I read an article in the new yorker about a powerful prison "mafia" that sprang out of a white supremacist gang. They systematically murder and rape other inmates and have connections outside of prison walls that enable them to traffic drugs and even threaten the families of other inmates or former prisoners. It was fucking scary. Authorities haven't really done anything; a leading prosecuting lawyer is trying to take out the top leaders in an effort to cripple the gang; "he is seeking the death penalty even though it's unpopular" [paraphrased, not a direct quote]. Anyway why don't I just find the article. Ok I can't find it in my stack of old magazines. The article was called "The Brand."
I am really quite against the death penalty in theory, mostly because of (4) above. But there are so many things I don't know. "American History X" was bad enough, but this is just, sheesh. These would be dogs that you'd have to lock up in a cage and who manage to kill other locked up dogs by hiding weapons in their large intestines.
And then of course you have the question, is prison violence an argument for the death penalty or prison reform of some sort?
Don't understand what you mean by "some absolute moral sense." Of course killing someone is worse than locking them up for life.
Here's some choice excerpts from the interview that cuts to the heart of what you're getting at:
...authorities have tried to keep the Brand in check and then have found it hard to stop people who seem to have nothing to lose and are willing to kill with little hesitation in order to achieve their ends. Even in isolation they have been able to rely on codes to communicate and issue their orders to kill.
...there are instances where individuals come in as bank robbers or drug dealers and, after being socialized in the violent, apartheid world of prisons and the gangs there, are transformed into conscienceless killers.
Q: Assistant U. S. Attorney Gregory Jessner is seeking the death penalty for twenty-three of the forty people he indicted. How effective is the death penalty in deterring convicted killers who are already serving life sentences from killing again?
A: The Brand challenges almost every conventional notion we have of crime and punishment. How do you punish people who have, in theory, already been punished? What do you do with them? Jessner believes that the last option authorities have is to sentence the leaders to death, both as a deterrent and as a way to simply protect other inmates from them. But it won’t be until years after the case, depending on the verdicts, that we will know whether this approach will have served as the kind of deterrent Jessner hopes, or whether new leaders will simply replace the old ones.
Finally, as for your comment "Don't understand what you mean by 'some absolute moral sense.' Of course killing someone is worse than locking them up for life.", what I mean is that absent our western judeo-christian (or similar) moral framework, there's no moral apparatus that says that killing someone is worse than imprisoning them. By comparison, I can say, in absolute terms, that cutting off someone's arm is worse than cutting off someone's hand (because the arm includes the hand). I think you can argue fairly successfully that killing is more humane, and possibly less bad, then life imprisonment.
I am really quite against the death penalty in theory, mostly because of (4) above. But there are so many things I don't know. "American History X" was bad enough, but this is just, sheesh. These would be dogs that you'd have to lock up in a cage and who manage to kill other locked up dogs by hiding weapons in their large intestines.
And then of course you have the question, is prison violence an argument for the death penalty or prison reform of some sort?
Don't understand what you mean by "some absolute moral sense." Of course killing someone is worse than locking them up for life.
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Here's some choice excerpts from the interview that cuts to the heart of what you're getting at:
...authorities have tried to keep the Brand in check and then have found it hard to stop people who seem to have nothing to lose and are willing to kill with little hesitation in order to achieve their ends. Even in isolation they have been able to rely on codes to communicate and issue their orders to kill.
...there are instances where individuals come in as bank robbers or drug dealers and, after being socialized in the violent, apartheid world of prisons and the gangs there, are transformed into conscienceless killers.
Q: Assistant U. S. Attorney Gregory Jessner is seeking the death penalty for twenty-three of the forty people he indicted. How effective is the death penalty in deterring convicted killers who are already serving life sentences from killing again?
A: The Brand challenges almost every conventional notion we have of crime and punishment. How do you punish people who have, in theory, already been punished? What do you do with them? Jessner believes that the last option authorities have is to sentence the leaders to death, both as a deterrent and as a way to simply protect other inmates from them. But it won’t be until years after the case, depending on the verdicts, that we will know whether this approach will have served as the kind of deterrent Jessner hopes, or whether new leaders will simply replace the old ones.
Finally, as for your comment "Don't understand what you mean by 'some absolute moral sense.' Of course killing someone is worse than locking them up for life.", what I mean is that absent our western judeo-christian (or similar) moral framework, there's no moral apparatus that says that killing someone is worse than imprisoning them. By comparison, I can say, in absolute terms, that cutting off someone's arm is worse than cutting off someone's hand (because the arm includes the hand). I think you can argue fairly successfully that killing is more humane, and possibly less bad, then life imprisonment.
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