What has caused Western societies to generally stray from and abolish capital punishment?

What has caused Western societies to generally stray from and abolish capital punishment?

communist plot to undermine the West

They are afraid of wrongly executing someone that doesn't deserve it.

the meme has spread through western culture that vengeance is not justice, and in fact undermines justice. And capital punishment is blatantly nothing more than a spiteful revenge killing, a government sanctioned murder of someone particularly disliked. Nothing can be learned from it, nothing can be gained. There is no positive aspect. The only argument in favor of it is a cold spartan one - that we should just kill undesirables because it's cheaper than paying for them for the rest of their lives - that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of most essentially liberal westerners.

its only advantage is cost-saving.
We prioritize other concerns.

morality and the consideration of jail as educational instead of pure punishment

Mostly due to the propaganda/cultural aspects of the Cold War. The West was supposed to be tolerant and liberal in contrast to the brutal authoritarian Soviet state it opposed.

The growth of the (((legal system))).

Due to the extensive set of appeals now guaranteed for every death penalty case, it usually costs more to execute someone in America than to just house them in prison until they die of old age.

but the soviet union abolished death penalty first on 1917 and then after the war around 1947 IIRC

This is actually a very interesting topic. Lynn Hunt in "Bone of Their Bone: Abolishing Torture" notes a steady progression toward the awareness of bodily autonomy starting in the 1400s when it became defecate in public, not wipe your nose, etc. Basically if bodies are seen as yours and not the property of God or the Lord torture soon becomes unpalatable.

Foucaut also notes that the penal ritual became focused on viewing someone as a judicial subject. Hence in modern executions we bypass the body via painkillers as if the body is incidental to the crime.

If a court system that protects the rights of the accused is a Jewish plot, can they really be that evil?

Evolution of ethics.

Modern people are more concerned about not just the welfare of people but also treatment of people.

We have the capacity to do both. It wasn't such a case in earlier times due to constrains in resources.

because it takes just 1 innocent person to be killed for the whole thing to be pointless.

It's an experimental mutation of our justice system, due to the fact that justice is not always perfect and we might kill people forever that are in reality innocent.

Some people absolutely do deserve to die, this much is 100% certain. Who would deny that a child killer deserves to keep living?
The argument that life is more punishment than death imo is laughable. This strongly implies that imprisonment is worse than death (which 9 out of 10 times it really isnt) or that the guilt will haunt the murderer. Which 9 out of 10 times wont happen either.

I think historically the abolishment of the death penalty is a direct consequence of an easier lifestyle. If you never ever met anybody that died, you think it's outrageous to kill people. If you dont have to kill your own food, death is much more outrageous.

>There is no positive aspect.

There is the threat of violence that stops crime.
If you steal, we cut off your arm. Thus to criminals. Think its still worth it?

I am not for it, but its a factor, and I think it would reduce crime if criminals caught were tortured.

If you ask me it's a combination of Enlightenment and Christian metaphysics.

Republican law was seen as a transcendent concept compared to the divine right of kings, and the Christian soul still lives in people.

It's pretty funny that even though the West is less and less Christian for every day that passes, the morality of meekness still lives on.

Perhaps they abolished it on paper, but both after 1917 and 1947, executions were carried out in the USSR. I think the Russian federation abolished capital punishment in 1994.

>I think historically the abolishment of the death penalty is a direct consequence of an easier lifestyle. If you never ever met anybody that died, you think it's outrageous to kill people. If you dont have to kill your own food, death is much more outrageous.

I think this is one of the main reason, if not the main reason. Older times were much harsher and death was always close.

>morality issues surrounding killing
>risk of an innocent being executed who could have otherwise been freed and compensated
>greater emphasis on rehabilitation in modern prisons
>concept of reparation over retribution predates Christianity in the west (most notably in the Weregild)

has that actually been the written justification for any state proscribing capitol punishment?

>If you steal, we cut off your arm. Thus to criminals. Think its still worth it?
That's not how it works.
Criminals don't go around, wondering if it's worth it to get caught and punished. They usually think they won't be caught in the first place.

except there's way less crimes that would incur capitol punishment now then there used to be, and there's also way lesser usage of capitol punishment than there used

>Criminals don't go around, wondering if it's worth it to get caught and punished.

Maybe niggers don't. Redneck methheads, truckers, bikers, spics, the Mafia, and various other organized crime groups all actually consider what criminal rackets are worth getting into based on what potential time they might be spending behind bars if they get caught. It's why (Italian) organized crime had such reservations about getting into the heroin & cocaine trades in the mid-20th century. It wasn't moral reservations, to be sure. It was because they would have no slack with law enforcement and would do serious time in prison if caught.