Capital Punishment & Prison Abolition

I feel, regarding Nuremberg trials, we, the winners, should have rounded up the criminals and shot them. Nuremberg created a false sense of blind justice and politically neutral laws. This is a wonderful goal and standard, but it is hard to attain and is as fragile as republican democracy. Admit we won, that our winning comes with consequences, admit we recognize the passion of the war and want to diffuse this tension quickly. And as much as we do not want our executions to become a standard. We take the risk and kill....at once. Sorry I moved sideways on main topic but I recognize and support the power of the state and the minimal implementation ideas behind supporting capital punishment. It just might be the best approach.

A couple of years ago we had a class on debating, and one of the topics was the death penalty. No one at my table wanted to support it, but since I'd had the easier position in the last one ("Should Donald be impeached?" - fuck yea, obviously, look at all these crimes! - remember when that hadn't happened yet? Twice?) I was volunteered to be the one arguing in favour of capital punishment...not fun, but I gave it a shot. The proposition I came up with in the 3 min prep time (so you may notice some pretty motivated reasoning here given the above set up) was: The death penalty should be allowed *only* for extreme cases like genocide, and even then only if there's also still an outside movement aiming to break that perpetrator out of prison, reinstall them as dictator, and encouraging them to do it again. My main example was Saddam Hussain, and how he probably needed to be executed less for what he'd done but for what he'd do if he were put back in charge of Iraq; this would cover the Nuremberg trials too. Every other justification I could think of in those 3 min just kinda fell flat. Thinking back on it now I can see a lot more holes (like, how far down the chain of command do you need to be before you don't count as genocidal? How could we trust whoever's overseeing the process, presumably the UN or similar, to do it honestly? Does systematically ignoring a pandemic count as genocide Boris? etc.) but this video kept reminding me of that little mock debate.

Beeblebroxologist

Excellent treatment of this issue. I have been against the death penalty here in the USA since the serial killer Ted Bundy was captured/convicted/executed based on monetary issues alone. The psychologists and psychiatrists studying him at the time made the argument that incarceration for life would cost the public a "mere" $35,000 annually whereas the struggle to implement the death penalty would be significantly more expensive. As it turned out the cost of execution after lawsuits, appeals and all the other insanity that surrounds this sort of event was in the neighborhood of $5 mil so they were correct ~ and lost a heck of a guinea pig. Add to that the number of convicted killers being exonerated by DNA and other methods and it seems the argument for life sentences far outweighs the argument for putting someone to death. The abolishment of prisons is one I will have to contemplate....

My gosh, I just got around to watching. 26:20 had me laugh so hard, my energy drink shot up through my nose. This caused an unstoppable coughing fit that woke and concerned my fiance so much she thought I was choking on something. Suffice to say that she found it marginally less amusing.

BronzeDionysus

The closed captions were'nt available to me at the premiere, so thanks for reminding me of this, as it usually gives a different experience

Veronika

This video has been a massive help for me, I wrote my masters thesis along a similar vein two years ago and I've been asked to put on a seminar on about it at work. Having a refresher in such a well-presented manner has been amazing, thank you.

By jove, you've done it again! Bravo, Abigail.

If you aren't watching this with the Closed Captions turned on then you are missing out!

ptbrown121

For most of my adult life I've been opposed to capital punishment, and I've even used similar reasoning to explain to others why I opposed the death penalty. I feel like you did a very good job in building this argument. I especially liked the part where you highlighted a lot of what you, myself and others think about a particular execution comes down to how we feel about a case more than the case itself. That was a new way to think about the problem for me, and I realized that a lot of people I know that use the language “it wouldn't hurt my feelings if such and such person were executed”. You're argument will really how I will approach that rhetoric in the future. Watching video I feel like you did all of your heavy lifting on the question of capital punishment, but didn't quite follow though with the argument on the abolition of prisons. That the expected function of prisons in rehabilitating someone so they can rejoin society wasn't being achieved through long term incarceration was probably your strongest argument for me. The fact that long term incarceration is a modern concept rather than a long standing form of punishment was also compelling for, but then I thought it seems likely that you didn't need prisons if you just executed everyone. This made me realize why I was feeling resistant to the abolition of prison. The question was, what about the safety of the public? Surely there are some crimes that we still need prison for sake of public safety. Because you didn't really touch this question I had to do a bit of the lifting myself, and I was able to think of ways we could help most people who committed crimes with out sending them to prison. In fact most things that are crimes really can be decriminalized as you have argued. You did bring up a story of a serial killer in your video and this stuck with me into the argument you gave about the abolition of prisons and this is what I think created my concerns about public safety. If someone commits murder after murder in a fetishistic way, or maybe even a repeat rapist I feel like I can see some justification for prisons. I could imagine some sort of alternative gentler psychiatric facility that could house this type of offender, but it would still be some sort of isolating the public from a potential recurring threat. If you have a better answer I would be interested in it. After watching you're video I feel prepared to begin chipping away at the prison system more than I already do, but I don't feel prepared to argue for total abolition. PS. I don't know if this is part of UK history but here in the US we have a history of using prisons as a form of slave labor. Our constitutional ban on slavery even makes this an express loophole. So you know another reason to abolish prison or at least chip away at it.

Fursona Erchon

The Werner Herzog impression was brilliant! This is maybe your funniest video in ages, it's great to see you so playful 💜

so, so so good, Abigail! As a law student I have to say, you did a wonderful job discussing the policy arguments. Absolutely stunning to see you again. Well done!!

Rat Queen

As an American living in Germany I don't get to flex my knowledge of obscure British folk music very often and for that I thank you Abigail.