Article February 3, 2003 Issue

Where are all these executed criminals GOING?

By Tom Black

MOST OF THE DEBATE about the death penalty centers on what impact it has on society—does it deter crime, is it just punishment, is it ever used on innocent people? These questions are important. What I'd like to put forth is a question that may get the conversation going in a different direction: Where are all these executed criminals going?

I ask myself: What if we don't just evaporate into oblivion when we die?

Different cultures and theologies have widely differing answers to this question. But let's say there is a "somewhere else." Is that place now inhabited by executed criminals who paid their debt to society but didn't quite have the chance to reform?