August 17, 2000

One year ago: I think about the people who do or don't read my journal.

This is the picture I took of the street fair in Little Italy, after I played with it in Photoshop a little bit.

So I very rarely talk about politics in here, but between the political conventions and reading xeney's forum and Man About Murfreesboro and watching Oz, I've just been thinking about things and I wanted to write about some of it. So if politics and issues bores you, feel free to skip this one.

First off, the death penalty. I've always been sort of pro-death penalty, in a very "eye for an eye", Old Testament kind of way. I have always thought that there are some people who commit crimes so heinous that they do not deserve to live. So, in theory, I guess I'm pro capital punishment. But then, there's reality. I know statistics aren't always reliable, so I'll try to be cautious. In reality:

• The death penalty doesn't seem to be a deterrant to crime. The homicide rate in states with the death penalty is almost double that in states without. Obviously, there may not be a causal relationship there, but I think that people who want to murder someone either don't think they will be caught, or aren't really concerned about the consequences anyway.
• The U.S. is one of the few "developed" countries that still uses the death penalty. Does that make us more developed, or less? Does it have to do with our violent culture? I don't know the answers to these questions, nor do I think we should stop doing something just because no one else does it, but it does give me pause.
• The whole "two wrongs don't make a right" thing. Why do I see it as wrong to murder someone, but okay to execute someone? Is it because the government does it? Is it because it's done in a more humane manner? There are serious doubts as to how humane capital punishment really is, (and lots of botched executions) no matter what the method.
• It's not cheaper. Due to our current legal system, the huge number of appeals in capital punishment cases makes it cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than to execute that person.
• It's not applied evenly. Women are hardly ever executed, even when convicted of the same crimes as men who were sentenced to die. There are also statistics that show that race comes into play in terms of both the race of the criminal and the race of the victim. If we're going to have a death penalty, it should be race and gender blind, and depend on the details of the crime itself.
• Innocent people may die. The reason for the high cost, and all the appeals, is because there have been innocent people on death row, and presumably innocent people excuted. Our justice system is far from perfect. Since 1973, over 80 people have been released from death row due to innocence. Researchers have found 23 cases since 1900 where an innocent person was executed. If one innocent person is executed, that's enough for me to have serious qualms about the death penalty.
• What about separation of church and state? I know it's naive to think that the U.S. has anything approaching a true separation of church and state, despite what our constitution says. But I still think that it's wrong to use biblical or religious references to support capital punishment. Just because the God that you believe in says that it's okay to kill criminals, doesn't mean it should be passed into law. This is supposed to be a democracy, not a theocracy.

So these are all the things I'm pondering, and I just don't think that under our current justice system, I can support capital punishment. I do believe in life without parole. I do believe in longer sentences for people who commit violent crimes. I know our prisons are overcrowded, and I think that the current drug laws on the books are ridiculous. I do believe in alternative sentencing for non-violent crimes, to reduce the number of people actually sent to prison. I guess I'm still idealistic enough to think that if we spent more time and money on trying to give people opportunities and education, they would be less likely to turn to crime. Then we could concentrate our incarceration efforts on the people who really do need to be locked up, and who are a threat to society. I believe that there are some criminals who cannot be rehabilitated, but I think that there are more who commit crimes out of lack of options, or because they grew up in a culture where violence was the easy answer to their problems.

I've been thinking a lot about education too, and the whole Lieberman nomination, and individual responsibility, and parental responsbility, but I'll save those for another day. Feel free to e-mail me your thoughts, as long as they aren't flames.