Comments on: Execution Dignity

By: Robin Hanson on the oddity of the prisoner’s last meal « Mike Kenny

Robin Hanson on the oddity of the prisoner’s last meal « Mike Kenny — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:58:08 +0000

[...] Robin Hanson on the oddity of the prisoner’s last meal. I comment there: Is it possible a good deed to an enemy before he is harmed is a hedge against a reversal, or reprisal from your enemy’s allies? Feeding a prisoner about to be executed could mean you are showing you care about him, but feel you have to kill him anyway for reasons other than immediate personal satisfaction. [...]

By: Recomendaciones « intelib

Recomendaciones « intelib — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:43:04 +0000

[...] Execution Dignity, by Robin Hanson [...]

By: Larry Lard

Larry Lard — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:59:36 +0000

> The whole point of punishing criminals is to discourage would-be criminals from doing crimes. The whole point? Really? Wikipedia has seven; an elementary text on jurisprudence could probably offer even more.

By: Julian Morrison

Julian Morrison — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:45:07 +0000

The explanation for this seems simple to me. It’s not that we’re being nice to the prisoner. It’s that we fear becoming monsters. We don’t want to do the kinds of measured harm to prisoners that the monkey mind of the public could possibly interpret as fun, not even if it would work better. We want punishment to bore us. If we started enjoying punishing people, then we would obliterate our ability to see ourselves as fundamentally ethically separated from “barbarism”. This is why tabloids, which eke out ribald enjoyment even from the deliberate boredom of legal punishment, are seen as a bit barbaric.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:55:43 +0000

The question: “If you get to choose your last meal but not your clothes before being executed?” is not useful unless you first explore why the condemned person is given this privilege to begin with. I once attended a forensics lecture in which this was explored. It is basically a sociological question, but no definite answer was forthcoming. The picture that I came away with was that death row in a prison is a complex social setting, full of tradition, in which each player fulfills a role. The inmate to be executed has prescribed act he will participate in including dress code. It is common knowledge that the dress code for everyone at most social occasions is prescribed, so why should this be different? The reason that the prisoner has the choice of meal is not clear and the lecturer could come up with various possibilities, none of was mutually exclusive nor particularly abstruse.

All social activities, especially those associated with death, are tradition rich. Just because there are certain parameters where choice is permissible, this obviously does not open the door to choice in all areas. Thus it is not a matter of logical consistency and to try to make it so is kind of childlike. It’s like asking Mommy why the fork is on the left side. The question does not really yield to logic, nor do many similar questions, despite the ability to fan up massive amounts of opaque verbal smoke or to try to make it the source of some political point.

By: James K

James K — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:25:24 +0000

Were I to be executed I would go for a Chinese style execution. A rifle bullet to the back of the head has to be about the greatest chance of swift death that you can get. But while its clean for the victim, its messy for everyone else so craven legislators try to make it medical, like they were putting down a dog.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:03:04 +0000

When Saddam Hussein was executed he looked very dignified. Was it the clothes?

By: J

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:51 +0000

“The whole point of punishing criminals is to discourage would-be criminals from doing crimes”

If you regard incarceration as punishment (you appear to), it also has the purpose of separating criminals from the public. Indeed, I think that is a far more important function than punishment. That said, I do wonder if, in terms of deterrence, we’d be better off with some sort of corporal punishment, or shorter terms in exceptionally harsh prisons. Has anybody asked convicts what they think would work?

“On the other hand, living in California, I’d have to say that anything is better than the three strikes law, where you can go to jail for life for stealing a pizza”

No, you can go to prison for life for demonstrating (a third time) that you are a criminal who can’t be rehabilitated. Are you one of those people who is mystified at the crime rate going down with all the people we have in jail?

By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:28:16 +0000

This attributes too much coherence to what “we” think. Prison rape is a good example of that. Some people try to do as this post claims and project to the world a civilized image with no rape; but others, including police and judges, brag about it. I think William H. Stoddard, above, is wrong that the same people try to signal an incoherent combination; instead different people signal different things. Similarly, people disagree on the purpose of the criminal justice system. Some want deterrance, others punishment.

By: Jeffrey Soreff

Jeffrey Soreff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:02:58 +0000

>There is only mercy in the speed at which death comes.

If the execution methods were actually designed with that in
mind they would drop a large rock on the prisoner’s head
or blow them up. As nearly as I can tell, most of the changes
in execution methods have been to make it appear more
clinical, perhaps because legislators are squeamish?