LEGO, as much as I might want to see these disgusting people killed, I still don't think it sends the right message to society....that killing someone is ok.

I don't like war either, especially the death of civilians, but I know that sometimes war is a necessary evil.
I doubt there was a worse wartime atrocity than the Yanks bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki though, with mainly women, children and the elderly in residence while most of the adult males were away at war.

Revenge served hot or cold is not a pleasant dish. Murderers who are locked up and not allowed out cannot offend again although precautions have to be taken so that they cannot murder while in prison. However, there is no need to treat them brutally or even unkindly. We do not have to act to others as they would act unto us.

Revenge does not bring the victims back to life. Resurrection is merely a religious myth. Dead is dead.

Suseoniline wrote: If they are the really terrible criminals that murders or rapes indiscriminately, with no remorse, then I see a lifetime of incarceration with hard labour as a just punishment.
These sorts of criminals should have no comforts at all in their cells, and perhaps spend their endless days cleaning the toilet blocks.

Dear Suseonline: That would not undo what they have done. Punishment is only just when its application might keep someone from reoffending. Otherwise it is pointless cruelty.

David F, "..: That would not undo what they have done. Punishment is only just when its application might keep someone from reoffending. Otherwise it is pointless cruelty."

That may well be true David, but it made me feel better saying it!

There are a few unspeakably evil people in this world that even anti-capital punishment people like myself would draw the line at providing anything more than food, water and shelter during their confinement.
I believe these very dangerous criminals are usually kept apart from the other inmates anyway.
I am not talking about cruelty, but I would certainly not want them too comfortable...

To Susie.

Try telling a soldier that killing people is not OK. Not only do soldiers live under the code of "Thou Shalt Kill". They also live under the code of "Great Woe Shall Betide Thee If Thou Dost Not Kill."

Genetically eradicating the most dangerous and unsocialised members of any society is a survival imperative. It presents a clear moral boundary which an offender must consider before crossing it and engaging in selfish behaviour which endangers the entire community.

Some people are just too dangerous and unfit to live. One Victorian man has been convicted and jailed three separate times for murder and has killed again every time he has been released.

Naturally, you did not address my premise that a man like Gary Ridgeway who has killed at least 48 young women, life in prison is a manifestly inadequate sentence.

Simply sprouting moral values without justification is meaningless. Moral values become valid only after a general agreement among an entire people that they are the correct way of doing things. Moral values can not be imposed by minority opinion, they can only be accepted when the majority accepts them after due consideration.

David f dead is dead, the religious do not get it, agree
Suseonline which category do you put Bush, Blair, Howard and Downer in? They were all war mongering idiots, just like the present group of politicians, they are murderers to the first degree, so why are they not facing the firing squad, protected just for being on the so called right side of the fence, surely their pea brains must tell them that they caused indirectly misery, deaths and carnage that they inflicted on people, are they really any different to Milat etc, murder is murder whether it be war or not.
Suse I was taught as an eighteen year old how to kill, didn't matter how excruciating it was to the other person, the more pain the better, I could have
joined the ranks of a murderer and possibly got a medal for it.

To Onjab.

No, I don't "get it."

Your premise seems to be, that state sanctioned killing is wrong. Then you seem to support euthanasia, which is state sanctioned killing.

Cuckoo, cuckoo.

Police forces everywhere carry sidearms to protect innocent life through state sanctioned killings. Almost every society allows state sanctioned killings where innocents are defending their lives against attackers bent on their homicides. Finally, every state in the world has armed forces who's job it is to kill enemy people in situations where open warfare is ongoing. All of that is state sanctioned killing.

Execution is just another aspect of state sanctioned killings which already exist. Even in those societies where the death penalty has been abolished by elites with no consultation or mandate with the people.

Get it?