It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree....I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.
Interpretation
The quote questions the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime, suggesting it serves only as a tool for revenge.
In this quote, Albert Pierrepoint reflects on his experience as an executioner, stating that he does not believe that the executions he carried out have contributed to preventing future murders. Instead, he argues that capital punishment merely satisfies the desire for revenge rather than promoting justice or deterring crime.
In practice
In a debate about the morality of capital punishment, this quote can highlight the argument against its effectiveness.
I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.
Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.
Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.
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