

Monday, November 28, 2016

The death penalty's a strange way to punish people

I've never understood some people's enthusiasm for the death penalty. When you're dead, you're dead, saving the cost of incarceration no doubt, but there the punishment ends. Isn't that revenge, rather than punishment? Life imprisonment for serious crimes lasts long years, rather than minutes. The fear of death may affect the condemned man or woman but, again, it's soon over. If you're of a religious persuasion, I suppose you might imagine the torments of hell or some other afterlife punishment, but an eternity is an eternity, whether it begins now or in fifty years time.