Death Sentence Gladiators

This posting is based off a fanciful and satirical conversation I had with one of my patients today. Be aware that I am not advocating this. Gladiator games are reprehensible to the core. Still it was a fun conversation. Here’s the gist of it.

Why not have all death row inmates fight each other to the death in the fashion of the old Roman gladiators?

Think about it.

If justice were fully meted out to the worst members of our society, the murderers, rapists, child molesters, terrorists, and drug dealers would all be sentenced to die for their crimes. So rather than let them suck up millions of dollars while they fight the system they could make the prison system billions of dollars by fighting each other to the death. As long as the condemned man or woman keeps winning he or she will live. Losing is death, and that means the sentence has been carried out.

How would this make billions? Pay-per-view of course! No less than 60,000,000 people would tune in for $40 each on pay-per-view for every fight. Yes, there are least this many people who would love to see the degenerates kill each other off, probably far more with a worldwide audience. That means that each fight would rake in at least $2,400,000,000. Just a few fights each year would pay for the entire prison system with money left over. This makes good financial sense. Each condemned person would actually make the government money rather than wasting millions. This doesn’t even count gambling revenue, which gets taxed.

Not ever fight would be fair. Terrorists are a mixed bunch and would be the wildcards. Child molesters are generally weak, hence their preying on the most helpless members of our society. They wouldn’t stand a chance against a hardened murderer or drug dealer. Rapists would most likely beat child molesters, though they are also people who prey on those who are weaker than them, but would be less likely to survive a fight with a murderer or drug dealer. Drug dealers would generally stand the best chance against murderers, especially against the sneaky ones. However, the most dominant gladiators are likely to be the most brutal, most psychotic murderers. People like Tookie Williams in his younger days.

Who wouldn’t have loved to see Tookie Williams chop Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmler into pieces? How about watching Ted Bundy slaughter a few child molesters?

Justitainment is what this would be. It is the People’s Court taken its greatest extreme.

Being serious for a moment I must point out a few things.

Such a system would make heroes of the worst dregs of our society. Young children would grow up wanting to emulate their favorite depraved killers, I mean gladiators. It would cheapen life in general. It would harden the population to violence and make us a more violence prone people as a whole by glorifying real slaughter. It would also open up the prison system to corruption of Running Man proportions where the guys running the gladiator program would be tempted to frame up non-death penalty criminals for murders in prison and make them fight to the death. This would be a very bad thing to do.

Still . . .