Tuesday, February 26, 2008

En-suite prison cells?

It's disturbing to think that murderers Levi Bellfield, Mark Dixie and Steve Wright could spend the rest of their lives in prison with the luxury of en-suite showers!

Would a hangman's noose have saved the lives of their victims!?!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds bad but would you like a legal system where there are tough guys running it. Where SWAT teams can break into your house in the night unannounced. Where tasers are used for fun. Where millions are imprisoned - often for minor reason. Where only the rich can afford justice.
well you know where this is.

Thatcher's Child said...

You are suggesting that capital punishment would sort out this problem?

Think you will find it doesn't. Capital punishment lowers the more violent crimes, but not the crime of murder. The idea being that if there is a chance that you may be planning to rob a bank, but if you kill someone you will end up on death row - you are going to make sure you don't kill anyone!

However, most crimes of murder are based on relationships and the emotion which is connected to that - no legislation is going to stop a crime of passion!

Snafu said...

V, I disagree.

I do not suggest that capital punishment would reduce the murder rate to zero, but it would reduce the rate back to the level it was prior to it's abolition.

None of the crimes highlighted in this post were "crimes of passion" nor were any of these murders based upon relationships that had turned "sour". There is no doubt that these murderers are guilty.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Snafu, apart from 'crimes of passion' (which will always happen, whatever the penalty), most people work their way up to murder via minor violent crimes, getting progressively more violent until they lose all self-control and just kill somebody.

So to actually prevent murders, what you have to do is lock up violent offenders (and the criminally deranged) for much much longer. For life if necessary.

You know as well as I do that our legal system is not perfect - would you be happy to be hanged by mistake if that meant the overall murder rate went down? I certainly wouldn't.

Snafu said...

Mark, it depends on the evidence, I'm not convinced that Jill Dando's supposed killer is guilty, he might be a fruit loop but the case is not strong enough.

Turning your reasoning on it's head, many people are murdered today because capital punishment has been abolished...