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99% of British tabloid readers want the death penalty back


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Nearly 95,000 Sun readers are in favour of the return of the death penalty to Britain. 99% of those surveyed said the government should reinstate the lethal penalty in a recent poll conducted after a spate of high-profile murders across the UK.

The readers' views were shared by religious leaders and senior politicians, including Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

One Sun reader for the return explained his stance.

"They took away their victims’ human rights and gave up theirs when they committed their hideous crimes. Bring back hanging, I say."

What are your views on the death penalty? Should countries use it as valid legal punishment or totally abolish it?
richjm

26 responses // 99% of British tabloid readers want the death penalty back

  • Can I just say that the Sun readers are not the best sample of humankind to be surveyed on such issues?
    saverio
  • honestly i am confused on the isssue i mean somtimes you'll kill them for self defence and then you just cold blooded kill some one and those sould get tthe death penialty unless there unstable then put them in a mental hospital
    TiffanyNacole
  • I completely oppose the death penalty!

    Think about it: In order to rid a society of murderers, you do not murder the murderers!

    The death penalty completely contradicts itself in its so-called 'reasoning'.
    glenobo
  • My objections to the death penalty - I wish the US would outlaw the practice.
    Tori
  • Revenge is not justice.
    JanforGore
  • The US is one of the last industrialized countries that still has the death penalty. That says something. I think there are other ways to serve "justice." Shouldn't we evolve past the point of capital punishment when there are better means than just killing?
    katharinekov
  • http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/wwn_0723...
    99% of tabloid readers probably also want bat boy released from custody immediately
    joebrilliant
  • NEWSFLASH 99% OF SUN READERS WOULD LIKE TO BRING BACK HANGING!!!

    Ive got another one for you...

    POPE IN "IM CATHOLIC" SHOCKER

    and

    BEAR IN "I SH#T" IN WOODED AREAS SENSATION

    99% of Sun readers want to lock down our borders, have us withdraw from the EU, deport anyone with "al" between parts of their surname.

    For those on here who never read it, live in some sort of fantasy world were they never come into contact with it or live outside of the UK. The Sun is the most read national daily newspaper in this country. It is reactionary and based totally around boosting circulation yet it still somehow manages to dominate the news and political agenda. It is the newspaper of choice in many workplaces across the UK and a constant source of amusement for its style of mixing news, commentary, sex, crime and pictures of women with their breasts out. It's a uniquely deplorable British institution.

    It can contradict itself happily over and over again and believes itself to be the voice of reason.

    The sad fact is that most average members of the British public probably advocate the return of the death penalty anyway. Our politicians removed it as an option in the 60's. It's quite easy and predictable to use a few court cases about violent sexual murders to stir up public feeling in favour of the death penalty. Also we're getting plenty of voices advocating a register of the DNA of every UK national as well now as a result of all this.
    It'll die down. The "news" agenda will move on. It does.
    graemesmith
  • are you sure this is a good idea... who are we to decide wether a person should die or not.... its all messed up in this world we are led to beleive the rong things
    global_problems
  • I beleive in the death penalty.I think it should be applied fairly and impatailly. I think that, if you are rich, you can probably get out of it. If you are poor, you will probably get fried, when facing Capital Punishment. The London Underground terrorists and the conspiritors shou be killed. It is not revenge, it is as simple as the punishment fitting the crime.
    mjsmith11
  • "Think about it: In order to rid a society of murderers, you do not murder the murderers! "

    No, you execute them.

    "who are we to decide wether a person should die or not"

    Who are they to decide whether a person should die or not? They should be ready to get the same treatment they dish out.
    I can see crimes of passion getting a double take, and self defense and the like are a non-issue here - but murdering someone in cold blood, particularly planning for it, is perfectly deserving of death.
    I can't fathom why people condemn governments for killing people, and then rush to the defense of some monstrous ape holding a smoking magnum.

    Sometimes the death penalty is perfectly justified, and putting all your eggs in one basket with an issue like this is, in my opinion, extremely narrow-minded. We don't live in that world.
    Humdrum
  • The death penalty is not a "valid legal punishment." Who are we to have such control over someone else's life to kill them. Admittedly, the person commited a wrong as well, but that does not give us the right to kill the individual; regardless of their past actions.
    naty_forty
  • I would like to ask people who are against the death penalty - Why should we keep people who have committed the worst or the worst offenses alive? We have a prison system to rehabilitate people. If someone has committed such offenses against society that rehabilitation is not possible and they have met objective criteria for receiving the death penalty, why should they not receive it? It is an injustice to society to force citizens to tolerate intolerable offenses.
    mjsmith11
  • If you asked the Sun readers probably a higher percentage could list the names and vital statistics of the Page 3 Girls a lot better than they know the history of the death penalty and it's consequences
    Argon18
  • Could somebody from the UK be as kind enough as to enlighten us Americans and the rest about the "Sun Tabloid". We have the National Enquirer which is sort of credible (not really) and we have the Weekly World News (science fiction would be an understatement.) and everything in between. I am not sure if the SUN is distributed here in the US.
    mjsmith11
  • I don't think that the supposed values of the readers of the Sun are the issue.
    Humdrum
  • Quite the opposite. In order to understand that statistic you need to be familiar with the newspaper. Its not the most reliable of stats. I read that edition of the Sun (being a reader of most UK newspapers) and they set up a premium rate phone poll around horror stories about violent crime. That was the result they wanted http://www.thesun.co.uk/ - check the website for a feel to the paper. Its not like the national enquirer - a lot of people really do read this newspaper. Its more like the New York Post but with more sex - so its catered to the UK market.
    graemesmith
  • yes okai the person who killed shouln't do what they did but they have mental instability in most cases or they take revenge
    im not sticking up for them because i stand by "we shouldnt have the right to decide wether to live or die!!"
    but bringing back the death penalty is stooping down to their level (the killers) you will then be doing to them what they did to others....
    its not the way to punish them in my oppinion.
    global_problems
  • What if you make a mistake when handing out the death penalty? No legal system is 100% perfect.

    It's hard to gve someone a pardon when they've been executed by the state. And clearly, the prospect of the death penalty hasn't put off many wannabe murderers...
    Simon_S
  • Nothing will ever be 100% perfect, and a system that allows methodical murderers, brigands, and psychopaths to leech off the government (in turn, the tax payers), holed up and kept "alive" in a cell for the rest of their lives, is definitely far from perfect.

    I'm not saying that the current system couldn't use a rehaul, and I definitely don't think the death penalty should be used in anything but the most extreme, cold-blooded cases, but getting rid of the death penalty altogether, in a country as huge as ours, only helps the ones who'd sicken our society.
    From an individual's standpoint, I know that the death penalty looks terrible - but when you look at everything as a whole, sometimes, in certain cases, it's just plain necessary.
    301 million people, as opposed to less than 70 million in the UK - when percentages are broken down into raw numbers, that's a lot of people to jail for life, and a lot of money flushed down the toilet that could instead go towards oh, I don't know...health care? Social programs? Something?

    Also; sure, with the death penalty in place, there are still plenty of murders - but I don't see how not having it in place would suddenly turn everybody into a care bear. This is gun-toting, gang-ridden America, after all.
    Humdrum
  • Why do people who have murdered deserve to get an easy way out in being executedin a humane way, more than they usally give their victims. I cthink murders deserve to spend the rest of thier life in prison
    Dreamerboi
  • It's not about what they deserve - it's about what's best for society as a whole. When they spend the rest of their lives in prison, all that does is waste money, in my opinion. Think of it in the coldest manner possible.

    In any case, it's not a federal decision to make; it is the decision of the state governments.
    Humdrum
  • An interesting note for the UK on this one. We have a prison system that is now at capacity. So much so that the justice secretary has now asked the courts to avoid custodial sentances as we simply dont have the capacity. So I guess in many ways it could be valuable not to keep these people in the system for life but to get rid of them. Also we see most convicted killers serving life terms attempting suicide but being stopped in order to carry out the rest of their sentence and in the case of one notorious child killer being force fed through tubes on a hunger strike - thats the way we do it here and i prefer it that way. I think countrys define themselves by how they treat people in these situations, even if they are loathsome.
    graemesmith
  • You should seriously consider these: Are they going to go drunk with power and out of control?

    Are the sickos going to start doing this in public in Israil and do nothing put make the public and victims only as bad as the judged brut, if not worse?

    Could they mistake another Bently and Chris from the 50s and only be discovered in over another 50 years that thhey did'nt do it? DNA or not?

    Could they mistake someone with mental problems?

    Could'nt it be more humaine? It is the 21st century, you could by the least inject them in private, the ways already taken and gone wrong are exactly why they stopped.

    Last of all "If you can take a man's life for the thought's that are in his head!" - Johnny Cash.

    Think about it. REALLY.
    steadward
  • Who benefits from execution? At least here in the states, the legal appeals process is so costly that it is actually more expensive to execute someone than it is to give them life in prison.
    benjaminwinters
  • Simple. Death Penalty = Wrong

    There is nothing to suggest that when we had the death penalty in the UK the rate of crimes that had it as a punishment were any less

    There is also nothing to suggest that (backward) countries that still have the death penalty have lower crime rates.

    PS can people who buy The Sun read now?
    TheWogans

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