A state-sponsored execution is filled with ritual, from the agonizing countdown to the grim hour to the prisoner’s last meal. That final repast is such a curious display of compassion under the circumstances. Don’t let the man die hungry, as if that would be an indication of a truly uncivilized electorate. Or is the last meal a grudging willingness to let the convicted man have the tiniest bit of control over how he will exit this world? …
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
>There is only mercy in the speed at which death comes.
If the execution methods were actually designed with that inmind they would drop a large rock on the prisoner's heador blow them up. As nearly as I can tell, most of the changesin execution methods have been to make it appear moreclinical, perhaps because legislators are squeamish?
Execution is the ultimate penalty we can apply to a single person. Therefore, if a person is convinced that a crime is worth the death penalty, there is nothing preventing that person from committing further crimes. We can not punish him more than what he has already accepted.
To avoid that situation, we must hold some last ultimate punishment in reserve. Death with an empty stomach.
The last meal is just that. It is factually the last. Because it is known to all to be the last, it becomes distinct. While distinction tends to produce ritual, all of the formal activities that precede such a death are part of the larger legal practice. The last meal of course has special significance to Christians. In a Christian society, redemption is the key attribute of our behavior. We provide a stable coherent process to implement a sobering capacity to allow for redemption of the condemned's soul.
Being put to death in public is undignified. There is no dignified way to kill a person. There is only mercy in the speed at which death comes.
Our obligation to the condemned is to be professional about the process. The quickest and surest implementation of dying.
You know, that argument is all very well, but at the same time, prison rape is generally accepted as existing, widely mythologized (perhaps beyond its actual extent, for all I know), and often eagerly anticipated by people resentful of various crimes. And yet at the same time it is not generally accepted as "cruel and unusual punishment," as it would be declared in an instant by the Supreme Court if any court had the naked honesty to say "we sentence you to be forcibly sodomized for your crimes" (with the exception of the proprietors of Agoraphilia, http://agoraphilia.blogspot... , whose lucid thinking I commend). So I think your theory needs to be expanded to account simultaneously for our signaling that we are decent and humane in our treatment of prisoners, and yet that we are harshly punitive and criminals have every reason to fear prison . . . both at the same time.
Always remember, "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind." So debate all you want about what are, or are not, the best punishments. But whatever you decide, make sure you keep the violent felons locked up and away from law-abiding society for a long, long, time. Thank you.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
When Saddam Hussein was executed he looked very dignified. Was it the clothes?
"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?
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.
>There is only mercy in the speed at which death comes.
If the execution methods were actually designed with that inmind they would drop a large rock on the prisoner's heador blow them up. As nearly as I can tell, most of the changesin execution methods have been to make it appear moreclinical, perhaps because legislators are squeamish?
robin - not really, you said
The whole point of punishing criminals is to discourage would-be criminals from doing crimes.
sure, that's a part of it - but the main point of it, really, I reckon, is preventing habitual criminals from re-offending for a number of years
Execution is the ultimate penalty we can apply to a single person. Therefore, if a person is convinced that a crime is worth the death penalty, there is nothing preventing that person from committing further crimes. We can not punish him more than what he has already accepted.
To avoid that situation, we must hold some last ultimate punishment in reserve. Death with an empty stomach.
The last meal is just that. It is factually the last. Because it is known to all to be the last, it becomes distinct. While distinction tends to produce ritual, all of the formal activities that precede such a death are part of the larger legal practice. The last meal of course has special significance to Christians. In a Christian society, redemption is the key attribute of our behavior. We provide a stable coherent process to implement a sobering capacity to allow for redemption of the condemned's soul.
Being put to death in public is undignified. There is no dignified way to kill a person. There is only mercy in the speed at which death comes.
Our obligation to the condemned is to be professional about the process. The quickest and surest implementation of dying.
OK, I'll correct the post.
But we will not allow them a choice of clothes, musical accompaniment, or execution method.
The man executed in VA choose his execution method.
You know, that argument is all very well, but at the same time, prison rape is generally accepted as existing, widely mythologized (perhaps beyond its actual extent, for all I know), and often eagerly anticipated by people resentful of various crimes. And yet at the same time it is not generally accepted as "cruel and unusual punishment," as it would be declared in an instant by the Supreme Court if any court had the naked honesty to say "we sentence you to be forcibly sodomized for your crimes" (with the exception of the proprietors of Agoraphilia, http://agoraphilia.blogspot... , whose lucid thinking I commend). So I think your theory needs to be expanded to account simultaneously for our signaling that we are decent and humane in our treatment of prisoners, and yet that we are harshly punitive and criminals have every reason to fear prison . . . both at the same time.
Always remember, "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind." So debate all you want about what are, or are not, the best punishments. But whatever you decide, make sure you keep the violent felons locked up and away from law-abiding society for a long, long, time. Thank you.
Yikes, not competent today. That should be,
"you can go to jail for life for three times failing to learn your lesson ..."