It’s an interesting question.

Some people would be bothered by the mass-slaughter of convicted criminals, of the most serious crimes, but the flip-side is if we are not restoring the full-rights of those convicted of a serious crime, then why should they be kept alive, draining resources on society, and causing further violent crimes to be committed?

When you think about it, there was no such thing are prisons prior to about 150 years ago in most communities. Short-term town and city jails, yes. But not prisons. Since the founding of our country, until the 1850s, those convicted of the most serious crimes were generally executed. We didn’t have the resources or ability to lock criminals up in a cage for long periods of times. Prior to the 1850s, those convicted of crimes, either went to the town jail for a couple of weeks, or would be executed on the town square.

Felons are basically non-citizens, with few if any rights. They are forever forbidden to be part of our democracy, and in most cases can not vote, can not have a job, can not own firearms, or even get government housing or food assistance. Many if not most felons, if released from prison, spend their days wandering the streets of blighted neighborhoods, homeless, and causing trouble.

It certainly would remake our cities and change how we thought about felony crimes. It might make dangerous criminals even more dangerous, if they felt they had nothing to lose. But it does seem inhumane to lock criminals up for long periods of time, and wasteful to have them consuming society’s resources, without them giving back anything to society in future.

It doesn’t seem right to be locking people up for extended priods of time, much less for life. Why waste the resources to extend a life that has no value to society? It’s even more terrible to be releasing criminals from jail with their rights greatly compromised, and unable to participate fully in society.

Execution seems harsh. But if we are going to have felony crimes, to punish the worst behavior, then we should either have defined sentences, with full rights restored upon treatment and release, or we should outright execute the felons, so they can not come back to harm others.