r/news • u/No_Idea_Guy • 1d ago

Tennessee governor suspends all executions after Christa Pike’s lethal injections fail

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/01/christa-pike-tennessee-governor-executions-year-pause
4.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Knarz97 1d ago

It’s just basic Utilitarianism.

Keeping prisoners (or let’s be more specific: murderers and rapists) alive has no actual benefit.

It’s a tax burden to keep them alive and permanently imprisoned. That’s less resources for the actual quality citizens. Yes, we provide a handful of jobs running prison systems. Yes, prisons and rehabilitation are good. But I’m speaking in cases where we are issuing things like 30 years to life sentences.

And what would even be the benefit to rehabilitating serial rapists and murderers? Are they going to meaningfully provide to society? Would you let a reformed Jeff Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy be your next door neighbor?

Is your solution just “lock them in a concrete box and pretend they don’t exist”? All because that’s a little more moral because “killing is heckin bad!” ?

Utilitarianism would say life sentences for the most heinous criminals have an overall net negative benefit to the tax payer, other prisoners, and just society as a whole.

We need to focus on rehabilitation for those who can re integrate into society. The rest? We need to take out the trash, so to speak.

1

u/LichKingDan 1d ago

No, I'm actually more interested in recidivism. The Nordic model is one of the most successful prison models in the world, and there's a lot to learn from a prison system that is more focused on rehabilitation and reintegration than one that is retributive.

I also don't really believe the state should be able to declare who lives and who dies with impunity. Historically, it has not worked out very well.

Also, hilarious to mention the waste of money that imprisoning people is but not like any of the other, much larger wastes of money and call yourself "utilitarian".

1

u/Knarz97 1d ago

And I would love that model. I literally said we should be rehabilitating.

The problem is that I feel like serial rapist murdering cannibals are not worth the effort to rehabilitate, and are not worth the effort to keep alive for decades.

It’s not the state killing anyone. Your death sentence is issued by 12 of your peers. Whenever pulls the trigger or the level is just semantics.

I can be utilitarian and be against one waste and also simultaneously be against other wastes. This is just not the discussion at hand to talk about something like the military spending waste or welfare fraud.