Pictured: Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, senator of Vermont and prominent Democratic presidential candidate, has made a promise to reform the criminal justice system should he win the election come 2020. His idea is to tackle the ills of the current justice system by implementing new policies. For example, Sanders plans to end cash bail and privately owned prisons to combat economic injustice and profiteering in the system. In another example, Sanders wants to ensure accountability for law enforcement by banning the use of facial recognition software and military equipment. One of the most controversial of Sanders' goals is to abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment has been a part of the American justice system for decades, ever since it was reinstated in 1976 by the Supreme Court. And of course, recreational use marijuana will no longer be illegal, and all past marijuana convictions will be expunged. Please take a look at the article; I only covered a small portion of the reforms.
Discussion Questions:
- What do you feel about the planned riddance of the death penalty?
- Do you think Sanders' new program will help him in the polls for the presidential race?
1. Personally, I don't have anything against the death penalty itself. If someone commits a crime so severe that they're punishment is death, then so be it. Instead, I believe there are issues on how it's carried out. There have been many cases where lethal injection has been unsuccessfully performed which have resulted in more harm than good for prisoners and their families. If there isn't a successful and harmless way to punish prisoners by death, then I believe it should be removed.
ReplyDelete2. In my opinion, his new program could go either way. People could see him as an optimistic individual who embodies the drastic change that society needs or they could see him as a crazy old man who has no idea what he's doing. As you've mentioned, many of Sanders' goals are controversial so I believe there's definitely going to be some type of opposition. Only time will tell whether or not his new program will help him in the polls.
I disagree with the idea of removing the death penalty. While I do recognize that there are statistics provided by Amnesty International that state the overall cost of the death penalty is significantly higher than the cost of housing an inmate in prison for the rest of their life, I think the death penalty serves as an important deterrent to crime. By having the death penalty, the ultimate punishment for a crime is the taking of your life which serves as a great deterrent to violent crimes like murder since life is pretty important to a lot of people. I don’t think getting rid of the death penalty will do much, if anything, solve the ills of the criminal justice system, especially since there is a lack of proper law enforcement training in some police departments across America. Additionally, while I do agree that minor drug charges involving marijuana should be expunged from people’s records if the drug is legalized at the federal level, I don’t think higher level drug charges involving marijuana should be erased because people were aware of the drug laws at the time of committing the crime and they broke the law in a more serious way than having weed for personal or medical use.
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DeleteNathan, while I understand where you are coming from, I generally disagree with your view. I do not think the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime—there is no conclusive evidence among criminologists. Part of the reason is that for most people, fear of death (and more importantly, morality) is an effective deterrent, many that commit murder score high on the psychopathy spectrum and thus have a muted or nonexistent fear response. In addition, the death penalty is much more expensive than life imprisonment. Surprisingly, the cost of lethal injection vs. lifetime sustenance is not the deciding factor. Instead, it is the significantly higher defense costs for capital punishment trails, which is unlikely to change due to the inherent difference between death penalty and life imprisonment. However, I do think that the fact that the death penalty disproportionately targets minorities is a better justification for systemic law enforcement reform rather than changing a single punishment. Nonetheless, because the death penalty is ineffective and inherently expensive, I think that abolishing the death penalty is the logical next step.
DeleteI do not agree with abolishing the death penalty, even though there are arguments of it being more costly and potentially targeting minorities disproportionately. However, I do believe these issues should be addressed and the death penalty system itself may need some more looking at to make it more cost effective. (And if the claims about the penalty targeting minorities is true that should also be fixed, but I'm not sure whether or not it is.) I feel personally that if a person will commit a crime that warrants the death penalty, probably murder in the first degree, the death penalty will not need to act as a deterrent but rather as a punishment that is more than fair (Unless of course the murder was proven in some reliable way to be in self defense). Additionally I'm not too sure of Sander's banning of government use of facial recognition systems, as it is one of the necessary evils the government must use to keep the people living in the US safe.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with abolishing the death penalty even though I understand that many sources say that it costs more for the death penalty instead of keeping prisoners in jail but their is just the tier of crimes that are beyond punishable by just life in jail such as terrorism and rape/statutory rape just are some types that are beyond punishable in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteSander's plan to end the death penalty is a very bad idea. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, homicides, sex offenses, the use of illegal weapons, and drug offenses make up 77.4% of reasons why citizens go to jail. Out of this 77.4%, 76% of inmates are likely to go back to jail 5 years after they're released. It has become obvious that most inmates have adopted the mentality that jail will be a temporary punishment, that they will eventually go back into society just so they can select the same choices again. Yes, killing people shouldn't be a choice that we had to take, but I'm sure that there are exceptions to that 77.4%. Out of this percent, there have to be several inmates that have assassinated innocent people, have hurt others, and have destroyed lives. I believe that this society needs to embrace the death penalty since it seems to be the only way that criminals will think twice about their actions. In my opinion, inmates that have killed, or done any harm to a person, to more than 3 people should be considered for the death penalty.
ReplyDelete1) https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/8/8/16112864/recidivism-rate-jail-prostitution-break-cycle
2) https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
I don't think that abolishing the death penalty is the best idea because it does solve the issue with criminals who have committed crimes that are horrible. However on the other side, it does cost the government less money to send those criminals to life sentence than the death penalty. Some cases with the death penalty do have controversial topics because it could be accounted for cruel and unusual punishment which is part of the 8th amendment. Other people may also agree that those criminals who have done such actions should receive a death equal to their crime. Overall, people may or may not support Bernie with his views due to the death penalty. It really depends on the mind and beliefs of the people along with the other programs he hopes to start if he becomes president.
ReplyDeleteI personally feel as though the abolishment of the death penalty is unwise and extremely controversial. The death penalty was initially instated for the purpose of serving justice. Whether it be to the victims family or friends, the riddance of capital punishment would essentially strip away a chance for the convicted person to be punished for their heinous crime. Death penalty cases are typically extremely long processes and the convicted can be held for years because a consensus is made by court when sufficient evidence is presented. Most argue that criminals who have committed such extreme crimes should be rightfully punished through an appropriate consequence that is equivalent to the level of crime they commit. However, others argue that the death penalty can be seen as a from of cruel and unusual punishment. Electrocution was a common way of putting criminals to death which was seen as a form of cruel and unusual punishment due to the immense and somewhat slow suffering the convicted would experience. Both sides offer reasonably strong arguments, however abolishing the death penalty would only fuel more controversy between the two opposing sides.
ReplyDeleteI would largely disagree with many of my peers here, who all seem to believe that the death penalty is necessary for an effective criminal justice system. Many seem to believe that fear of the death penalty would cause criminals to be more wary of committing violent and terrible crimes like manslaughter and rape. This is effectively false. If that was how the death penalty works, then states with the death penalty would have lower crime rates, especially when it comes to violent crimes. But they objectively do not. The psychology behind the death penalty is, sadly, not sound. Simply speaking, when these awful crimes are being completed, there are already a multitude of consequences which criminals forsake when committing these crimes, and it's not like adding "the death penalty in 30 years" will add to this. Also, it's important to remember that many of these criminals, some given the death penalty with insufficient evidence and clear racial bias, have families. Families that would likely not want to lose their child, and would still like to visit their child throughout there life. Why should we create a second grieving family after a murder? Finally, as many of my colleagues above have stated, the death penalty costs millions of dollars more to complete due to a complicated court proceedings. This is money that could be well spent doing objectively better tasks, such as improving education and social mobility to lower crime rates. Then, maybe we won't ever even have a reason for a death penalty.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with Bernie Sander’s view on the death penalty. I feel that, while statistics may prove it as obsolete, it is an important punishment that serves for the greater good in our society. Its purpose is to scare people away from wanting to commit a severe crime that will cause them to receive capital punishment. I agree with Nathan Lin’s stance that the current system of implementation of the death penalty is poor. In an article by Austin Sarat, it is mentioned that several states have messed up death penalty punishments through lethal injection. These failures are the problem with the current system of the death penalty, botched injections are inhumane and unfair to the victim. If the current system can be revamped to make it more humane and efficient then it is an ideal punishment that will continue to limit the amount of horrendous crimes that occur.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, the death penalty is a flawed practice and should be abolished. Those that are in support of it have said that it deters crime, but it has been proven that its presence or absence doesn’t have an effect on crime rates. In the US, states in the south account for 80% of executions, yet have higher murder rates than any other region. No matter the location, people contemplating murder do not sit around and say I won't commit this murder if I face the death penalty, but I will do it if the penalty is life without parole. People contemplating or committing murder just don’t plan to get caught, so they don’t weigh the consequences into their decision to commit crimes.
ReplyDeleteAs for Sanders’s other ideas in his new program, I don’t think they would have a significant the current status of the presidential race. The new issues that he addressed in this program are all very polarizing, and his plans do stand out as very ambitious compared to other candidates, so it may draw some more support to him in the near future, but if he becomes the democratic nominee his extreme positions might repel a lot of voters in the general election.
Lastly, many of Sanders’s proposed policy changes sound very promising, but could have unintended side effects. For one, his goal to expand the rights of prisoners and loosen the punishment given for certain crimes would give prisoners many rights that they were deprived of and make the justice system much fairer, but it would also make people less afraid of the consequences of committing crime. Also, regarding his stance on the war on drugs, legalizing safe injection sites might solve the problem drug overdose deaths in the US, but it could increase illicit drug use as a whole.
I believe that it is a good idea to get rid of the death penalty because even if a criminal is accused, and guilty of committing a horrible crime, like killing others, I do not think that it is right to punish the criminal with death because it’s taking a human life, and no matter how bad the crime they committed was, a person should not have his/her life taken away. Moving on, I believe that this new program could lead Bernie Sanders either way, because it is such a controversial topic/idea; just like many people find it to be good to remove the death penalty, many others believe that removing the death penalty is not a good idea. Bernie Sanders could either win or lose, but I do think that it will be very close, because this topic is very sensitive, and I believe that citizens will be split when it comes to choosing whether they agree or not.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with banning death penalty because when a person commits a crime, they would be less likely to think again knowing that they would not have their life taken away. Although death penalty is costly, it serves its purpose in having people rethink their decisions before commiting a crime. This may lead Bernie Sanders either way. If more people is in support of his proposal, he would be strong candidate. But if more people are in support of the death penalty, or in opposition of his policies, he would likely lose many votes.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with the proposal to abolish the death penalty. Many people cite various European countries as examples that show that the death penalty is not needed. However, they fail to consider the vast difference between those countries and the United States. There is a large difference between the prison system for those countries and the prison system in the United States. One of the main focuses of those countries is rehabilitation, which is very good, but it also consumes a lot of time and money to implement. Currently, the United States has a very poor system in place for rehabilitation. Therefore the first step that the U.S should take is to develop systems for rehabilitation before making the call to abolish the death penalty.
ReplyDeleteThe death penalty is a very controversial topic, and for good reason. On one hand, it denies very violent criminals the right to live due to the extent of their crime and saves hundreds of thousands of tax dollars per prisoner on death row as these tax dollars fund their healthcare and food for the rest of their life in prison. On the other, due to the recently advanced technology, such as DNA testing and recognition, some who are wrongly convicted and wrongly put on death row can be absolved and are not killed based on an erroneous conviction. Furthermore, taking people's lives is an enormous responsibility, and unfortunately it is still for-profit as there are companies who make monetary gain from more capital punishment (such as companies who make the drug that kills the prisoners). While necessary for the death penalty, this practice often involves corrupt and amoral company executives who have influence over certain states and their representatives. I do believe that this extremely comprehensive plan will help him as this will allow him to gain the votes of those who support a very progressive criminal justice reform bill, namely minorities who are disproportionately affected by this system. However, those who are more moderates will definitely be turned away, especially by his very progressive stance on the death penalty. Those who are independents and possibly favor his position on climate change could maybe be turned away from Sanders if they either support the death penalty or oppose marijuana legalization. Furthermore, I agree with Ankur in that rehabilitation needs to be an integral part of any criminal justice reform. In order to make prison actually effective, and to deter America's extraordinarily high rate of ex-inmate's return to prison, jail needs to be more about rehabilitation and life after they are released instead of simply punishment. If the prisoners have nowhere to return to, and are unable to get a job due to their nonviolent record, they are much more likely to simply return to crime and be put right back into the justice system. This is not only ineffective, but extremely wasteful of tax dollars. Furthermore, there is a crisis of under-staffing in many prisons, as we saw with Jeffery Epstein's lack of surveillance/suicide-watch while he was in a maximum security prison. Such a high-profile prisoner needs to be monitored at all times, especially if he was found attempting to commit suicide in prison previously.
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