Death penalty for rapists?

[Aractus]

I am certain that everyone here has noticed the recent events in India, where a young student died last night, who was brutaly gang raped and beaten by 6 men with iron rods before.

This crime sparked widespread protest in India, where a woman is raped almoust every 20 minutes and authorities long didn`t seem to care much.

Some of the protester call for mandetory death penalty for rapists. And following the story I have noticed that in alot of comments various people from different national backgrounds also demand the death penalty to be interduced in their country.

Personaly I think that in tragic events emotional reactions and the political demands coming from such can ofter be irrational.
Whilest finding the situation for women in India horrible, I do not believe that the death penalty would be a solution to the problem, since the main cause of the problem was that the laws in place were oftern not inforced.

Your thoughts?

There are plenty of people who rape and pillage and get away with it in the not-so literal sense, but still in a very real and quantifiable way. It is so much easier to punish blue-collar crime than white, as if it is worse than the other when often it isn't any worse.

Although the crime sounds bad when SIX people are involved, is it any better when one person alone rapes and murders their victim?

In various parts of the world, forgiveness has been trialled as retribution for the crime, in various ways, and with various levels of success. Retribution is supposed to consist of penalty AND rehabilitation. Rotting in gaols for finite times is fine for penalty, but often neglects rehabilitation. There is only so much that can be done, but there is also so much that is often not done at all. Is it better to have a productive member of society that has been rehabilitated, or someone gaoled indefinitely at the cost to the taxpayer of around $500/day (I think it may even be more than that, and of course I'm talking about Canberra's gaol the "A.M.C.").