Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There is no easy solution, and I am definitely not in the kill them all camp. I am just pointing out a pitfall in the current system that is possibly equally costly in innocent lives and suggest that perhaps we shouldn't let convicted killers get parole as easily as they now do.

Being against the death penalty isn't the same as supporting easy parole.

Relapse wrote:
However, currently do we lose more innocent lives than we save by creating situations where people truly guilty of murder kill someone else?

Appeals processes are so lengthy that the death penalty leaves inmates in prison for years. The op article is about a guy convicted in 1985, that didn't get his head on the block till 2009 and whose appeal on the grounds that the 2009 execution was botched took 7 years to get a decision from the appeals court. The guy has the death penalty and he's still been in prison for 30 years. It would seem the death penalty doesn't prevent the possibility of inmates committing murder in prison, so unless the argument is we execute people on the spot I don't see what relevance having or not having a death penalty has on prison violence, which will happen regardless.

This seems a non sequitur to the argument that there are innocent people on death row, statistically there probably always will be, and can we morally justify the death penalty accepting that it will inevitably kill innocent people. Which is not an argument that we should parole guilty people (how is it even close?), or even an argument that we should not punish murderers at all. It's not even an argument that we should parole innocent people found guilty in error. It's simply an argument that the death penalty isn't justifiable on the grounds that it will inevitably kill falsely convicted people.

Or maybe I'm just still confused as to what you're trying to say @_@

Relapse wrote:
Just to play devil's advocate, how many people that have served time for murder and are released kill again? Do the number of people killed by previously convicted murderers exceed the number of wrongful executions? Add into this the number of people in prison who are murdered by someone who avoided the death penalty.

By all accounts, paroled murderers murder again very rarely, about 1.2% of the time.

Of 368 convicted murderers granted parole in New York between 1999 and 2003, six, or 1.6 percent,were returned to prison within three years for a new felony conviction — none of them a violent offense, says a state Parole Board study reported by the Journal News in White Plains, N.Y. The board reported that of 1,190 convicted murderers released from 1985 to 2003 in New York state, 35, or just under 3 percent, returned to prison for a new felony conviction within three years.

"Individuals who are released on parole after serving sentences for murder consistently have the lowest recidivism rate of any offenders," said John Caher, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. A 2002 study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics tracking 272,000 inmates released in New York and 14 other states found that 1.2 percent of those freed after serving a murder sentence were rearrested on homicide charges within three years — the lowest rate among all reported crimes by released prisoners. "This is a very difficult issue, and unless we lock everyone up for life they're all coming back sooner or later," said Martin Horn, a former New York City corrections and probation commissioner who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/low-recidivism-rate-reported-for-paroled-ny-murderers/

To an extent, that makes sense. A large number of murders were not "career" criminals, many murderers are pretty old when they are released, and parole boards probably look for the most profound rehabilitation for murderers.

 TheWaspinator wrote:
Being against the death penalty isn't the same as supporting easy parole.

I'm not saying it is, but perhaps the parole system should be reviewed as closely as the system that puts these kind of people to death.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

Relapse wrote:
However, currently do we lose more innocent lives than we save by creating situations where people truly guilty of murder kill someone else?

Appeals processes are so lengthy that the death penalty leaves inmates in prison for years. The op article is about a guy convicted in 1985, that didn't get his head on the block till 2009 and whose appeal on the grounds that the 2009 execution was botched took 7 years to get a decision from the appeals court. The guy has the death penalty and he's still been in prison for 30 years. It would seem the death penalty doesn't prevent the possibility of inmates committing murder in prison, so unless the argument is we execute people on the spot I don't see what relevance having or not having a death penalty has on prison violence, which will happen regardless.

This seems a non sequitur to the argument that there are innocent people on death row, statistically there probably always will be, and can we morally justify the death penalty accepting that it will inevitably kill innocent people. Which is not an argument that we should parole guilty people (how is it even close?), or even an argument that we should not punish murderers at all. It's not even an argument that we should parole innocent people found guilty in error. It's simply an argument that the death penalty isn't justifiable on the grounds that it will inevitably kill falsely convicted people.

Or maybe I'm just still confused as to what you're trying to say @_@

I like where you've gone with this. What I am saying is, based on repeat killings after they get out of prison, perhaps we need to tighten up on letting convicted killers go, if at all. I really wouldn't shed many tears to see the death penalty go by the boards in the majority of murder convictions, researving it for truly heinous killers.

This is a bit rough and ready, because I've done it very quickly but...

In the UK there were 35 murders and manslaughters committed by convicted murderers while in prison or after release in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011.

The murder rate in the UK varies between about 600 and 1,000, so let's assume an average of 800 per year. Convicted murderers in the UK usually get released on licence after 10 to 20 years, unless they are criminally insane. So we can assume that 750 murderers get released every year on average.

This means the rate of being convicted of murder and going on to kill again is 35/7500 = 0.47%

This academic article based on US stats (because only the USA has the death penalty among civilised western countries) shows a wrongful conviction rate of 4.1%

http://m.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230

Obviously you can't totally rely on a comparison between the US and UK, but the huge gap makes you think.