I Now Support Abolition of the Death Penalty

I once tried to buy a briefcase in the souk of Fez, Morocco. I said, this looks like plastic, and you are charging for leather. He replied, it is European leather. Ah, I said.

I now support abolition of the death penalty.

1) We should have the European death penalty. It is quite lively, and it is called, suicide. The US prisons accomplished the greatest achievement in psychiatry of the 20th Century, at no cost, no program, no treatment, no additional staff. They nearly eliminated prison suicide by a warden policy change, eyesight supervision. No one knows about this greatest of achievements in psychiatry, to come close to eliminating the hard, harsh outcome of psychiatric disorders, death. Meanwhile suicide in European prisons is massive, with violent offenders properly at the highest risk, numbering in the hundreds, if not in the under-reported thousands. Prison officials always have the tool of placement. Place a violent, recalcitrant, troublesome white supremacist in a cell block filled with black organized crime members, or a Latino prisoner in a block filled with white supremacists. Then count 3-2-1, before responding to any alarm;

2) The opiate overdose epidemic will be causing the attrition of the violent criminal class. That will be thanks to Chinese imported carfentanyl, an opiate 10,000 times more potent than morphine. It standard use is by veterinarians needing to deeply anesthetize elephants for prolonged major surgeries;

3) CRISPR/cas9 technology will soon fix the defects that result in criminality and in addiction. These defects were well described in the mid 19th Century. This change will be despite the all out obstruction by the lawyer profession, trying to save their totally worthless, and toxic, government, make work jobs.

The law, a worthless form of rent seeking, is in deep failure. It never addresses problems, only technology does.The Supreme Court once abolished the death penalty. That decision caused a lot of lawyer unemployment, from the immediate layoff of the entire death penalty appellate bar. They raked in $billions a year of tax payer money, returning nothing of any value. The Supreme Court quickly corrected its mistake. They now have the death penalty exquisitely tuned for its sole real purpose, lawyer employment.

Almost no one is executed. There were three dozen executions a year, in the face of  soaring murders in many cities, now at a total of 15000. Yet, $billions are being spent on death penalty legal appeals. It takes decades, not years to execute a murderer. This is a  condition perfectly tuned by the  Supreme Court in the Baze decision, of maximizing lawyer employment, while making the death penalty worthless.

To every remedy there is a dose response curve. Too little does not work. Too much is toxic. The same applies to the death penalty. Imagine giving a miracle drug like penicillin. Give a dose to one in hundred pneumonia patients. Price it at $10 million. Wait 10 years after the onset of pneumonia. It will not be effective, and people will claim, penicillin is too expensive, does not work, abolish it.