July 01, 2008
Crime Doesn't Pay but Education Does
On ethics in the news I blog about Education and the Fairness of Capital Punishment - a small neural network study has shown that it is possible to predict who on death row who will be executed based on non-crime factors, such as education. Yet another problem for the supporters of capital punishment and more evidence that education (or a high g) pays off.
It seems that most ways of fixing it doesn't preserve fairness or due process: executing everybody within a set time would be fair within the set of condemned but lead to more wrongful executions which are unfair to all of society. Giving assistance to the least able condemned to do their appeals would likely cause more subtle unfairness depending on ability to make use of this assistance, and so on. I guess a pro-capital punishment person could simply regard the small unfairness of some convicts being able to get a better deal is simply worth it.
But while the unfairness of the educated convicts surviving better may have people talking, most ignore the even larger unfairness that males are executed over females. Here is an inequality that is apparently regarded as acceptable for no good reason.
Posted by Anders3 at July 1, 2008 03:11 AM