I'll have to restructure my idea then. Worse punishments would only work if applied on a very large scale, for everything from small to large offenses. The poor and the underclass in every society does not engage in rampant crime.
And we already live in a country where the federal government kills its own citizens. We live in a country where you are about one thousand times more likely to be killed by a fellow American. A grand total of 4,661 executions occurred in the U.S. in the period 1930 to 2002 with about two-thirds of the executions occurring in the first 20 years.
On the same hand, America's homicide rate stands at 12.0 per 100,000, or 2500 murders a year. Assuming a rate of 10.0 per 100k since 1930 and a population of 75 million graduating to 250 million by 2004, anywhere from one to two million people have been murdered in the US since 1930. So 1000000/4661, or as Mclean would say, alot by a little, means that you are 200 times more likely to be killed by your mailman than the US govt. And of those killed by the US govt., a vast majority have killed themselves. Even assuming a Govt. failure rate of 25 percent, which is fucking huge, 3/4 of those killed by the government were guilty of murder.
The government death sentence is among the less likely causes of death that exist. In fact, deer kill more people.
