CNN on Graham

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Jun 22 11:07:35 PDT 2000


At 11:27 AM 6/22/00 -0400, Doug wrote:
>Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>>In fact, Amerika is a crime-ridden society, much more so than any other
>>developed nation, so that threat is not completely irrational.
>
>Not exactly true. U.S. murder rates are high by world standards, but
>property crimes are in line with most other First World countries. So

So are assault rates. But the general point is true: it is the pervasiveness of and infatuation with violence that is salient.

But that does not contradict my point that death penalty is a sacrificial ritual that symbolically re-establishes social order disrupted by crime. In fact, that would hold even if the US had the lowest crime rates in the entire industrialized world - all you need is the heightened visibility or salinece of the crimes that have been committed - e.g. in the media reports.

DP is gruesome as any act of killing - not less gruesome than, say, death by car or death by occupational hazard or death by Cruise missile - but its symbolic value (which I think is what attracts both proponents and detractors, lefties and assorted bleeding hearts and law and order demagogues, like flies to manure) aside, it is a minor and negligible cause of preventable deaths.

wojtek



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