Madatory Medical Testing For "Unredeemable" Criminals

[Asinis]

This discussion is based upon a point i made in one of my previous threads. Its morally wrong and in violation of human rights, but would any of you be ok with this idea and how would you change it?

Persons convicted of crimes who would normally face the death sentence or the remainder of their lives spent in prison would instead be subject to a new law. Under this new law human rights would become forfeit and these "unredeemables" would become property of the state. The primary application of the use of "unredeemables" would be mandatory non-military medical testing.

What else could you add to this law?

 

[Hecatoncheires]

I'll drop my usual asshole act for a minute for this one. No, I wouldn't be okay with this sort of law and I don't think there's any way of fixing it.

The idea of an "irredeemable" criminal pre-supposes the idea that the justice system they've been tried under is full-proof, which kinda immediately kills this scheme since no such justice system exists. We're talking death penalty just now so I guess we're talking the US justice system which, from a dirty foreigner's perspective, is pretty fucking flawed at the best of times.

Take a look at The Innocence Project if you don't believe me. Since 1992 they've successfully exonerated over 325 people wrongfully convicted of crimes, 18 of which spent time on death row. Under this proposed system the vast majority of this number, despite being innocent of their accused crimes, would have been subject to what effectively amounts to medical torture. There's also an excellent TedTalk by Scott Fraser, explaining just how flawed the US justice system can be.

I guess I'm a bit too much of a postmodernist, but it seems to me that you can never say for sure whether a person is definitely guilty or not. Sure you can throw up the example of serial killers, but people have been falsely convicted and even executed for such crimes in the past as well.

So in short, this law is just as fucked as the death penalty, if not more-so.

 

[Jorick]

I'm assuming this idea comes along with some note that such prisoners are legally considered objects rather than living things, so none of those annoying medical ethics laws come into play. If that's not the case, this would end up just being a really stupid form of life in prison rather than some fantastical boon to medical testing. Most places have laws about how and when you can test medical products on humans, and that usually comes after lots and lots of testing in other ways to make sure it's probably safe. Without some "these entities don't count as people or living things anymore" clause in there, they would basically just supplement or replace standard clinical trials for medication, which is not exactly some huge pressing issue that we need bodies for. I'm going to assume that you're talking about other kinds of medical testing, like trying highly experimental medications or surgical techniques on them, and seeing how various harmful substances actually affect the human body. Y'know, the fucked up horror movie kind of medical testing.

Am I okay with people convicted for execution-worthy crimes being forced into that? Absolutely not. This is in fact worse than the death penalty. I'm totally in favor with the death penalty, but not this nonsense. Even in places where the death penalty exists, there's usually some kind of rule against torture and the like. In the United States Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment, the exact phrasing of the rule is "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Mandatory medical experimentation is both cruel and unusual by any reasonable definition.

Those sorts of anti-torture laws are damned good ones, and I support them completely. If you've decided someone is incapable of redemption, then you should kill them and be done with it. There is a huge leap between deciding that someone should be killed and that someone should be horribly tortured before eventually being killed. However, giving them a choice could be acceptable. Offer them the choice of execution or medical testing, with the caveat that at any time they may opt for the execution if they so choose, and that would be fine. Inflicting it as a mandatory punishment is, as you said, a gross violation of human rights and pretty much morally bankrupt. No thanks.

 

[Rainjay]

Honestly I'm a fan of death penalty and all that jazz. If someone murdered somebody else, they deserve death in return, depending on circumstances (self defense? That's cool. Mentally unstable person? Don't kill them. Asshole that really hated his wife for not loving him? Die) but the problem is that we have little way of knowing for sure who the murderer is/was, or what their intent was, or what caused them to do it. Innocent people get convicted and that's horrible. Or someone acting in self defense gets convicted because nobody believed them. Which is why as a whole I'd rather keep the death penalty out of things. Same goes for this. As others have said, this is cruel and unusual and horrible. I mean if you're some how 100% sure that some guy killed 500 people and you're totally sure that he would do it again given the chance, go ahead and do whatever you want to him, I guess. But that's probably one of the number one ways to destroy your own humanity, too.

 

[Dervish]

As usual, @Jorick beat me to the punch.

To put it in short form from my perspective, forcing medical experimentation on death row inmates is cruel and inhumane torture that is not befitting of a civilized nation. If it were voluntary and at the stage where human trials were permitted, I'd have no problem with it, especially if the inmate's consent was given. It would possibly be an incentive to reduce a sentence for opting into a clinical study. You could even make the argument an inmate would be ideal for a long-term study because they have no other obligations.

But the Nazi-like forcibly injecting unwilling prisoners with something to see what happens? Pretty barbaric. We're supposed to be better as a society than the people we lock up.