indeed. But as the progressive-thinker would hope to have you believe that the death penalty somehow encourages murder -- which is just plain stupid, and is quite frankly insulting -- the death penalty is most likely a reaction to the rate of murder within those states, surely?

People do not knowingly commit a crime so heinous as murder in the knowledge that they might gag / fry / swing for it?

Again, a convenient smoke screen for statistical anomalies that owe more to social conditions and maybe even general education and upbringing than anything else.

Surely rehabilitation programs are the way forward, here?

Err, no.

And I'll give you a good reason why:

The systematic application of remedies to effect a cure: care, regimen, therapy, treatment. Informal rehab. See health/sickness, help/harm/harmless.

In politics, the restoration to favor of a political leader whose views or actions were formerly considered unacceptable. (Compare nonperson.)

Note how that in both cases of the dictionary definition of the word: 'rehabilitation', both allude to a point where something is returned to a previous state.

So, let's assume that there is a default state to human behaviour. Such a default state is entirely subject to the whims and fancy of the upbringing of the individual.

Where I live in Britain, there is an entire generation of kids who have literally zero grasp or understanding of simple right & wrong.

I am not dipping into hyperbole, I'm being quite serious. An entire generation of kids who simply have no clue of what is right and wrong.

Please, someone tell me how we rehabilitate these people?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is not me issuing some kind of blanket assessment of everyone. But for the kind of murderers that I’m thinking of, there is no practical, workable route to reform or rehabilitation.

The progressive-thinker will throw up any number of examples of rehabilitation programs that have been a relative success. Yes, that was a deliberate emphasis.

First off, let's be clear, here: there is no route to rehabilitating someone who has been imprisoned for life with no option of parole. After all, what would the point be? But I'll be generous.

The examples that I've read about consist of twenty or so prisoners finding their collective way into the kitchens of some hotel or old folks home.

So that would be twenty prisoners from a typical prison population of around two-thousand?

Even by my meagre grasp of math's, that's just a single percent. And that's from a selection of prisoners who're considered the most eligible.

Now, I know that there are other contributory factors here, such as potential employers, resources available to pilot such programs. But even factoring all of this in, I doubt the figure would creep above even five percent.

OK. Now my turn.

Let's flip this discussion on its head and give the progressive-thinkers something to consider.

Hospitals. As a good example, America have no publicly-funded healthcare system. So, almost everyone must pay. Money is a consideration.

Now, for someone like me, that is a horrifying prospect. The thought that my life might literally be at the mercy of a flip of coin fills me with dread. But the sad thing is, even here in Britain, we do not have an inexhaustible supply of money to keep the National Health Service ticking over.

So, as a result, there are often intensive care bed shortages, staff shortages and a whole host of other funding and / or resourcing issues that mean you're not likely to get that tumorous growth removed from the back of your eye before the damned thing creeps, inexorably into your brain.

So we have a situation were peoples' lives are held in the balance by the colour of the ink on the hospital bank balance.

The bottom line here is, the preservation of life can only be adhered to so long as adequate funds and resources are available.

Now, just to clarify the nagging grievance moving from the back of your mind right up to the tip of your tongue, or maybe even the tips of your fingers, let me be clear about who I'm referring to when I say murderer.

We have a population of prisoners who are murderers. In line with my life philosophy, you have only three kinds of killer: those who kill for either pleasure, profit or self-perpetuation.

The latter is probably a little more ambiguous and therefor deserves more leniency depending on the nature of the murder. But the other two are much more cut & dried. To kill for either pleasure, profit, or for pleasure and profit is abhorrently wrong.

In the cases of those that kill someone to feed a habit, or rape and murder someone for some sexual gratification, in my mind, death is the only alternative.

So, if the progressive-thinker is more than happy to set aside their principles when hospital cash boxes run dry, why do they still protest when we discuss putting murders out of our misery?

After all, these people will never be productive within the remit of society, they will never pay taxes, or be the happy consumer and buy goods.

In the end, they will simply absorb funds that could be re-directed elsewhere to keep hospitals open and people alive.

If economics really is a consideration, why is the death penalty frowned up while people die in hospitals every day the world over because there isn't enough money and resources to keep them alive?

If the question really is life or death and economics is part of the equation, then there is only one logical answer...