One of the reasons that people advocate for softer punishments for child rapists is the possibility that they will choose not to kill their victims if the sentence for murder is harsher than the sentence for raping a child.
This idea only exists because our executions are, essentially, relatively painless binaries. You’re sentenced to death, you’re strapped to a chair, you’re injected with poison, you die quickly with very little suffering. A modern execution is basically flipping a switch.
But that wasn’t always the case. Used to be there were many degrees of pain and suffering involved in executions, depending on the method chosen. And that choice was often based on the severity of the crime. In this way, society could mete out fitting punishments for a variety of offenses within the “death sentence” category. Do something extra heinous? Receive more suffering before the mercy of death.
Were those times more barbaric? Less humane? Maybe. But to my mind, letting off a child rapist with prison time because you need to “leave yourself more runway to punish the ones who also murder the kid” doesn’t seem very humane to the children or their parents. Maybe our ancestors deliberately built those runways longer so that demons had more to fear than a quick and painless death.
I don't know. There's a spectrum to it all and a threshold after which it tips into evil.
Hanging might be more painful than injections, but it's not quite the same as disemboweling someone or some fantastical medieval torturer drawing someone's death out over several days. Wanton cruelty is immoral, and that's what I see being advocated for. It doesn't magically become a moral act simply because it is visited upon our enemies.
Yes. If one engages in torture it means they are an animal and can face the wall alongside the assassin.
Honest thought experiment:
One of the reasons that people advocate for softer punishments for child rapists is the possibility that they will choose not to kill their victims if the sentence for murder is harsher than the sentence for raping a child.
This idea only exists because our executions are, essentially, relatively painless binaries. You’re sentenced to death, you’re strapped to a chair, you’re injected with poison, you die quickly with very little suffering. A modern execution is basically flipping a switch.
But that wasn’t always the case. Used to be there were many degrees of pain and suffering involved in executions, depending on the method chosen. And that choice was often based on the severity of the crime. In this way, society could mete out fitting punishments for a variety of offenses within the “death sentence” category. Do something extra heinous? Receive more suffering before the mercy of death.
Were those times more barbaric? Less humane? Maybe. But to my mind, letting off a child rapist with prison time because you need to “leave yourself more runway to punish the ones who also murder the kid” doesn’t seem very humane to the children or their parents. Maybe our ancestors deliberately built those runways longer so that demons had more to fear than a quick and painless death.
I don't know. There's a spectrum to it all and a threshold after which it tips into evil.
Hanging might be more painful than injections, but it's not quite the same as disemboweling someone or some fantastical medieval torturer drawing someone's death out over several days. Wanton cruelty is immoral, and that's what I see being advocated for. It doesn't magically become a moral act simply because it is visited upon our enemies.