Ask UK

No.

You can never be 100% certain that a conviction is correct. There have been more than enough examples in the past of wrongful convictions being overturned years later.

You can't compensate someone who has been executed though.

But 5 mins on any subreddit and you have people frothing at the mouth to hang every criminal.

5 minutes on any subreddit and you realise that you're more than likely speaking to a 14 year old in the US.

Last time I looked a majority of Brits support the death penalty. Which personally I've always found quite disturbing considering all the problems with it

I would agree this is disturbing but I am not aware of any mass poll on this topic that's not from a right wing fringe group / newspaper. Do you remember where you saw the claim that the majority of Brits support the death penalty?

So what do you think?

No the death penalty should not be reintroduced. I would support tougher sentencing, however. But additionally it should come with multiple programmes to increase social cohesion (youth activities, arts, sports, community outreach, education, quality jobs, etc, etc) such that being a hardened criminal is not a viable or attractive option in the first place. The death penalty as a deterrent to criminal activity did not work when we had it and doesn't work today either (see the US).

What moral authority does society have to say that killing is wrong, if it does it itself? Justice needs to have higher standards than the people it's passing judgement on.

Allowing the state to execute people is like giving a monkey a gun.

Nope. I don't think we should be giving the state the power to execute people. Plus obviously there's always the chance that they're innocent.

I always find it kind of strange where in the US there's a big anti-government mentality but they're happy for the government to execute people.

Definitely not. There are the obvious issues with miscarriages of justice but also I think that an eye for an eye justice is archaic.

Our justice system isn't reliable enough to kill people as punishment. Plus life in prison is probably a worse punishment if that's your goal.

It’s too greater a power to hand to an imperfect state. The justice system can never be reliable enough to ensure someone is wrongfully executed.

That said, loosing decades of life to a wrongful life sentence can’t be undone either. So I would say opposition to it the death penalty goes hand in hand with support for reforming and improving the justice system

I do not support the death penalty. In all cases, either death is going too far, or death is too good. Also, while you can let someone out of prison and compensate them for false imprisonment, you can't exactly resurrect people who turn out to be innocent.

In fact, I would say that the whole judicial system could be improved so criminals are rehabilitated, rather than punished.

Of course, I also believe there is an exception to every rule (including this rule), so there's probably an acceptable set of unusual circumstances in which classical imprisonment or even death are the best options; though I do not know what these would be.

No. I don't believe the state should have the power to end someone's life. That's my fundamental position. I would also argue that if it did, this is open to abuses of power, corruption, and miscarriages of justice that can never be fixed.

Are there people I wish were dead, and who I think deserve to be killed? Sometimes. But that's not a pleasant thought, and I certainly don't think that my emotions should be carried into action, because it doesn't get humanity anywhere in the long run.

No. Quite aside from the certainty the state will accidentally execute innocent people and that the media would push for it for completely inappropriate situations, the job of the state is be to protect it's citizens (hence the army and police being separate) so it is morally indefensible for the state to ever kill any of its citizens

Relevant reading: https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/death-penalty-research-unit-blog/blog-post/2023/08/crude-opinion-polls-death-penalty-distort-public

the issue with death penalty is that even if you have a perfect state that makes zero mistakes when applying such penalty, it can only do so in the context of a criminal offense having been committed.

but what is a criminal offense? one person's "that's a crime" is another person's "i should be free to do that"

for example, in yemen, if you are caught performing homosexual acts as a married man, you are to be stoned to death.

in principle, a capital punishment supporter should also be okay with this.

if you are one of those who has just caught yourself saying "well... i think death penalty is okay but not like that" then you have just hit my main point like a brick wall

if the decision to apply death penalty is based on one's subjective assessment of what a crime is, then that's not rational or fair

here's some homework for you - replace "death penalty" with "any penalty" and re-run my thought sequence again :)

the very act of "criminalizing" is fraught with moral issues already, so i think we should drop all death penalties until we have perfectly solved the question "what is crime?"

for further info, here's a good one (link here, clicky!)

For certain crimes I'd be OK with it provided you can prove with 100% certainty that they are guilty. Not 'beyond reasonable doubt' or any other legal terminology. If there is any chance at all that they might be innocent, you cannot execute them.

But they'd have to be people who are dangerous to the rest of society, completely unrepentant and ideally having been through the rehabilitation process unsuccessfully before. You know the type. Those that don't want to change. Those that even in prison are a danger to others.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone over the last decade who'd meet that criteria, and in general terms I think I judge a society without the death penalty as more civilised than one that does condone the state killing it's own citizens.

So while in theory I'd be OK with it, it's safer for it not to be a tool available. When you have a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail etc.

Plus the general public are absolutely not to be trusted with it, and I can't imagine the sort of pressure that might be put on judges in high profile cases. Better for it not to be an option.

I would say that I don't support the death penalty.

However, do guillotines and Tories count?

I don't support the death penalty in any case.

My problem with the UK in general is that many people do not have any faith or any real understanding in our justice system. They view prison as a "punishment", and ignore the point of it also being a place for rehabilitation. I think that most Brits look at the US justice system and think "yeah, I'd love a bit of that", all while they shower praise on places like Timpsons for giving jobs to ex-prisoners looking to get their life back on track.

Back to murder, when you view prison as only punishment you look at murder as "the ultimate punishment", which is essentially no different to the crime the person committed. The crime was an extreme reaction, so you pair it with an equal extreme reaction? It's also the easy way out, where in reality someone that has committed a truly despicable crime should face a long time under surveillance to separate them from society. In the UK, you don't just "get released" like in the US, you stay on registers, you have to check in weekly, and you are closely monitored - with one slip-up throwing your ass back into jail.

I put much of it down to ignorance from the public, and the fact that generally the British public are probably more right-wing than people believe.

If the state is licensed to execute for crime, then it makes swings in government much more scary.
Say the next election were won by a party that decided to make my sexual orientation completely illegal, with the harshest penalties.
Without capital punishment, I go to prison, and I can hope that a new government reverses course.
With capital punishment, the infrastructure is already in place, and I swing from the gallows with machine-like efficiency.

I guess my point is that some people support the death penalty, without considering that it could be applied to situations they would not agree with it being used for. And that the only way to avoid creeping grey areas is abolition.

I'd support a voluntary death penalty, as a practical solution for both society and the criminal. If the person does not want to live anymore, for whatever reason, give them a way out of this life.

I strongly doubt free will is as free as we'd like to believe, so in all fairness we should focus on minimizing suffering for everybody. Guilt should just be a technicality of who triggered a crime, like cause and effect.

I cheated on and then broke up with my girlfriend 30 years ago.

I would very much like a death penalty please.