British Comedy Guide

Capital punishment - yes or no ? Page 4

Quote: billwill @ August 21 2012, 12:46 PM BST

Perhaps prisons for severe offenders should be made less expensive to the tax payer and the prisoners made to work to live.

Perhaps we should convert a remote island such as Thule Island (near South Georgia) into a prison by removing from the old Naval station any easy means of making a boat.

No guards, we just drop off new prisoners by helicopter or parachute & drop tents and some supplies (mostly seeds & fishing rods) by parachute from time to time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Island

We tried that with Australia - and look what that got us.
Paul Hogan.

A success all round!

Quote: billwill @ August 21 2012, 12:46 PM BST


No guards, we just drop off new prisoners by helicopter or parachute & drop tents and some supplies (mostly seeds & fishing rods) by parachute from time to time.

So instead of life imprisonment or the death sentence, we pump criminals full of experimental drugs and make them fight to the death on an island? This film sounds great! I hope Plan B does the soundtrack.

:D I agree with Bill , sort of thought let them fend for themselves, a camp on the Falklands.

Quote: Booo @ August 21 2012, 12:22 PM BST

Do you think a significant amount of lifers actually care about what they've done enough to want to redeem themselves?

Maybe some, maybe others are psycho enough to see it as jolly good fun! People volunteer to take part in medical trials anyway, for little or no money, so it might as well be a productive option for those doing f**k all else for society when they have a deficit contribution.

Quote: Harridan @ August 21 2012, 12:36 PM BST

I think that could very easily shift from volunteering to being volunteered.

I don't see why prisoners can't be put to some kind of productive work, though. Even if it's only growing vegetables or something giving prisoners an 8-hour work day would alleviate some of the boredom, and might teach skills to those who didn't have any.

True. Your version is significantly more sensible. But no-one seems to do anything sensible about prisons and prisoners, so let's keep mine as a back-up plan :D

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ August 21 2012, 12:36 PM BST

Wow, that is pretty scary stuff. You've reduced a human being (albeit, not a very good one) to a status of less then a lab rat. What do the prisoners get in exchange for letting someone spray shampoo in their eyes? How much extra will it cost the taxpayer if we suddenly have to hospitalise vast amounts of criminals? How would you deal with Amnesty International and other human rights campaigners?

Still, it worked for these guys -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

You are more intelligent than to Godwin yourself.

Although I am one of those thoroughly British people who prefers animals to people, especially the murdery, rapey, paedophiley people.

Anyway, I said it was voluntary, and for goodness sake, man up- I get shampoo in my eyes every time I wash my hair. It only stings a tiny bit.

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ August 21 2012, 12:44 PM BST

In the olden days, instead of killing a rabbit to see if you were pregnant, you could have gone to Holloway Prison and sliced opened some lags uterus instead. You are a lovely person zooo. :)

As far as I am aware, the standard tests for pregnancy, before the current chemical tests, involved a frog not a rabbit.

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ August 21 2012, 12:54 PM BST

So instead of life imprisonment or the death sentence, we pump criminals full of experimental drugs and make them fight to the death on an island? This film sounds great! I hope Plan B does the soundtrack.

I said nowt about drugs.

And so what, if a person rejects society, why shouldn't society reject him/her.

Quote: billwill @ August 21 2012, 12:46 PM BST

Perhaps prisons for severe offenders should be made less expensive to the tax payer and the prisoners made to work to live.

Perhaps we should convert a remote island such as Thule Island (near South Georgia) into a prison by removing from the destroyed Argentinian Naval station any easy means of making a boat.

No guards, we just drop off new prisoners by helicopter or parachute & drop tents and some supplies (mostly seeds & fishing rods) by parachute from time to time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Island

I think I've actually seen that film...

There was a film about escaping from the French prison island. There are also Science Fiction stories about using marginal planets as prisons and I think they may have made a film of one of those.

"Lord of the Flies" has a similar environment, though I think that was a ship or plane wreck rather than a prison island.

Quote: billwill @ August 21 2012, 1:03 PM BST

And so what, if a person rejects society, why shouldn't society reject him/her.

Innocent people are released on a continual basis because of false imprisonment, biased juries, contaminated evidence, police corruption, political leanings or their own mental incapacities.

As long as just one innocent person gets sent to prison, any kind of death sentence or rape island is a non-starter for me.

Quote: AJGO @ August 21 2012, 12:56 PM BST

and for goodness sake, man up- I get shampoo in my eyes every time I wash my hair. It only stings a tiny bit.

Laughing out loud Laughing out loud

Quote: AJGO @ August 21 2012, 12:56 PM BST

Anyway, I said it was voluntary, and for goodness sake, man up- I get shampoo in my eyes every time I wash my hair. It only stings a tiny bit.

:D

Note the words "severe offenders" in my original post.

Quote: Harridan @ August 21 2012, 1:06 PM BST

I think I've actually seen that film...

There was No Escape with Ray Liotta that was pretty much what billwill describes, you can also throw in Fortress with Christopher Lambert and the John Carpenter classic Escape From New York. Oh and there was some space station one out recently with that bloke from Neighbours.

No Escape! that's the one. For some reason I thought it was a Jean-Claude Van Damme film.

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ August 21 2012, 1:15 PM BST

There was No Escape with Ray Liotta that was pretty much what billwill describes, you can also throw in Fortress with Christopher Lambert and the John Carpenter classic Escape From New York. Oh and there was some space station one out recently with that bloke from Neighbours.

Fortress is fantastic. Fortress 2 not so fantastic. And that one with Guy Pearce is meant to be pretty good.

Quote: Tursiops @ August 21 2012, 11:52 AM BST

I wonder how much it has cost to keep Ian Brady in prison all these years? I am guessing about the cost of building a school, or year on year the wages of around a dozen nurses. As a society we have to make choices about how tax revenue is spent. From a utilitarian point of view it does not make much sense to put that investment into maintaining the life of someone who has broken society's rules to such an extent that under no circumstances would they ever be released.

Just saying.

Executions required about 3 guards working 3 shifts a day for 3 weeks.

It wasn't cheap.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ August 21 2012, 11:43 AM BST

Or did have until Anders Breivik came along.

He's just spent a month in court arguing and probably proving beyond all doubt that it is.

And three thousand plus people murdered by the 9/11 murderers. An act that was rational in the extreme.

But any death sentence is irrelevant in such cases as it would have had no deterrent effect at all.

Rational and sane are not the same thing. Or else smoking fags and drinking booze would be a clinical diagnosis of insanity.

The 9/11 killers viewed themselves as soldiers, arguable but a diferent framework.

Quote: AJGO @ August 21 2012, 12:14 PM BST

Agreed, but we still can't go around killing people cos killing people is wrong which is why we want to kill these people. Innit.

I would like to see criminals given the opportunity to voluntarily participate in medical trials, thus giving something back to society, stopping animal testing, and hastening scientific and medical progress.
If they weren't obliged to then it wouldn't be cruel, they may get a sense of pride and feeling of playing a part in society because they would be likely to see the results of important studies published and used as the lengthy animal testing steps in a development would be eradicated, and as an alternative to dying or even boredom I think there would be a significant enough amount of lifers up for it.

I assume you mean the low risk ones stoners do for bong money.

Because otherwise you're classing people as less than animals for offending the law. And hoping to exploit people's sense of remorse and guilt.

nb a well organised, monitored and enforced scheme of community service is and always been a better option than prison.

It's cheaper, more effective and is more likely to rehabilitate the offender.

And most people won't do a bunk if prison is the other option.

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