Paying the penalty

by Mike

To kill people who have killed people, whether that’s government-sponsored or otherwise, is feeding a cycle of violence that I think is alarming.

Daniel M. Buechlein, Archbishop of Indianapolis

Since 1982, the state of Texas has executed 398 convicts after the Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment. In this Month alone they five executions scheduled. A frightening prospect and one would have to ask do we really need to resort to executing murderers? Does it not defeat the purpose of punishment?

Virginia is the closest state to Texas’ executions with 98 in the same time frame. Take away the Lone Star state’s figures and the average time spent on death row would be considerably longer then the national average of 11 years.

Yes there are some sick and depraved people in the world, of that there is no doubt. Sometimes incarceration is not enough and some criminals even look forward to the prospect. However with all the research we are able to do about the human body and the mind, to go along with all the technology we have at our disposal, is there not another way that we can rehabilitate criminals?

[The death penalty] is hurtful to us and it diminishes us. We become more and more desensitized. Where do we stop? How do we decide who lives and who dies? We have put ourselves on a very slippery slope.

Bishop Edmond Carmody, Texas

Some practices of the bible are still in existence in today’s society. The recent stoning of Jafa Kiani in Iran for Adultery is proof of that. However just because something is written, spoken or thought does it immediately make it right?

Maybe it’s our leniency across the board that is a result for the eventual extreme measures that are used. There is also the fact that prisons across the world are becoming overcrowded and it’s either a case of release prisoners early or impose a stricter punishment for a crime where others, in another place, may just be sentenced to jail.

The Houston Chronicle published a story, on August 5th of this year, about criminals being released from sentences early for good behaviour. The gave one example of a 15 year old boy who received a 20 year sentence for the rape of a 7 year old girl in Central Texas.

A shocking crime; yet the boy known only as ‘Tommy’ served three years and nine months in a Texas Youth Commission facility. “Basically, you had to get along well with the guards,” the now 20 year old stated.

Parts of the world rejoiced when it was announced that Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging and subsequently executed in December 2006. Did he deserve to die or to rot away in prison for the rest of his life with memories of those who were beaten, tortured and murdered under his regime?

How can we judge the evil in this world, if we respond to the evil it took to commit a crime with a punishment that can only be described as inhuman?

My question is when is punishment taken too far? Have we just been fed violence so much that we do not notice or care when those that hurt us are punished far more then the original crime merited, simply because we do not know what else to do?