Because of the same reason there is an offence of assualting a police officer. You are not just attacking a fellow human being but one of Her Majesty's officers empowered to enforce the law and uphold the peace of the nation. No one is saying that a police officer's life is worth more than any other citizen's but once you start attacking, and killing, those people who are there to maintain law and order then it's a very slippery slope into anarchy.

And, just because someone chooses to become a police officer doesn't mean they should expect to be assaulted and/or seriously injured, maybe fatally.

A couple of generations ago, this wouldn't have been an issue. But people afforded the police more respect then than they do now. You should see some of the ****s I have to deal with on a daily basis. Ask me whether I'd have an issue with *them* being flogged or executed and I wouldn't have a problem answering with a 'no'.

(Edited by Staff 05/12/2005 19:57)

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by Whistler
Because of the same reason there is an offence of assualting a police officer. You are not just attacking a fellow human being but one of Her Majesty's officers empowered to enforce the law and uphold the peace of the nation. No one is saying that a police officer's life is worth more than any other citizen's but once you start attacking, and killing, those people who are there to maintain law and order then it's a very slippery slope into anarchy.

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As the death penalty has no deterrent value, how will imposing it on cop killers keep us off the "slippery slope into anarchy"?

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And, just because someone chooses to become a police officer doesn't mean they should expect to be assaulted and/or seriously injured, maybe fatally.

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Of course they shouldn't, but they knowingly accept the increased risk they might.

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A couple of generations ago, this wouldn't have been an issue. But people afforded the police more respect then than they do now.

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Respect for the police has come and gone: Victorian attitudes were much harsher than today's. Any recent loss of respect hasn't occurred without reason. Events that went unreported -- corruption, brutality and racism -- have come to public attention. No one's saying it's fair to tar all police with the same brush, but neither should we accept the police line at face value.

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You should see some of the ****s I have to deal with on a daily basis. Ask me whether I'd have an issue with *them* being flogged or executed and I wouldn't have a problem answering with a 'no'.

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I've seen a fair few from the public gallery, and wouldn't want society to be brought down to their level. When the hanging lobby tried to bring back flogging, an enterprising Tory MP produced the old birching book: the same names showed up repeatedly. The Bloody Code was around for over a century, and did nothing to stop the flow of crime. If anything it increased it. Why should it be any different today?

Well, I'm sure most people don't give a rat's ass whether or not flogging someone stops them from re-offending. It's just something the *******s deserve.

(Edited by Staff 05/12/2005 19:57)

Criminal sanctions decided by popularity not effectiveness don't "uphold the peace of the nation". Don't their future victims deserve punishments that work?

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by Byron
Criminal sanctions decided by popularity not effectiveness don't "uphold the peace of the nation". Don't their future victims deserve punishments that work?

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Byron, I work within the CJS, so I know whereof I speak. And, believe me, and as you already alluded to, some people are beyond rehabilitation. So why not gibve people the satisfaction of publicly humiliating them by giving them a thoroughly deserved thrashing?

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And, just because someone chooses to become a police officer doesn't mean they should expect to be assaulted and/or seriously injured, maybe fatally.

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If you are a fireman you should expect to atleast once get a slight burn throughout your career. If you are a soldier you should expect that you can get sent to a war and get shot at (an possible get hit). This is why all these people are trained and given a set of tools to avoid this risk as the risk is inherent to the job.

Of course police officers shouldn't be assaulted however it's a fact of life. If you are there to keep the peace you should expect to have to deal with "everything from the bottom of the barrrel" which aren't always nice people. To enable them to do this job they give police officers stab / bullet proof vests and their them how to deal with this kinda people. If you had half a brain when you entered police training this should have been a "small" hint won't you say that down the line there was a risk that you might get hurt?

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So why not give people the satisfaction of publicly humiliating them by giving them a thoroughly deserved thrashing?

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Which people are you talking about? If you aren't a direct victim I would be seriously worried if you took pleasure out of this at all. If society as a whole would benefit from this there is something seriously wrong with society.... When that happens we are no better than the people we are trashing.... but with all the reality tv crap which people seem to love so much nothing surprises me of "society".

America uses the death penalty and it only inspired more violent crime (gun law not really helping) so it doesn't really help. So if the death penalty doesn't work you shouldn't use it. When you start putting people to death you lose the moral high ground if you ask me which is never a good thing. Put them in high security prisons, mandetory isolation & make their life uncomfortable (in a legal way) and put them away for a long time (if not forever) but just as cursing in a debat, the death penalty just shows weakness as a society.

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by Whistler
(quotes)

Byron, I work within the CJS, so I know whereof I speak. And, believe me, and as you already alluded to, some people are beyond rehabilitation. So why not gibve people the satisfaction of publicly humiliating them by giving them a thoroughly deserved thrashing?

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If the law doesn't combat those instincts it becomes mob justice and society suffers. Once you start imposing brutal punishments they don't remain the last resort for those "beyond rehabilitation", they warp the climate of the justice system to become the preferred option, spreading at the expense of rehabilitation and degrading the people inflicting as much as the recipients.

They even fail in their stated aim of inflicting suffering: it's a matter of record criminals used to be proud of taking a birching. All they demonstrate is failure. I don't mean to disrespect your experience of the law but many of your fellow lawyers agree with me on this.

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by Byron
Don't their future victims deserve punishments that work?

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There are two ways in which a punishment can "work". It can either prevent the criminal from re-offending, or discourage others from imitating their crime. In most cases our current justice system in general fails on both scores.

It used to be that killing a police officer just wasn't done, but now it seems that the police are afforded no respect and are more of a target than ever before - people now seem to go for them as some kind of criminal rite of passage.

There will always be an element within the criminal population who wear their previous punishments as a badge of rank - that always has been the case, and while stupid people still exist always will be.

I completely disagree with arming the police - you only have to look at the police mortality rate in the States to see that that really doesn't help. And let's not forget that *all* emergency service personnel have now become targets. Ambulance crews have to wear stab-proof vests in some areas, a fact which I find extremely shocking. Wear a uniform - any uniform - and some people now think you're a fair target.

I disagree with the death penalty in general, but the older and more cynical I get, the more I feel angered by society in general admonishing me to feel sorry for some of the lowest criminal elements because they had a hard time as a child or can't get a job or whatever and informing us that we should all pay for their expensive rehabilitation, not only with money but with our personal safety. Why? Some people, as far as I can see, will never make a positive or even neutral contribution to society - all they will ever be is a drain on our pockets and in some cases a danger to our lives.

I'm out of ideas about what to do with such people. What would you suggest as an effective punishment, Byron?

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by Kate
Some people, as far as I can see, will never make a positive or even neutral contribution to society - all they will ever be is a drain on our pockets

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If we look back into recent history (lets say 60 - 70 years) we see the Germans applying this style of thinking to mentally and physically handicapped and look what they did with it.

Don't totally agree with the argument about don't arm the policy you make there. As in the USA everyone can get a gun which means that a lot more criminals will also have a gun. Also they have the death penalty in place and sentences are pretty harse overall so if you get caught in a shootout with the cops you're going to be put to death anyways (if you kill one or not) so why not try to kill them and get away?

In the Netherlands every cop is armed (presuming they pass their test etc). Okay it isn't a automatic chaingun or anything but still it is a gun. They aren't used very often as police is trained to use it as a last resort. However if I'm a burglar with a knife and I'm 15 meters away from a cop with a gun aimed at me I would be thinking twice of attacking this cop and would probably just give up completely.

If I get caught and just give up my sentence isn't going to be too high so I have no real motivation to risk a life in prison sentence or death penalty. Of course it doesn't work as a deterent but if you can make the % caught high enough that would also work as a deterent and you don't have too much violance against police.

You have to make sure that crime doesn't pay because if it doesn't (or doesn't pay enough) nobody is going risk their necks. If you are able to effectively block sales of stolen goods so it becomes so expensive to sell stole goods that its hardly worth it, make sure stores have no cash (pin + chip) and put darned good security on the rest you should see petty crimes drop a lot. (okay if you remove these targets other places become targets but those places are easier to ensure and there are less of them making monitoring easier and should mean the % caught shoots through the roof) Overall you'll see crime numbers go down and % caught shoot up.... what more do you want

(Edited by Chambler 21/11/2005 12:25)

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by Kate
There are two ways in which a punishment can "work". It can either prevent the criminal from re-offending, or discourage others from imitating their crime. In most cases our current justice system in general fails on both scores.

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Indeed, because it values punishment over rehabilitation.

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It used to be that killing a police officer just wasn't done, but now it seems that the police are afforded no respect and are more of a target than ever before - people now seem to go for them as some kind of criminal rite of passage.

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Police officers have always been killed in the line of duty. Up until the Great War, coroner's juries had a habit of bringing in "lawful killing" verdicts! It may have got worse recently, but as I said earlier, these things go in cycles, and it's too simplistic to lay the blame at the door of liberal laws, especially as the criminal justice system has been getting progressively more draconian over the past 20 years.

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There will always be an element within the criminal population who wear their previous punishments as a badge of rank - that always has been the case, and while stupid people still exist always will be.

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So to what purpose imposing those punishments?

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I completely disagree with arming the police - you only have to look at the police mortality rate in the States to see that that really doesn't help. And let's not forget that *all* emergency service personnel have now become targets. Ambulance crews have to wear stab-proof vests in some areas, a fact which I find extremely shocking. Wear a uniform - any uniform - and some people now think you're a fair target.

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I could go either way on this -- European police are armed, and gun crime there's a fraction of the States -- although it's interesting to note police officers themselves have been most vocal in staying unarmed.

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I disagree with the death penalty in general, but the older and more cynical I get, the more I feel angered by society in general admonishing me to feel sorry for some of the lowest criminal elements because they had a hard time as a child or can't get a job or whatever and informing us that we should all pay for their expensive rehabilitation, not only with money but with our personal safety. Why? Some people, as far as I can see, will never make a positive or even neutral contribution to society - all they will ever be is a drain on our pockets and in some cases a danger to our lives.

I'm out of ideas about what to do with such people. What would you suggest as an effective punishment, Byron?

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I'm more concerned with effective rehabilitation. That, not punishment, is the hard thing to devise. For a start I'd reserve prison for violent offenders instead of using it as a dumping ground for mentally ill and drug addicts, massively increase education, and legalize hard drugs. Our current system's failure to cut reoffending is what costs you money and personal safety. "An expensive way of making bad people worse" to quote the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. It costs over £30,000 a year to imprison someone, and what do you get for your money? Drug addiction and high reoffending rates.

No one's admonishing you to feel sorry for "the lowest criminal", they're saying that throwing criminals in jail doesn't work because it's a school of crime that turns them back onto the street worse than when they went in. Some criminals are violent thugs who enjoy crime; some are victims; most fall in between. I have no problem with locking the first category away for a long time, or imposing proportionate punishment on all offenders, but assuming the majority are a lost cause endangers society. An experimental unit in Scotland for serious violent offenders cut reoffending from over 50 per cent to 4 per cent by educating the inmates. You'd think the government would have been delighted wouldn't you? Instead they closed it down in 1994 after a tabloid outcry at prisoners' "soft" treatment. That's where a climate exalting hanging and flogging gets you. Shutting down effective rehabilitation in the name of vengeance is the real scandal. Rehabilitation's not failed; it's never been offered the chance to succeed.

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by Byron
For a start I'd ...and legalize hard drugs.

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Yeah cos at least while we were all wasted out of our faces we wouldn't notice people running around breaking the law

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by Milky
(quotes)

Yeah cos at least while we were all wasted out of our faces we wouldn't notice people running around breaking the law

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Because taking the market out of illegal hands would practically eliminate overdose deaths and reduce muggings and domestic burglary by half, actually. Anything to say on the original topic?

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by Byron
(quotes)
Because taking the market out of illegal hands would practically eliminate overdose deaths and reduce muggings and domestic burglary by half, actually.

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And where pray tell is your evidence of that? When prohibition was running in America in the 30's did the number of alcohol related crimes suddenly soar. No. But I'm sure that if we let people buy and smoke crack at there ocal drugstore then we won't have addicts running the streets commiting crimes.

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by Byron
(quotes)Anything to say on the original topic?

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Why not a life for a life? If I was assured that my intentional killing of someone was going to cost me my own life I'd make damn sure that I wasn't doing anything to get me in that situation. Society has gotten so soft nowadays with all this no hitting your kids and alternative rehabilitation. Some good old fashioned discipline is what is needed.

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by Byron
(quotes)
What this does is send out the message that the state isn't made up of its citizens but government employees, and their lives are worth more than its ordinary members

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********s!! What this does is say that you cannot ignore the law no matter how much you don't respect it. It's got nothing to do with government employees. As Kate said earlier the days of the cheeky crook that stopped with a "It's a fair cop guv" are long gone. That's because nowadays people are more likely to try and fight there way out of trouble with the police as at the end of the day the punishment they are going to get probably isn't going to be any worse than the punishment for there original offense.

(Edited by Staff 05/12/2005 19:58)

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by Milky
And where pray tell is your evidence of that? When prohibition was running in America in the 30's did the number of alcohol related crimes suddenly soar. No.

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Well yes, actually, modern organised crime in America was famously created by the battle to control the liquor trade.

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But I'm sure that if we let people buy and smoke crack at there ocal drugstore then we won't have addicts running the streets commiting crimes.

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Since addicts commit most crimes to fund their habits, crime would be slashed. A 1980s experiment in prescribing diamorphine to Liverpool addicts saw overdose deaths eliminated and burglaries drop 40% overnight. It was such a damning indictment of prohibition the Tory government quickly hushed it up. The Swiss recently voted to keep prescribing heroin as their program is so successful. There's nothing inherently criminal about drug use itself, only the culture prohibition creates. In Victorian Britain opium, morphine and cocaine were freely available at every chemist, and the biggest trouble came then, as now, from alcohol. And look what happened when the Americans banned that. Prohibition has to be among the most counter-productive ideas in the history of crime control.

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Why not a life for a life? If I was assured that my intentional killing of someone was going to cost me my own life I'd make damn sure that I wasn't doing anything to get me in that situation. Society has gotten so soft nowadays with all this no hitting your kids and alternative rehabilitation. Some good old fashioned discipline is what is needed.

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No it isn't, since study after study show the death penalty lacks any deterrent value as murders are committed in the heat of the moment, or the murderer assumes he won't be caught. If this "good old fashioned discipline" is so effective, pray tell why the death penalty isn't a deterrent, the Bloody Code failed miserably, and increasing the UK prison population from 40,000 to 80,000 in the space of a decade hasn't worked.

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********s!! What this does is say that you cannot ignore the law no matter how much you don't respect it. It's got nothing to do with government employees. As Kate said earlier the days of the cheeky crook that stopped with a "It's a fair cop guv" are long gone. That's because nowadays people are more likely to try and fight there way out of trouble with the police as at the end of the day the punishment they are going to get probably isn't going to be any worse than the punishment for there original offense.

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Except the days of the cheeky crook stopping with a "It's a fair cop guv" never existed outside Dixon of Dock Green. Serious assaults on the police attract the heaviest sentences available and murder has a mandatory life tariff, so how can you back up your assertion that "the punishment they are going to get probably isn't going to be any worse than the punishment for there original offense"?

(Edited by Staff 05/12/2005 19:58)

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by Byron

Well yes, actually, modern organised crime in America was famously created by the battle to control the liquor trade.

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I think to say that prohibition created organised crime in America is fairly presumptuous, as organised crime did exist before the 1930's! All prohibition did was raise the amount of organised crime, which really was only within the hands of a few large and powerful gangs anyway.

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Since addicts commit most crimes to fund their habits, crime would be slashed. A 1980s experiment in prescribing diamorphine to Liverpool addicts saw overdose deaths eliminated and burglaries drop 40% overnight. It was such a damning indictment of prohibition the Tory government quickly hushed it up. The Swiss recently voted to keep prescribing heroin as their program is so successful.

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Prescribing drugs to people would not eliminate the problem, as it is easy to see how this has failed in America with the painkillers black market that has sprung up from prescription drugs. And again, overdose deaths would not be eliminated, people can overdose on prescription drugs as my friend did on codeine.

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There's nothing inherently criminal about drug use itself, only the culture prohibition creates.

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I guess it's a case of what you feel is right or wrong. In my opinion, putting a drug into your body which is harming to you and potentially harming to others is morally wrong, and I also think this is true with binge drinking.

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In Victorian Britain opium, morphine and cocaine were freely available at every chemist, and the biggest trouble came then, as now, from alcohol. And look what happened when the Americans banned that. Prohibition has to be among the most counter-productive ideas in the history of crime control.

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You only have to read publications or articles takenby the Liberal government to see how so many people fell into disrepair because of opium and spent alot of time in drug dens instead of working. Which is why they had to introduce so many Liberal reforms to get people to go back to work. The copious supply of drugs was just as much to blame as alcohol, which was more expensive than some drugs anyway.

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Except the days of the cheeky crook stopping with a "It's a fair cop guv" never existed outside Dixon of Dock Green.

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Oh thanks for ruining a lifetimes enjoyment of Porridge

Oh and on the main subject of this topic, I don't believe in the death penalty, period.



(Edited by Miss Corrupt 22/11/2005 16:35)

See, this is all getting terribly complicated when it doesn't need to be.

1. Killing people is wrong.

OK, if it's a case of 'either them or me', you might have an argument, but other than that the taking of another human life is wrong. I don't care if you get there because god told you it's wrong, or because you're dead clever and worked it out using utilitarian principles, or just because you were brought up that way. You need to be there. It's the very basis of all civilization: without it there can be none.

And it doesn't matter if the killer is one person, a gang, an organization, a company, a society or the whole darn state: killing is wrong.

Don't do it.

Now, we can get into all silly arguments about whether the harshness of the sentence or the actual chance of being caught is the real deterrent (truth is, it's a bit of both, and also that some people just can't be deterred - let's face it, we don't kill people because we know 1. is true not because we think we in turn might be killed). Or whether society is better served by punishment or rehab. But the point is, on this matter, that you can't get away from rule number one. Cop Killers should not face capital punishment - Because It Is Wrong. For the same reason that no one should. For anything. Ever.

See, that's not complicated.

Still not convinced? Then we come to:

2. Innocent people get accused (and convicted) as well as guilty ones.

Just because I say you killed someone doesn't make it true. Or that I have indisputable scientific evidence that you did it, doesn't mean later on that evidence won't turn out to be highly disputable and actually wrong or even faked. Anymore than me beating the bejesus out of you until you confess means you did it.

Now, maybe y'all are happy to kill someone. Maybe you're only happy to kill someone who's killed someone else. Or that they killed a cop. Can you kill an innocent? Just because you thought they were guilty at the time? Now, I'm not happy about imprisoning someone, taking them away from their loved ones, their freedom, their life, only to find out they were innocent, but at least you can give them some of that back when you find out you were wrong. But not if you killed them. You can't take that back.

Still want to take a life for a life?

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by Miss Corrupt
[b]I think to say that prohibition created organised crime in America is fairly presumptuous, as organised crime did exist before the 1930's! All prohibition did was raise the amount of organised crime, which really was only within the hands of a few large and powerful gangs anyway.

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Of course organised crime existed before prohibition: that's not the same as modern organised crime. Handing criminal gangs a monopoly on the nation's most popular recreational drug vastly increased their potential market, resulting in unprecedented criminal organization and scale.

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Prescribing drugs to people would not eliminate the problem, as it is easy to see how this has failed in America with the painkillers black market that has sprung up from prescription drugs. And again, overdose deaths would not be eliminated, people can overdose on prescription drugs as my friend did on codeine.

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America's not really comparable with England, especially when you consider the unavailability of doctors and high medical bills are a major factor in the black market. And the fact addition itself, not a specific condition, would be grounds for prescription makes it a different situation.

But then it's not a question of eliminating the problem. That's impossible. Prohibition's attempt to do that is the reason it's a disaster. It's a question of damage limitation. All the studies to date show clean drugs cause less damage than their prohibition.

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I guess it's a case of what you feel is right or wrong. In my opinion, putting a drug into your body which is harming to you and potentially harming to others is morally wrong, and I also think this is true with binge drinking.

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What's morally right and legally wise are clean different things.

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You only have to read publications or articles takenby the Liberal government to see how so many people fell into disrepair because of opium and spent alot of time in drug dens instead of working. Which is why they had to introduce so many Liberal reforms to get people to go back to work. The copious supply of drugs was just as much to blame as alcohol, which was more expensive than some drugs anyway.

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A hobby of mine. As well as reading those articles in the context of their authors (the Liberal governments were into moral redemption big time) it has to be remembered the vast majority of opium was taken for medicinal purposes (laudanum was the Victorian aspirin and prozac combined). Gladstone himself took opium in the chamber of the Commons! The tiny minority who used it as a mind altering drug caused no problem to the police, compared with the havoc of taverns. And the number of "opium fiends" was wildly exaggerated by the Victorian temperance movement. The sprawling opium dens of lore never existed outside shock journalism and Sherlock Holmes stories: the reality consisted of two dingy back rooms in Shadwell serving a handful of addicts and drug tourists.

A better comparison to how legalization would work today would be heroin prescription up until 1971: the number of addicts was around 2,000 (compared to some half million today) because it wasn't in the interests of criminal gangs to deal heroin: once you got someone hooked, off they go to get a clean supply from their GP.

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Oh and on the main subject of this topic, I don't believe in the death penalty, period.

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It's not called Tangent21 for nothing!

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by Jayjay
See, this is all getting terribly complicated when it doesn't need to be.

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If people accepted all premeditated killing was wrong, that'd be true. As most people don't, and never will, I've long given up trying and argue against capital punishments on grounds of practicality. And those, unfortunately, are never going to be as simple as "killing is wrong".

Personally I can't agree with the death penalty because it's well... final isn't it. the "oops we got it wrong - you're pardoned... posthumously" just doesn't cut the mustard does it.

In addition I don't like the idea of the state being in control of anyone else's life, it smacks of bullying and retribution and revenge, not justice, punishment and rehabilitation.

I don't know whether I'd like to see police routinely armed or not. Byron raised an excellent point regarding the US vs continental European standpoint.

The otherthing I'd like to say is that every police officer knows what they're going in for, if they get shot at, they're aware that might happen, they wear the uniform, accept the pay and take the risks. I'm incredibly sorry for the loss of this officer, but I believe she would have said she understood the risks of being in the police force.