Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Periodic Horror

Taking reality tv a bit far here people...

Bangladeshi television has decided it will not air a series of zippy, fun profiles of the country's most famous hangman.

They say that the government has ordered the three-part show off air because it could frighten children.
The hangman, who has hanged nine people in his 21 years in prison, has requested anonymity.
But he told the BBC that the programmes on the private channel, Banglavision, were mainly about his lifestyle.

Yeah, that sounds tasteful.

More alarming however, is this:

The hangman started working as an executioner seven years ago and was trained for the job while serving a 30-year murder sentence - passed down when he was aged only 16 - for murder.
He was released early in August after getting 18 months' time off for working as a hangman.
 Bangladesh has executed 411 people since the country gained independence in 1971. All hangmen are prisoners or former convicts who have trained in jail for the job.
The unnamed hangman told the BBC that he carried out the hangings to reduce his time in jail.
"Although I did not like to hang anyone in the gallows, I did it to decrease the span of my jail term. For each hanging, I got two months' exemption from my 30-year jail term," he said.

Outside of the pretty profound moral consequences of providing prisoners incentive to be executioners let's consider the utter craziness of this: A convicted murderer is getting time off his sentence by doing what now? Killing folks.

I can't wrap my mind around how this could be considered a good idea on any level.

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