The death penalty is no more. What instead?

To the Gulag, comrade.

A lobotomy.

A concentration camp on the moon.

Hard/lethal (anything with a high mortality rate) labor and medical/pharmaceutical research. I’m not really looking for satisfaction per se, but more or less a way of making them worthwhile to society.

Permanent solitary confinement, no books, entertainment, visits, exercise. Bread and water for meals with enough vitamins to keep him alive.

@wonderingwhy
My idea too.

@eden2eve
I thought about that too, the solitary confinement.
When i thought a bit longer about it, i thought it might be almost torturous?

Drop them off in the middle of Mecca, Saudi Arabia with a t-shirt that reads, “Allah is swine.”

@rebbel
Yep, but not as torturous as the electric chair. Or killing a child.

And… they are NEVER released!

For rapists, child molesters/killers, and the other most heinous crimes?

How about beatings?

Life imprisonment without parole. Truly no parole unless vindicated later. For extremely heinous crimes like you mentioned, solitary confinement, no amenities, Just what @eden2eve said above.

For child molesters/rapists tie them to a chair in a sound proof room for 20 minutes with their victims.

I think solitary confinement only makes people crazier.

Life in prison is acceptable to me.

In general, I think prisoners should have access to therapists and skill building opportunities so they have a place in society when they are released. There is a fine line between all of us and the thief or even murderer, and that line is often marked with abuse (child, sex, etc), neglect, lack of opportunity, drugs, and other terrible things that we were lucky enough to not have to experience and they unfortunately were subjected to and had no control over. I think very few people are pure evil.

@lilikoi – I agree with all that you say for “normal” convicts. But we’re talking about people who would have otherwise been executed and so will NEVER be released (unless they’re exhonerated).

Assuming they are actually found to be guilty of a crime worthy of the death penalty, permanent solitary confinement. I wouldn’t put them to work simply b/c that’d be slavery. They’ve lost their right to live and participate in human society, but they haven’t lost their right to be treated as humans.

It is called a life sentence. Spelt: l-i-f-e s-e-n-t-e-n-c-e

Life in prison, with access to psychological rehabilitation.

The tickle penalty.

Ok, jk. When the crime is something where someone had the other person at their complete mercy and abused them, e.g. rape, or hostage taking, or murder, I like the idea that the victim, or the victim’s family, be asked what the penalty should be.

I also like the idea of controlled communities, where life sentence convicts and other categories who just don’t belong free in society can live with each other and be productive/creative/helpful without being put in circumstances where they can re-offend.

@lilikoi
Why do we care if solitary confinement makes them crazier? I like that it gives them plenty of time to think about what they did.

We are not talking here about people who need to be rehabilitated. They are in this room for life. They don’t need skill building. They already know how to sit in a room. They have lost their right to any privileges and pleasures that the rest of us enjoy. If some of our more generous members of society are going to let them live, they should not have an opportunity to enjoy it. That’s not abuse, that’s justice. Fair to the victim and fair to those who have suffered the loss. They have positioned themselves as a burden to society, we don’t need the additional expenses of recreational therapy and rehabilitation.

There is not a fine line between a child murderer and the rest of us. That is a very exclusive club, and they deserve exclusive treatment. Literally.

1. Build walls around Utah, Staten Island, or some other place that no one would miss. Big, thick walls. No gate.

2. Drop all heinous crime offenders in via helicopter, each with an axe, a book of matches, and the means to start a vegetable garden.

3. Leave.

4. Shoot Kurt Russel in the head, and drag the body out with you. That way, the rumour that he’s dead will be undeniable.

@Seek_Kolinahr…Utah and Staten Island… hahahaha, funny . . . NOT!!!

@njnyjobs I’m from The Lost Borough. Most people don’t even know it exists. No one would miss it. You can’t deny that.

@Seek_Kolinahr ...doesn’t mean you would want to allow it to become a penal colony. As a matter of fact, I would rather have people leave the place alone than congest it like Brooklyn and Queens. At least you can still park your car in the same block where you live..

Their internet connection is limited to 300 baud dial up – for life.

@njnyjobs Ah, then build the walls around Brooklyn. I don’t care. It’s just hypothetical. I’d rather lose Utah, to be honest.

@Seek_Kolinahr how about making it Newark… Utah is great in the Winter for skiing!

@worriedguy
And a porn-filter.
Now, that’s punishing somebody.

why not texas? they want to secede anyway, and they have a border to mexico. by erecting a wall around texas you kill two flies with one rolled up newspaper.

@ragingloli Sold!

Vigilante justice, lynchings, and extrajudicial torture and murder.

Make them watch every Michael Bay movie. Twice.

@filmfann ... a day.
(And yes, that would require simultaneous showings)

More seriously, I agree more with @wonderingwhy (‘useful’ work) than @eden2eve (solitary) for the simple matter of potential economic advantage. In theory since these are people who are dead to society why bother to (and spend money to) torture them when they could be doing something (anything) to either save lives or reduce taxes (by being productive.)
Of course if they don’t want to work, it would indeed be slavery to force them, but the choice should be there (with incentives of some kind)

You took away everything that makes any sense, so what do we do – nice them to death?

Castration for DNA proven rape cases/child molesters. Lobotomies for psychopaths. Their brains don’t work right, anyway. Anything is an improvement.

@Seek_Kolinahr, props for the Snake Plissken reference.

I honestly think for those who murder not in self defence and those who harm and rape should replace our animals who are being tested on.
That way we can test on people and let innocent animals go.
And get better research.

True rehabilitation. Heal the wounds and move forward.

The answer here really should be obvious…

Thunderdome!!!

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. You put the murderer in a room with a wall of photos of his/her victims and a video screen with footage that has them in it during their alive time. He/she is but in this room and the only way to get out [for the day] is to push the right button there are like 500 buttons bit 80% of the buttons administer a shock from annoying to excruciating lasting 5 seconds. If they do not pick a button a shock in between the extremes fires off automatically. Everyday they go in that room they will know why they are there. And the people they killed to put them there will be forever staring them in the face on the victim’s wall. We can toss drunk driver in there too when they finally kill someone.

Consign them to the uranium mines of Ganymede. That’ll fix ‘em! : )

A normal person who simply gave in to a base desire to hurt or kill, yes, such punishments are punishments, indeed, but for some people, like sociopaths, these punishments wouldn’t work. So what do you reckon in such cases?

When you look at the countries that have capital punishment, it sure puts the USA in interesting company….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_nation

I like the idea of an island or walled Metropolis. The Australians used to say that all the time about boat people arriving on their shores… they’d say..‘We should build a wall around the country, 40 foot hight and 6 meters wide.’ Of course the Kiwis always agreed with them. If the Aussies got really obnoxious the Kiwis figured they could always fill it up with water.

The only civilised answer is life imprisonment….. but life has to mean life.

Thank you all very much for your answers!
Appreciated.

An issue I see with life imprisonment, though a good option, is space. But we could open up all those old prisons they show on the Travel channel when they have ghost investigations. Maybe a haunted prison?

I would be in favour of life in prison with not possibility or parole unless they are later exonerated.
I would offer those who do not represent an unreasonable risk to prison staff or other prisoners the opportunity to do useful work that benefits society in some way. Such prisoners would be less of a problem to manage than those with nothing to do but plot escape or crimes within the prison.

Those refusing to work should not be forced but should have little access to anything else that prisons offer to help pass the time.

Convicted child rapists or murderers should not be offered special protection from other prisoners. Even the most criminals have limits to what they will overlook.

@Seek_Kolinahr – They did that already for real! It’s called Australia…

@HungryGuy That hasn’t happened for 170 years now, unless you include the refugees we’re taking on, some of which have serious criminal records in their country of origin.

Life imprisonment without parole. To me this punishment is actually more severe. The death penalty offers an easy way out of prison (people don’t suffer in their graves). And it cannot be undone later if new evidence turns up.