What are the cages for?

-Justice? This is the easy answer. It's what everyone says. But what does it mean? It is ill-defined. In my opinion, the proper definition of justice is in atonement, but when I hear the word said, it usually sounds to me like they are talking about revenge. "I just want to see justice done!" I don't think justice is something that we should want to see done. Yes, it must be done and we know it. But it should at least make us a bit sad to SEE it done.

-Atonement? They are in there to be punished. But what does that mean? I think the clearest way to understand this is to say that when a wrong is done, it must be somehow made up for. Things must be set right. Can a person ever atone for one of our great felonies like murder or rape? Does being executed a person in any way make up for what they did? It doesn't undo the wrong. I hope this isn't the goal, because it is an unattainable one. God is equipped to handle this issue, but men are not.

-Rehabilitation? We say that our parents punished us when we did wrong as children, but we don't really mean atonement. What they were trying to do was rehabilitate us. (At least ideally. Some parents do it for revenge.) There are programs out there that work, but if this is our goal we have done very poorly on the whole. It often seems like few prisons give it an honest effort, but it is worse than that. Society outside is rigged against rehabilitation too. We are often unwilling to forgive and disinterested in redemption. But if it were our goal (and it is a worthy one, where possible), we could DEFINITELY do this better. It should be obvious, though, that execution cannot serve this goal.

-Revenge? An alarming number of victims or victim's families act as if (or even openly state that) they believe the convict is caged or killed on their behalf because of their great need to see the person who hurt them hurt. To bring them that greatly craved thing called "closure". Execution is much better at meeting this goal, but I judge state sponsored revenge to be an unworthy goal.

-Deterrence? It seems logical that having a hardworking justice system in place would prevent crime. People fear what they have to lose for breaking the law. This is a very worthy goal. I would much prefer that crime was prevented rather than punished. It is very difficult to guage our success in this goal, though. How does one form an experiment with a valid control and variable? There are studies that show that execution is a deterrent and there are studies that show it is not. This is the only issue that gives me pause. If executing a guilty prisoner is going to prevent another person from killing an innocent victim, that makes a compelling pragmatic argument for execution. The the success of deterrence does not seem to be certain.

-Protection of the Public? Honestly, I assume that this is our goal. If for no other reason because it is the only one that we are particularly good at. Though there are occasional accidents, I believe we are good enough at this that it isn't necessary to execute for this purpose.