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Public execution is already wayyy outside the realm of consideration for modern Westerners; if it should be reinstated, I'd prefer that we go the whole nine yards, as it were. Also, have you seen the comments on gore sites? Asides from stupid teenagers, I'd wager that ~everyone who frequents those sites to see anything more graphic than bodycam footage are somehow mentally disturbed.
Besides, the broader objection I have is towards the instrumental value of your formulation. When there's just not that much crime that deserves capital punishment compared to how it was in the past (at least among the blue-blood races), you don't really need to drive the point home in that way; it seems like your ought doesn't follow from the is. I'm curious: what crimes do you think deserve the death penalty (and while we're on topic, which deserve caning)?
I mean, that’s the thing: in the American context, both execution and caning would be wildly disproportionately applied to the “non-blue-blood races”. I obviously have no objection to hanging or caning a white felon; the demographic disparities are, at least in the short term, simply the reality.
When it comes to non-violent crimes, it’s more about the habitual aspect of crime. If someone commits shoplifting, I’m perfectly happy to see them caned once and then everyone can move on. If someone has committed shoplifting 47 times, this person is very obviously an intolerable burden and incapable of being rehabilitated. Career criminals are what I’m trying to focus on.
There are, however, certain non-violent crimes which I’d be perfectly willing to have someone very severely harmed for: scammers, for example. People who steal not from large impersonal entities, but from vulnerable individuals. A very close family member of mine lost his entire life savings to a scammer, who exploited his naïvety and conscientiousness. I myself had a phone stolen because a guy begged to use it to call his mother, then ran from me the second I handed it to him. These people are irredeemably sociopathic and must be culled. Generally any crimes which demonstrate a depraved mind must be dealt with through making it onerous or impossible for this person to reproduce.
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I will note that in the EEA everyone was basically fine with gore. It's the modern, intermediated society where the vast majority of people don't have to kill animals that is unnatural.
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