Is Indonesia right to execute drug smugglers?

[Praktik]

On that we are agreed. Well, i'd rather none at all, but if forced to, would have to limit it to #1... "Harshest penalty for the most responsibility" - pretty simple rule of thumb.

 

[Mudcat]

I'd rather there be no need for death penalty as well. I'd also rather there be no need for a military, but there you have it.

 

[Praktik]

Ha well at least you feel bad about it!

Better than standing on a pedestal and crowing about how brutal you are in any event - by a longshot!

 

[shuize]

This woman, who is the target of the thread, crime seems to be being coerced to commit a crime that bares a penalty of death.

In my opinion, Sandiford's claim of coercion is very weak. As I noted above, for the claim to have any meaning, the threat must rise to the level of death or serious bodily harm. The threat must also be immediate and inescapable -- also not evident in this case.

Even if the alleged threat to her family in Britain were real, which I doubt, the proper response is obviously to report the threats to the police in Britain -- something we can fairly expect a former legal secretary to know.

The fact that Sandiford was reportedly a "familiar face" in the Bali drug scene also seriously weakens her claim of coercion.

 

[Mudcat]

Ha well at least you feel bad about it!

Better than standing on a pedestal and crowing about how brutal you are in any event - by a longshot!

There is something fundamentally wrong with a person as a human being if they enjoy the need for death penalties or armed militaries, or they stand on a pedestal and crow about it.

Instead, the Spockism holds true:

"I do not approve, I merely understand."

~Spock, Star Trek TOS 'A Taste of Armageddon'

 

[theprestige]

OK, I had not seen that. I was under the impression she was a duped one off.

I was referencing this to smuggling and those who get duped and are patsies for the drug lords.

Thanks for the clarification. Now that you've actually familiarized yourself with the topic of the thread, are you still opposed to Sandiford's death sentence?

 

[Soapy Sam]

This is why I ask: if it is appropriate for Sandiford to get the death penalty, then what do we do with all the people who are much more important than her in terms of supplying¹ illegal drugs?
There is nowhere else to go in terms of severity!

Well, yes, there is.
But you probably don't want to hear about it.
However, if you consider removal of life the worst possible punishment and seek a sliding scale, how would you view a modern equivalent of Sharia punishment,in which a lesser offence was punishable by (say) the surgical removal of a kidney which having been tissue typed while in situ could be used for immediate transplant. In this way, offenders can literally pay a debt to society at no cost to anyone but themselves, with someone actually benefitting.

 

[Soapy Sam]

There is something fundamentally wrong with a person as a human being if they enjoy the need for death penalties or armed militaries, or they stand on a pedestal and crow about it.

There is a difference between recognising reality and liking it.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Well, yes, there is.
But you probably don't want to hear about it.
However, if you consider removal of life the worst possible punishment and seek a sliding scale, how would you view a modern equivalent of Sharia punishment,in which a lesser offence was punishable by (say) the surgical removal of a kidney which having been tissue typed while in situ could be used for immediate transplant. In this way, offenders can literally pay a debt to society at no cost to anyone but themselves, with someone actually benefitting.

WTF? How does this even work? Loss of a kidney doesn't cost you anything.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Discourages second offences.

 

[Praktik]

hahaha - cause you only got one left, maybe you'll be more careful!

Where I was going was medieval styles, thinking the only thing worse than death is to die horribly -> drawing and quartering, flaying, tarring and feathering.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Chemically (or surgically) induced senility. There are innumerable things worse than death- but the question is their effect as deterrents. Trouble is, most of us think it will never happen to us, then when it does we don't feel guilty- we feel cheated.
Wer see the potential gains to be made from bending the rules and ignore the downside.
For that reason, I tend to the view that punishment should always apply- no exceptions.
If we all knew we would be caught and fined for doing 80 on the motorway, we might stick at the limit. Instead, we get peeved if we do get nicked.

 

[Praktik]

I think the evidence will show that when they were employing hideous torture as normal course of justice, that there was no violence in medieval society because of the deterrent effect, or maybe not:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/...g-term-historical-trends-of-violent-crime.pdf

 

[Soapy Sam]

We don't , of course, have data on how much better (or worse) things might have been had they been able to make deterrence work.

The question seems to be not how draconian the punishment is, but how certain we are of being caught and convicted. Hence the speeding comparison.

Compare how likely we all are to break speed limits with how unlikely we are to double park illegally in the centre of a city. There's a good chance we'll get away with 80 on the motorway, There's a very high probability we'll get fined for double parking. The more potentially dangerous crime is committed daily by tens of thousands of otherwise law abiding people.

Unrealistic people are willing to smuggle drugs through airport security because they think they will get away with it. Real criminals don't because the odds of being caught are far too high.

 

[Praktik]

Yes i recently found out that a friend's dad regularly takes a few joints w/ him on plane trips.

What a ridiculous risk to take! Ridiculous he has to in the first place I guess, but even more ridiculous that he doesn't just source locally or - for Odin's sake - abstain for a few days!

 

[Eddie Dane]

This frightens me:

I have two colleagues who have very limited mental capabilities.
They recently went to a trade fair for household appliances and such, came back having bought new washing machines and fridges and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Our HR manager, went on phone campaign contacting all these companies and telling them to cancel the orders as these people can't pay for all that stuff anyway.

These people are so pliable, they'll sign any dotted line.

I wonder how many people like that end up being mules? They look normal, they sound reasonably normal, but they can be so easily exploited.

 

[lionking]

In terms of the hierarchy of culpability in the drug trade, I would put the smuggler right at the top. Without the smuggler, there would be no distributors, lieutenants and so on. The attempts to depict Sandilands as a player of little consequence are unconvincing, to say the least.

 

[Praktik]

By all means, demonstrate to us why they are unconvincing. Methodologies to do so have been suggested and even adopted by myself. You are welcome to crib those methodologies and apply your own weighting, or come up with a different method that is more suited to you. You could take a negative approach and take my data points and logical arguments and tell us why they are mistaken, or you could take a positive approach and develop your own case.

But merely asserting something and leaving it at that is ummm... unconvincing? (for lack of a better word)

 

[shuize]

By all means, demonstrate to us why they are unconvincing.

The fact that Sandiford was reportedly a "familiar face" in the Bali drug scene added to the fact she was caught with 5kgs of cocaine with a street value of $2.5 million demonstrate she was a player of some consequence.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I don't for a moment think Sandiford was the naive innocent she claimed.
Nor , it seems, do the local polis.
I do wonder why anyone would smuggle smallish quantities of anything in by plane to an island. Same applies here in the UK. Our coastline is so long that a yacht or shallow draught vessel can put in almost anywhere.
I suspect anyone smuggling anything by civil airliner is "small scale" in the sense of competing with operations that ship by the containerload, merely paying off customs officials and police.