Justice, Prison, and the Death Penalty

Part of a governments job is to keep society functional and working. We can choose our own paths within our society to the extent of the freedom available within that society. But there are, necessarily, laws that limit our freedom from interfering with freedoms of others. You can not harm other people or take that which is theirs and other laws that compel us to play fair with one another in life. Morality is in the details. The effectiveness and moral competence of actual laws and regulations is beyond my scope here.

Invariably governments, like people, must protect themselves. When there is no governmental power guiding and regulating them then they are like unto people in anarchy and must seek to defend themselves by force. War and violence itself is neither good nor evil, it's the motivation behind it is and that falls upon the realm of ethics and morality.

But the topic at hand is regulating society. When a law is suspected of being broken the matter is brought to a legal authority, namely a court which must decide the merits of the charges. The is no infalable system of justice. Invariably people will be wrongly convicted and punished. It is in fact a citizens duty to bear a conviction no matter if they are guilty or not. All that can be done is too carefully implement and design a fair and accredible system.

I find nothing unconscionable with the death penalty anymore than I do killing in war. It's the circumstances that pertain to it that may be objectionable. Innocent people will be killed, the same as innocent people are imprisoned or otherwise punished. But for the record let me state that while I personally have no moral problem with capital punishment in itself that I find it's use as a deterrent impractical. The time necessary to reasonably determine guilt makes it so. And a lengthy amount of time is necessary because death can not be commuted by appeal unlike a prison term, nor can proper reparation really be made after in the case of wrongful conviction. Furthermore it is just too expensive to be practical and courts do not exist to exact revenge. In order for a death penalty to be useful it would have to be implemented swiftly and but justice is not swift. Indeed such a deterrent is a tool not of justice but rather of oppression. The only place for it is really under martial law and dictatorship when there is no time for proper justice and there are not sufficient facilities and manpower for prisons.

I make objection to a system that does not readily motivate officials to admit their mistakes or that provides compensation for those that have been wrongly convicted and burdened. Another is a prison system in a democracy which does not allow prisoners to vote or later to be elected to political office. For it is those unduly burdened by laws and possibly wrongly convicted that are the ones that have the most motivation to seek to change the system for the better.