what do you think of the death penalty?

Well capital punishment has been abolished in my country since 2006. Citing humanitarian, religious or some such laughable reason.
I say it was a smart idea. Why give them the quick way out? Labor and life sentence in prisons not fit for human beings? Genius!

death penalty directly sucks, I against it, We should be harvesting all their organs for medical use. There many people need organs to survive.

I am all for it, look at how the world is today, some need to be put to death.

Why should the rest suffer?

On the one hand I'm for it (but only for murderers, and especially for serial killers) because if they've taken a life, they should give their's back (a life for a life). On the other hand though, I'm against it, because if an innocent is wrongly suspected and they're given the death penalty...and later on, some evidence is revealed that they were innocent the whole time...well...

For it. This not so human being committed a terrible crime and we are feeding him, providing him a decent home, paying to the guards and all that... some poor people livig worse than this garbage...

If we have a system that is incapable of sentencing some poor innocent bastard, then I have no real problem with it. I'm mostly an utilitarian/consequentialist, I don't care about "punishment", I just want to prevent future crimes. So if need be you get a life sentence or the death penalty (I'll even let you choose what you prefer), doesn't matter much to me.

Never heard of that game.

Plus you're asking a population of people which I suspect are around 14-28 years old. I'm just surprised you haven't received more "kill it with fire" responses.

Anyone saying that the death penalty is cheaper than life in prison is hugely misinformed. A simplistic view on the matter might suggest that the death penalty is cheap, yet studies (f.e. cost of death penalty vs life in prison in Maryland http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/CostsDPMaryland.pdf) show that death penalty is a lot more expensive.

Punishing a crime with another crime, sounds very smart...

death for the corruptor

im not for it, only because it is an easy way out for them, but I do thnk prison isn't bad enough for them. they should just cut off an arm or something :P

For, because it's cheaper than housing/feeding/entertaining criminals for the rest of their life.

They just need to make sure that someone is actually guilty before applying it though.

I'm against it because:

• It's too definitive: if for some reason the sentence is not rightful, you cannot go back once the mistake is discovered, and this has happened before. Years spent in prison cannot be "refunded" either, but you can compensate with other means - you can't get somebody back from the dead though.

• If the state has the power to decide that it's wrong to take a life, it would be hypocritical to take one back in return.

• The actual outcome of it are two:

  1. The culprit cannot harm anybody any more. But that is also true for incarceration, and I dare say human life plus coherence are worth more than the money spent to maintain a prisoner even for life - rather put him to forced labour so he repays what the state is paying for him.
  2. Potential criminals will feel discouraged to commit life-punishable crimes. Except that has long been proven ineffective.

And as seen, both of those points are actually void.

There is thus no reason or justification to enforce the death penalty, even though killing a criminal before he can cause further harm (such as when one is caught during a shooting spree or while holding hostages) can be acceptable if there is no other way of pacifying him.

Against. Why not just life in prison?

Against... It doesn't really work...

I think reasonable penalties with aim to rehabilitate the criminals is best way... For the really crazy people life in mental institution until they are rehabilitated is reasonable... Which in some cases might not happen.

do you mean capital punishment?And what does have it in common with gaming?

So... I hope I'm getting my English right on this rather difficult topic :P

I'm all against it.
Why?

1. Both incarceration in form of a life sentence and death penalty are definitive, so further harm cannot be done either way.
2. Incarceration is actually cheaper than the consequences of a death sentence (especially when found not guilty after the execution)
3. (which brings me to: )Possible innocence - history shows us that the "advanced" forensical utilities/methods are nothing against greedy, rich, biased lawyers and political influence. So, once a person's dead, justicial clarification is pretty much a fricking slap in the face
4. Proportionality. "An eye for an eye" doesn't solve anything (compare to 1.-3.) and executing someone for "trivial offense" is just.. fascist.
5. Research. The ability to research "deseases of the mind" and studying criminality can better prevention - obviously. If you kill the "object" you might never catch a similarly thinking bastard in the future.

6. Law. Human rights > all

   Well, if I had this conversation in my native language it would be a LOT easier :D
   But yeah.. death penalty is fascist, wrong, destructive and stupid :)

EDIT: Anyone thinking differently is of course entitled to their own opinion, but can suck my salty chocolate balls.

Because it costs more money to execute them then it does to keep them in jail. Why should someone else decide to end their life? What makes them any better? It is still the premeditated killing of another human.

Against. Nobody should die, whatever the reason. It's against the... The rules of life.

Against.
Reasons were already stated.
That's murder, no matter what.
True, I won't deny that some people do deserve to die. I believe that even the most innocent soul will agree if they witnessed some of the biggest crimes out there. But the risk of innocent people being killed is too great, we can't afford that.
Put yourself in their shoes, for god's sake.

depends whether or not they are friends of the furry adorable critters of the planet. such as if hitler was also a ferret lover then he should be spared should he come back as a undead hitler

i'm sort of not surprised that most people here are for the death penalty.
"prisoners take up my tax dollars"... how many of you are actually old enough to work?

"We live in a primitive time, don't we? Neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it, any rational society will either kill me or put me to some use."