Quote:
Originally Posted by mist
There's a difference between rehabilitated and more useful alive than dead.
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More useful to whom? Who gets to decide which inmates on death row are useful and which are not? And by what standard?
And what does it mean to say that someone is more useful alive than dead? At one extreme you could argue that everyone is
potentially more useful alive than dead--in the sense that anyone might do something wonderful in the future (discover some great invention, paint a masterpiece,
etc). This would seem to quickly devolve into a no-death-penalty argument--is that what you meant? Towards the other extreme we could give each inmate on death row, say, five years to demonstrate their 'usefulness'. If they can't sell enough inventions or books or whatever then it's off to the execution chamber. Literally, publish or perish. :/
That would have a disturbing utilitarian aspect, in that the death penalty would be enforced not on the basis of the acts of the criminals, but on their talents as artists, authors,
etc. (
i.e., their usefulness). Frankly, that seems to me ultimately more dehumanizing than simply killing them (
we're killing you because you're an unrepentant brutal multiple-murderer and your poetry sucks).