This is exactly my point, how can you tell, that it's not already "low". There could always be more. How can you not believe death penalty has no deterrence effect for example on apostasy or drug crimes? The only way you could know is, that these countries removed their death penalties now.neon joe wrote:Take a look at the countries that Neil listed... if you look at the data, you can see a trend. If CP was working, crime rate would be low in those countries.Erssa wrote: How can you tell it's not working in those countries? You obviously can't, so let's not make blanket statements.
When I called your statement a blanket statement, you didn't single out homicide. You cannot measure capital punishments deterrence by just homicide rates, unless capital punishment is only reserved for homicides. Why don't you use for example Afghanistan's apostasy numbers? Based on them, you could say CP is in fact an effective deterrent.I looked up the recent homicide rates in those 6 countries, they're spread out randomly... indicating that CP doesn't have any effect on homicide rate.
My 'blanket statement' is a generalization based on data that's available. I have yet to see any conclusive data that CP acts as a crime deterrant...
Just look at the list. Out of those 6 countries, only USA reserves death penalty only for murders (plus treason, espionage and some military crimes).
When something is deterred it leaves no numbers or statistics that you can count, because it doesn't happen. Disproving deterrence is as easy as disproving lack of god. You are only left with a guess, which is as good as mine.
I'm sure you believe hand-free saves lives. If I asked you how many, you wouldn't be able to tell me. You could only guess it prevented, but you couldn't actually tell which cases it prevented. Why is this so hard to accept on death penalty?
Sound logic? A man using hands-free, while driving, died in a car accident -> hands-free doesn't prevent deaths. Clearly sound logic indeed.aristide1 wrote:And yet, somehow, BF will ignore this, as part of sound logic.Erssa wrote: For a specific example:
Zommer murdered that elderly woman, apparently he wasn't deterred by the chance of getting the death penaly.