Fair warning, get ready, this is gonna be a long one.
I'll start by saying I believe in the strongest of terms that it is wrong to mistreat prisoners. Or subject them to cruel or unusual punishment. As well as being unconstitutional.
Soo, doing nothing about prison rape? Thatts wrong and can't be condoned.
Experimenting on prisoners? Repugnant and wrong.
Torturing prisoners for any reason is as much a crime as those that put people in prison in the first place.
I think if you believe in any of those things then you don't believe in human rights. You believe in morally reprehensible acts of human evil and its disgraceful.
Which brings me to capital punishment. For the longest time I believed in it. I've never been OK with doing it in deliberately painful ways, but humanely putting people to death by injection or some other methods? In general I don't think that's morally wrong.
I do however believe that believing it is morally wrong for the state to put anyone to death is itself a moral position to take. It's not like the above acts of barbarism. It's a legitimate difference of opinion.
While I once believed in capital punishment, I have come to oppose it for 2 reasons.
1 is I have slowly felt myself becoming more sympathetic to the belief that it is wrong for the state to put anyone to death in principle. I am somewhat undecided in it.
2,and the reason I now consider myself opposed to capital punishment, is we have failed to exercise sufficient diligence in ensuring no innocent person is ever put to death. There have been far too many close calls or maybes.
Until we can change the standards of proof and the systems to ensure there is virtually no risk of the innocent being put to death, I don't think the death penalty can be considered a morally justified sentence.
I also don't believe in deterrence, I don't believe it works and I think it's been very well established that it doesn't work. Even when I've been pro death penalty, it was out of a belief that some crimes are so horrible that the action forfeits your right to continue participating in our society, even in prison. Not because I thought it deterred anyway.
I believe the justice system should be protecting society, not punishment. We should only confine people in jail when it's not safe to permit them to remain in free society.
Those are my moral and philosophical beliefs on the matter.