• In total there are 8 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 8 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Old Enough to Die - (Page 117 of Arguably)

#100: Oct. - Nov. 2011 (Non-Fiction)
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6498
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Old Enough to Die - (Page 117 of Arguably)

Unread post

Australia abolished capital punishment 45 years ago. I agree that not all murderers are psychopaths who deserve to die, but some are. A court ought to be able to assess if a person is a psychopath, and if so, we are all better off without them. Asserting that it is compassionate and civilized to keep psychopaths alive seems to me to be a very thin argument.

There are several murderers in jail in Australia who are generally seen as psychopaths - Martin Bryant, Ivan Milat, and the Cobby thugs. In the US they would have been executed but here they are kept alive at taxpayers' expense. If someone does these things, they should die. These cases are adult criminals, but if a child commits pathological murder, their continued life will only bring more harm.

Singapore is another place that executes criminals quite regularly, and considers it fully justified. This helps to send a lesson to others, and is much less costly than keeping them alive to fester and vegetate and establish criminal schools.

Some background is at http://crime.about.com/od/juvenile/i/juvenile_death.htm

The Cobby case is discussed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Anita_Cobby
Post Reply

Return to “Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens - by Christopher Hitchens”