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1) Then stop thinking of it as a deterrent and start looking at is as the punishment it is intended to be.
1. This ties in with 4. You're wrong. Punishing people simply to punish is stupid; public safety is all that matters, and punishment happens to sometime be a means to that end. People are incarcerated to make credible the threat of incarceration and to separate the dangerous individuals from the rest of society. The legal system doesn't waste it's time making people feel bad simply to make them feel bad.
2. But that's not going to happen, and you know that. Here is a perfect chance to cut wasteful government spending, and you are saying no? You don't want to pay extra taxes to feed the poor, but you will pay extra taxes to put a sign in their yard that says "I hope you feel bad"? You're spending a hundred thousand dollars on someone's feelings.
3. And we can make sh
it happen less. Fewer innocent people put to death is inarguably better than more, so you're going to have to come up with a pretty significant gain to offset that cost. Right now it seems the only gain you've got is "maybe the guilty might feel slightly worse about what they did?"
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I don't understand what kind of f'ucked up world view someone has to have to believe that it's wrong to inflict the ultimate penalty on a person who deprives, intentionally or with special circumstances attached, another person of his or her life, of his or her parent, child, sibling, loved one or random fellow human being.
It's not wrong, it's just a bad idea. There are two options which happen to get the same job done, but one of them happens to be more expensive and more prone to failure. Why would anyone choose the more costly and error filled option?
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Some things just shouldn't be tolerated.
I agree, but from a different perspective. I think murder shouldn't be tolerated, but I don't give a **** about the murderers. You think murderers shouldn't be tolerated, but apparently don't give a **** about murder.