Post

Western Mars wrote:

Well, personally, I don't agree with the premise that capital punishment necessarily violates the dignity of human life; but otherwise it seems well-reasoned and consistent with immediately prior doctrine, and if there are any societies in history which have technologically or societally (?) advanced to a level of complexity, justice, and/or population such that they can easily survive without using the death penalty, ours probably number among them. In the USA, for example, where it's basically impossible to execute anyone anyway, I'm guessing the effect on crime would probably be nil.

I would broadly agree with your take.

While it's true that our society can survive without the death penalty and that in the USA, in the present criminal justice system, there is no justification for executing anyone for many reasons, I do think that more pastoral/theological thought ought to be put into the reasonableness/morality of executing people in two ways. First, there are some people who can otherwise continue to operate and commit crimes while in prison (gang leaders, drug lords, mafia), so in their cases putting them in prison doesn't actually nullify their harm on society. Heck there are some prison in Columbia and Ecuador and the like where those kinds of people run the prison and can essentially walk in and out as they please. Secondly, we should consider the problem that putting someone in many prisons, rather than 'rehabilitating' them or giving them time to have a turn of heart essentially encourages them to become more criminal. Oddly, execution might have had a better rate of redemption because "nothing clears a man's head more than the knowledge that tomorrow he will be hanged."