When does a just society kill or expel a member?

[Cunt]

Right away I should say that I feel pretty strongly about this. I will try to tell you why.

I met a lady who lacked some important social skills as a youth, and as a result, she was placed in an institution for her own protection and to give her a more specialized education.

Another way to tell this story is that she was tossed in a nightmare of a booby-hatch because some folks thought she was too stupid to live with the community she was lucky enough to be born into.

There she was abused in ways I don't want to think about, and was later put through a sterilization surgery.

To protect her from pregnancy.

She had always wanted a child.

Anyway, she was basically expelled from society, as is still happening to many with 'developmental disabilities' or 'mental health problems'.

Some places go a bit further than banning and outright kill their undesirables. There seems to be a bit more...I don't know...respect for dignity in this method, but it's awfully harsh.

Either way, these people are born as strangers in a strange land, just as everyone is, and a decision is made that they are so intolerable that something must be done.

What I want to know is when?

Personally, I would say when someone presents a threat of serious physical harm to others, they should be prevented from accessing (unwilling) victims from society. (some form of prison)

Short of that, hey, fuck chickens if you like (but I might not buy your eggs)

[Pappa]

In the UK, it's not illegal to be mad. You can't be institutionalised for suffering from psychiatric disorders at all, unless there is a perceived risk that you will harm yourself or others. The kind of stuff you've outlined above is clearly abhorrent. Nobody should ever be treated that way, even the criminally insane have basic human rights, and people who are simply maladjusted but not harmful should be offered help, not locked up.

I don't think there should ever be a right to kill, sterilise or abuse any human being. No mater what they may or may not have done. Not only because I regard it as moral wrong, but also because mistakes are made. Criminals are sometimes wrongly convicted, people with psychiatric problems are sometimes misdiagnosed.

[mistermack]

I'm totally against the death penalty, but only for one reason. That is the chance of an innocent person being executed. If it wasn't for that, I would vote for it.
But innocence and guilt are not always black and white.
You get grey areas, where you might be robbing a bank, and one of your gang kills a bank manager. You might not even know the ammo was real, but legally you were part of it, and you would hang for it.
Other questions like mental ability and responsibility come into it too. So the best thing is, don't have a death penalty. It might be right for the guillty, but it's not worth the cost of executing an innocent.

Mind you, I wasn't particularly upset when they hung Saddam.

I have a solutiion that I think might work. The judge that passes the death sentence, and the jury that voted for it, would have to be hung themselves, if it turned out that they hanged an innocent person.
I think they would then treat the question of 'reasonable doubt' with the seriousness it deserves.
.

[Posse Comitatus]

I'm totally against the death penalty, but only for one reason. That is the chance of an innocent person being executed. If it wasn't for that, I would vote for it.

Bingo.


At least in the normal course of domestic justice. I can't see what else could have been done at say (going right to the extremes) Nuremberg other than to kill as many as they could convict, (not that anything approaching a fair trail was heard at all times, and arguably that, for example, Russia was able to sit and judge others for war crimes (even lovely Britain's collective hands were hardly clean) is in its self utterly grotesque) but ultimately no one really cares because they're Nazis.

So essentially my position is no killing unless you've committed crimes on such a horrendous scale that your death is basically needed on some grand, romanticised symbolic level. It's not very nice writing that really. I'm sorry Kaltenbrunner, but really you had to go.

[FBM]

As long as people such as the lady described in the OP don't present a danger to themselves or others, they should be offered treatment and support services, not ostracised. The US went through a phase during which they sterilized the mentally handicapped, but they got over it. That was 50~60 years ago, IIRC. Cunt, when did all this happen to the lady you know? I hope that sort of thing doesn't still happen.

[hiyymer]

I'm totally against the death penalty, but only for one reason. That is the chance of an innocent person being executed. If it wasn't for that, I would vote for it.

As I grow older, I swear I can't find any reason to have laws except to protect the rest of us from harm and hold people financially accountable. That can be accomplished by locking them up. So why execute someone? You like watching them squirm before you pull the switch?

[Trolldor]

What's a "just" society? By who's "just" standards are we analysing this?

[Lion IRC]

I am totally against the death penalty because humans are not perfect judges of other humans and any punishment should afford the opportunity for redemption.
An ALL knowing law maker might be intelligent enough to know who is definitely guilty and who will never be repentant (a recidivist) but humans cannot.
There is no turning back with the death penalty and therefore you would never have the benefit of the “sinner” publicly “repenting” and making a mends to society.
If we had more former criminals talking about the regret they have come to feel about a past action then perhaps more people in similar situations would avoid making the same mistake. As it is, the death penalty removes those people from society all together – permanently.
The death penalty might actually be an incentive for some crimes where the perpetrator, knowing we all die any way, weighs up the cost/benefits of a “sinful” act they desire to do and makes a judgment that it’s worth it even if they DO get caught and punished. Then you are left with the very UNJUST scenario of murder victim and their killer both sharing the exact same outcome. No wonder the afterlife - heaven/hell – has such appeal to many peoples sense of transcendent morality and hope for Higher justice.
Do I think self-confessed, unrepentant axe murderers should be jailed? Yes – for THEIR own good. We put bars between criminals and ourselves for the same reason we don’t roll down our windows when driving though an African wildlife safari reserve.
Lion (IRC)
P.S. - I liked the bible reference in the OP "strangers in a strange land"

[Feck]

I think the death penalty should be reserved for the worst dictators of the world, those that happily committed genocide or mass murder . I dislike the idea of an imperfect legal system being empowered to take human life.I do not think it serves as a deterrent.
apart from the hideous crime of replacing my noodles with some vile mixture of bean shoots and noodles, that should have a a death by torture penalty

[Cunt]

As long as people such as the lady described in the OP don't present a danger to themselves or others, they should be offered treatment and support services, not ostracised. The US went through a phase during which they sterilized the mentally handicapped, but they got over it. That was 50~60 years ago, IIRC. Cunt, when did all this happen to the lady you know? I hope that sort of thing doesn't still happen.

It is still happening (though getting better all the time).

We have special institutions to lock up the bothersome members of society. We have executions. I was wondering when it is 'just' to do so. Then someone asks this...

What's a "just" society? By who's "just" standards are we analysing this?

Ofuck.

Um.

Just...lemme think about it.