Most questions I see asked about the death penalty seem to center on whether it is wrong because of the harm it does to the person who is executed. What about the harm done to others by keeping a dangerous sociopath alive? Let's posit that we have a person who is so depraved that a prison sentence is no deterrence; and this person will gleefully cause pain, suffering, even death to prison guards and other inmates whenever he has a chance. Is it reasonable for all these other people to have to be exposed to such danger? Granted this scenario is an extreme case, that prison guards (let alone other prisoners) never anticipated such a danger to themselves when they first signed up for the job.

Is it consistent to oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, and also believe that life in prison is actually worse anyway?

What drives all the squabbles about free will and determinism? Is it anything more than a desire to reward and to punish, especially to punish?

It is a common moral conviction that it is better to let many guilty people go free than to wrongly imprison a single innocent person. My understanding is that this principle underlies the presumption of innocence in criminal trials. I can see that this strikes us as profoundly right, but I'm not sure why. I mean, off the top of my head it seems fairly easy to refute it along a crudely utilitarian line: all we need is to suppose that the guilty parties are liable to do harm enough to outweigh the suffering of the wrongly imprisoned innocent party.

Hello. I wanted to ask about revenge. (1) Is there anything morally wrong with taking revenge? (2) If the urge to take revenge is a genetic instinct (and surely, it's quite plausible that it might be), why should it have less moral authority than any other feeling about right and wrong? The background to this question is that, while there's no explicit eye-for-an-eye in the laws of most contemporary societies, usually judges take community expectations and appropriate punishment into account when sentencing, and not just factors like legal requirements, precedence, rehabilitation and deterrence -- so revenge is arguably still very much a part of modern law.

Would it be better to have set punishments for crimes (Ex. murder = 20 years imprisonment no matter the circumstances) or to have the punishments be defined with the individual that caused it? Would it also be better for punishments to be more "aggressive" than needed (Ex. littering = 5 years imprisonment)

Is the following behavior moral : 1. I was robbed when I was 14 and 15 on the streets. It was only a few dollars and they only involved verbal threats and no physical violence but it was somewhat traumatic. I didn't report to the police because for whatever reason I can't still understand. Probably there was (1) a certain mistrust of the police's ability to catch such criminals and (2) not wanting to bother with the hassle of dealing with police work -- for certainly parents would be involved in a teenager's case, and my parents were busy people -- for what was so little money, and (3) the minimization of the potential effects of such a traumatic emotional experience; I was brought up to act manly and powerful, and "telling" seemed like weakness(why I don't know). 2. 15 years has passed and I want to find them and make them pay for the emotional trauma that I had to suffer for a long time afterwards. I still lack basic trust between people and so forth. Is this moral? I.e. is the attempt at vengeance moral? Since if I don't take revenge either I am bogged down by social anxiety or become unduly aggressive against others who haven't done me wrong, but if I do it would at least be a temporary relief.

Some states mandate an automatic death penalty for murdering a law enforcement officer. How can this possibly be just when it elevates the victim above that of common civilians? I agree with the Aristotelian conception of justice as only partially overlapping that of morality but consistency is crucial to rationality in both judgment and conduct. Actions ought to be judged similarly unless there are morally relevant dissimilarities between them so a law-abiding or even a vindictive police officer, already armed and aware of the risks of his profession, is the same as any other civilian, both legally and morally. Common law jurisdictions work on the basis that all citizens are equal in intrinsic worth--wouldn't the imperative be to either entirely repeal the death penalty for murder or use it in every single instance?

Recently, Indonesia executed several people, mostly foreigners, for drug trafficking. This has been justified on at least two grounds: 1) Countries have diffferent norms and political cultures, and it's (Western) arrogance to tell them their way of doing things is wrong. 2) The executed knew the risk they were taking and the consequences of breaking another nation's laws, therefore, they got what they deserved and have only themselves to blame. Any comments? Thanks.

Is rape always immoral? Could it be justified under jurisprudence as punishment for a crime or under environmental ethics to save the human race in the event of a near human extinction?