[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment

[aiguy at comcast.net]

Since most prisoners attempt to plea bargain by testifying against their accomplices or confessing to other unsolved crimes to avoid the death sentence even though they know they will get a life sentence.   Also because most prisoners will run the appeals process aas far as it will go, this indicates that prison life is preferrable to them over death.

In many cases though a mandatory death sentence could be counter productive.  For instance if rapists knew that the death sentence was waiting for them then they may choose to murder their victims afterwards to prevent them from testifying against them.

As it is now the vast majority of rapists do not murder their victims making it easier for them to be caught and prevent them from repeating the crime.

Also I have read that the reason for murder reduction rates is due primarily to improved medical care and trauma centers where more people who would have died in the past are now being treated more quickly and effectively and being saved.   To get a real statistic attempted murders should be added to actual murder before we can conclude that we are really making any progress on violent crime.

It would be interesting to see if the states with the highest murder rates also have the least trauma units and lesser effective hospitals in these type of incidents.

In the case of police bringing in shot up gang members I can just hear the emergency room doctors thinking let's save the state the cost of a trial.

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> 

> On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:36:02 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: 
> 
> > I admit to being confused on this point as well. Speaking of 
> > deterrence alone, which consequence of conviction is more 
> > to be feared: death or a life sentence? 
> 
> Curiously, states that impose the death penalty have higher homicide rates 
> than those that don't. And the differences are quite large. 
> 
> The total number of yearly executions rose over the last ten years. 
> Although this increase in executions correlated with a decreased national 
> homicide rate, suggesting a possible deterrence effect, it's also true 
> that during this time the gap between the murder rate in death penalty 
> states and non-death penalty states grew progressively larger. By 2005 the 
> murder rate was a whopping 46% higher in death penalty states than in non 
> death penalty states! 
> 
> This is based on FBI statistics. See this page for some interesting data, 
> charts and graphs... 
> 
> See http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/php/article.php?scid=12&did=168 
> 
> -gts 
> 
> 
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