shuggy's blog
I don't know the extent to which this is down to prejudice, but I think there is something we do as a society which is not based on rationalism, experience or logic, and it is to do with crime and punishment.
We lock up murderers and other very violent criminals, but then we let them go free after some essentially arbitrary time period, even when there is no evidence of reform.
This leaves society open to further predation, and it makes no sense at all. Somehow, when we weigh up the right of the criminal to mercy and forgiveness, and the right of an unknown innocent to be protected, we are prejudiced towards the known criminal, and against the next victim. And this seems only to be due to the fact that we know the name, and face, of the former, but not the latter.
Towards previous victims of crime, we have boundless sympathy, again because we know who they are. We wish we could wave a magic wand and save them from that suffering. But the only victim we can save is the next one, and we don't really try.
'...when we talk about deliberately killing the innocent, we usually mean they have been killed with the knowledge that they are innocent.'
But if we accept that there is a strong probability that a proportion of those executed are innocent, then although we may not know which specific individuals were innocent, we accept that some members of the group we are killing are most probably innocent, but we do it anyway. Thereby deliberately killing the innocent.
Although I'm also opposed to the death penalty, I find the one about avoiding false positives especially weak. Assuming it can be shown that the reintroduction of capital punishment would result in a reduction in murder, then as long as the false positives remain below the aforementioned difference, there's still more innocent people walking the streets.
Right? Right, er, no.
And the one about the apparent willingness to accept people being wrongly incarcerated for years on end.
Right? Right, er, no.
Right. No?
Sorry, I lost that. Were you agreeing with me?
I... erm... don't think I was touching on your point. Rather, suggesting that to blithely suggest the deciding factor was executing innocents only remains sustainable if any decrease in murders following the introduction of capital punishment is less than those false positives (who, admittedly we wouldn't consider false positives, would remain minor compared to true positives).
Otherwise, the willingness to accept greater numbers of innocent dead (from murder) strikes as simple squeamishness and not wanting to dirty our hands.
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