[Buddha-l] Re: +AFs-Buddha-l+AF0- Re: Texas liberals (death penalty)

[Stephen Hodge]

Richard Hayes wrote:

>  One of my favorite pastimes is to ask my class in reasoning and critical 
> thinking
> where they think the USA ranks in these categories: 1) total number of 
> people
> in prison, 2) percentage of the population who are victims of murder and
> other violent crimes, and 3) percentage of the population who are
> victims of theft. (Try it. The answers are at the end of this message.)
The statistics you quote are worthy of atention but they would be more 
meaningful if they were also expressed as per capita numbers.

> As I'm sure you all know, the first country to abolish the death penalty
> was Venezuela in 1863.
Of course, there have been states that abolished the death penalty in 
pre-modern times but allowed it to be re-introduced subsequently.  For 
example, I believe it was abolished in Russia around the time of Catherine 
the Great.  Likewise for Japan and Tibet.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge.