There are two main categories of theories on criminal justice and punishment.
- absolute theories: These concentrate on punishment as revenge or payment.
Your death is the price you pay for the taking of another life. Brought up prominently by Kant: "Even if society unanimously decided to dissolve itself, the last imprisoned murderer would have to be executed, so that everybody receives what is the worth of his deeds."
- relative theories: They think of punishment as a tool for perevention, splitted up in:
- special prevention: so that this criminal won't strike again
- general prevention: so that others get the message and don't attempt to do that
The judicial system here does not have to exact revenge or equality but has to protect the public.
Many countries nowadays apply (mostly) relative theories which of course excludes the death penalty, as it is an extremely harsh measure to achieve crime prevention and studies show, that federally sanctioned killing could be the cause of a higher social acception of killing and thus increase murder rates.
So, whether you advocate death penalty or not depends on how you see your judiciary system and your society. I for myself advocate the relative theories
because:
I like to view society as a big family and I think that it is the law's obligation to educate people. Punishment may be a necessary element of education, but revenge is IMHO not.
[ 11-08-2003, 07:53 AM: Message edited by: Faceman ]