Hi Karlene,

Thanks for that response. I wasn't thinking about the death penalty in particular. I was thinking about the prison system in general and how they let society down. They were created to do three things, punish, protect by keeping dangerous people from doing dangerous things, and to rehabilitate. It's obvious that they punish but I feel they let us down in every other respect. People do come out worse, and then we ask why that is the case. Some of the things people must do to survive in prison, they would not think of doing out of prison. And in the case of those who do come out, we stack the cards against them and then wonder why they fall to old ways.

I don't have an answer. We can speak on idealism, but it is obvious something needs changing. Like everything else it begins with understanding that something is not right. We continue to build prisons (at least in the USA) and pursue ridiculous punishments for common sense cases. We give one person life for murder, but in other cases just 7 years. In cases of rape, we humiliate the victim, and then let the rapist out for good behavior. In cases of pedophilia, we throw the book if it's a man, and turn our head when it's a woman. Maybe one day we'll figure it out.