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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3788 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'd guess it's the same reason we don't use corporal punishment (painful just to watch, incredibly painful to endure, but low-time-preference offenders get maximally deterred by it and potentially-rehabilitated offenders can still go back to family and work the next day) but we do use long prison terms (no instant of which is super awful, except maybe the one where the offender is fired and the one where their SO leaves them, but which adds up to more suffering over years).

At least subconsciously, we want to be cruel but we don't want to feel like we're cruel, so the cruelty has to be slow and calm and quiet.

And as for why the US in particular? My guess here is that it's because we're aware that when we were routinely cruel, we were just too awful at it. Corporal punishment reminds us of Puritan pillories for skipping church in the best case, or of whipped slaves in the worst. Hanging reminds us of lynch mobs. The one good thing you can say for long prison terms (including our ever-longer waits on Death Row) is that they provide lots of time to rectify an unjust miscarriage of justice. (not that we will, in general, but at least the possibility remains open)

Does anyone think that Japanese or Singaporean long drop hanging is any crueler than lethal injection? I mean, sure, public hanging from a construction crane, Iran-style, is outside the Overton window due to perceived cruelty. But that’s not what’s being discussed. There’s some movement in the us away from lethal injection because, as noted, it doesn’t work very well, but usually to firing squad or inert gas asphyxiation.

Honestly kinda seems like a fixation with being modern and technocratic more than anything else.

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