May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon and we've moved on to the electric chair.

This whole notion that "punishment" soothes crime is illogical and remains unsupported. Actually, Sweden recently shut down four prisons as the nation's focus on rehabilitation has left the number of inmates plummeting. After announcing plans to shut down eight prisons in 2009 (for reasons similar to Sweden), The Netherlands added eleven prisons to that list in June of this year. Norway, home to Europe's prison with the lowest reoffending rate offers inmates education and vocational skill programs. The prison also utilizes a pod community system to combat the criminal prison subcultures that develop as a result of the traditional wing and landing model. Not to mention, Norway has neither the death penalty nor a life sentence (prisoners face a maximum of 21 years behind bars).

Any crime that's not a result of an unjust law (examples including everything from the sexist nature of many states public indecency laws to the Christian undertones of our nations sex work regulations to the xenophobic attitudes that dictate our immigration policies) results from economic inequity and/or mental illness. Economic inequity can be defined as need, rather real or perceived, founded on cultural cues that praise wealth while simultaneously making it more difficult for individuals to achieve upward mobility in any form. Quite maddening really.

Imprisonment and the death penalty solve neither mental illness or economic inequity. When society's peoples are committing crimes, our society needs to ask why. When the cause is economic, we can not blame individuals who are victim of an unjust social structure for their response to such injustice. Instead, blame the society that establishes and allows for these conditions, working from there to redistribute wealth and restructure our economy. Such crimes beg us to give attention to our nation's ever increasing income gap and rampant poverty rates and to examine how such truths leave individuals to believe that criminal activity is their most profitable path in achieving a comfortable lifestyle.

In the case of mental illness, that is excessive greed and/or psycho/sociopathic tendencies, imprisonment or the death penalty are far from rational responses. Although the ways we which we commonly categorize and define various mental illnesses are flawed and classist, the desire to harm others or the desire to fulfill one's own desires to the extent that it harms other individuals indicates something missing in terms of one's empathy and suggests that this lack of empathy is uncontrollable.

Medical professionals have the responsibility to address and/or treat such illnesses. It is not the job of police officers, judges, policy makers, etc., etc. That's not to say these individuals who are a threat to other's wellbeing and safety should remain in mainstream society, but their own lack of empathy does not grant us permission to abandon our own empathy. We who do not suffer from such mental health matters do have control over our own emotions and desires. Thus, we ought to act like it by providing safe and just living environments for individuals who do not share our luxury. It is our responsibility to create spaces, with the end goal being self-growth, where individuals can receive psychological evaluation. How hypocritical of us to look at these criminals in disgust, claiming we simply can not both be human, only to stow them away in inhuman facilities with inhuman conditions? Even if these facilities exist as the permanent homes for particular individuals, they must address the fact that these persons are people and ought to be treated as such. If the environments in which mentally ill criminals were consistent in their treatment, they could potentially teach us more about these types of behaviors and in turn, we could learn how to take preventative steps to reduce crime in the future.

Overall, the death penalty does not deter future criminal activity. Individuals who commit heinous crimes are not discouraged with the threat of ultimately receiving the death penalty, and those who do receive it, were never going to live in mainstream society again. Therefore, the death penalty does nothing to help solve the greater issue of crime as a whole. Not to mention, judicial systems are strongly biased and full of prejudice. People will be wrongfully convicted. Innocent people will fall victim to the death penalty.

When I find myself arguing my beliefs with some stubborn pain-in-the-ass, I resort to this statement: "Ghandi once said, 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' You're not smarter than Ghandi, so shut up."