It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree....I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.
Interpretation
The quote questions the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime, suggesting it serves only as a tool for revenge.
In this quote, Albert Pierrepoint reflects on his experience as an executioner, stating that he does not believe that the executions he carried out have contributed to preventing future murders. Instead, he argues that capital punishment merely satisfies the desire for revenge rather than promoting justice or deterring crime.
In practice
In a debate about the morality of capital punishment, this quote can highlight the argument against its effectiveness.
I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.
And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.
She - philosophy is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally harms the young and old.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony
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