I seeLog In (though I'm kind-of disappointed if GCF still doesn't have its own webpage that shows up here), but I imagine that there are some infected criminals so hardened that the only way to prevent their future crimes is to exterminate them. Penn-&-Teller's SHOWTIME show states that--since "killing is wrong"--the states that legalize such extermination are peopled entirely by murderers. I disagree. States that do not legalize such extermination are TRAINING murderers to do it MORE without getting caught! Besides, at-the-end-of-the-day do you want to spend a little bit for an extermination & sleep a little better knowing that the criminal no longer exists, or would you rather pay for decades-&-decades of room-&-board-&-training to improve your odds in the coin-toss of whether the prisons will release a good citizen or an evil genius into society?
Death penalties haven't made much difference. Even when those condemned to die were dispatched in barbaric ways - boiling alive, skinning alive, slow-slicing and the like - that didn't rid society of criminals. People still committed crimes because they knew quite well that death comes to everyone eventually. What we need instead is to replace prisons with labor camps. Those sent there would at least be doing something useful.
Penn-&-Teller reviewed the three main reasons people commit crimes punishable by death---compulsion, passion and ... sickness? I forget exactly what they were, but the point is that NONE of them came with 'clearly reasoning and considering options'---nobody's thinking 'should I do this? or will they kill me, so I better not!' And lethal injection was designed by one of Hitler's doctors to be the most-excruciating death you can imagine---like drowning, but you're unable to move. I think the most-humane death would be ... being totally vaporized in an explosion. But I'm considering it at a couple of simple levels: 1) Crime-amount - a dead criminal is going to commit fewer crimes than a living one. (I know you could use that thinking to justify killing 'all but the perfectly-innocent,' so I say that with the assumption that you've eliminated every option before you decide they should die) & 2) cost-to-society: small cost (death facilities & operators' salaries) or large costs (salaries for all the guards, administrators, lawyers, etc.; room-&-board for however-long the person's incarcerated; possibility of relapse after the convict is released; etc.) I'm sure the well-reformed criminals repay ALL of that (although---do WE ever see any of that?), but what do you do about the ones that DON'T reform? Is it worth the cost just to claim 'your state doesn't murder?'
Criminals are underutilized, yes, but who's fault is that? The government of course. They have every option to utilize the criminals so they can be useful members of society even while incarcerated but officials opt to just let them stay behind bars instead of using them to plow the fields, catch fishes or milk cows.
Criminals are like wild animals were to you when you were a toddler---we don't know WHY they did what they did ... could be a crime-of-passion (and the incarceration-time is the only "whip" we can use to train them to keep their heads clear), could be they're SICK (either with-or-without the hope of 'being cured,' we don't know THAT either). And if you give the animals too much leash, there's the risk that they'll break free and run rampant.
I won't even look down on criminals. There's no point comparing them with animals. They're just human beings suffering from an emotional or spiritual void. You won't see psychos in jail, you know. They're dumped at asylums or psychiatric wards. Ordinary criminals won't run rampant as long as there's sufficient supervision.
I think that the criminals who are in prison for armed robbery and burglary and extortion would rather die than do a hard day's work. That's why they chose stealing large amounts of money at the cost of human lives. So those are exactly the scumbags that should be sentenced to hard labor and be utilized for whatever dirty jobs the state needs done. Since they wanted to avoid working so badly that they shot people for money, it would be fitting that they work like beasts for no money.
