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The Death Penalty and Deterrence as Public Policy Every time a death penalty case arises, and the time comes for the convict, thousands of people across the nation support the punishment as well as protest the punishment. This issue does not have any proponents of a particular group. People are much split on this subject, regardless of race, background, age, gender, and other variables that distinguish individuals. The death penalty is a controversial social issue across our nation. The most severe of all sentences is the death penalty.
Death penalty has been banned in many countries throughout the world, however, in the United States, an earlier move to get rid of capital punishment has now been overturned, and more and more states implement capital punishment for serious offenses. The abolishment of the death penalty is still one of the major political and social issues. Many people support this form of punishment, while others are against practicing death penalty. Every human being has the right to live and also has the right to choose his / her future. People have the right to make decision on what they want to do. Nobody has the authority to make decisions whether a person should die.
The ideology of having capital punishment is practically inhuman. The thought of taking a persons live just because he had created a controversial crime, is just uncivilized. One has the right to live even he or she had done something that is not acceptable to our society. The debate here is that capital punishment exists as to scare society to commit crimes. It exists to put fear in the society from doing any heinous crimes. Nevertheless, does this still prevent members of society from committing crimes?
People still commit murder, rape and drug trafficking, which are considered capital crimes in certain countries. In addition, most of these people are not being forced to do so. They have choices. They do not care about the death sentence for their crimes. These are people only care about money, wealth and pleasure. Capital punishment does not deter these people in anyway, away from crimes.
Another issue that is a threat to death sentence is that it has not acted as a deterrent, and crimes like murder and rape are on an increase. So why should we still have capital punishment? Throughout the extent of time, feelings have changed from one spectrum to the other. In our recent past, people were executed for just stealing a horse. Today on the other hand, it is a totally different story. In recent times, people can commit severe crimes, and can get away with their life and occasionally their freedom.
The decision concerning the death penalty is in the hands of other people and this negatively reflects on the basic right of freedom of each individual. Several major issues cause the debate over the death penalty. The first one is deterrence, which primary purpose is to avoid in the future criminal conduct. The deterrence theory suggests that a normal and rational person would try to avoid criminal behavior due to the reason that the benefits of such a behavior will be not as important as the opportunity to caught and sentenced to a death penalty. It is believed that fear of death prevents people from illegal conduct. Most criminals would think twice before committing murder if they knew that they are risking with their own lives.
Capital punishment is a form of retributive justice. It is not meant to deter the society from committing crimes. It is a measure taken by society to give retribution to the so-called outlaws. The criminal is regarded as an individual who willingly chooses to commit a crime like murder. Therefore, he should gladly forfeit his life.
The criminal is considered a misfit in society. In the Philippines, the outraged father who rapes his own stepdaughter mercilessly was given the death sentence. He had outraged the modesty of the girl. The public had summoned the Philippines government to give the rapist the death sentence. A verdict made by the public.
Is not this a form of retributive justice? Society feels that killing convicted murderers will satisfy their needs for justice and vengeance. Society feels that certain crimes are so terrible that executing the criminal is the only reasonable response. Still is this the correct thing to do?
Many factors make capital punishment unjustifiable. A criminal condemned to capital punishment could have committed the crime unintentionally such as insanity or self-defense. Insane person is not guilty of his actions. How can death penalty be imposed on a person who does not know his own mind? In the United States mentally ill person can be sentenced to death. Sentencing a mentally disturb person to death naturally would not deter society from committing crimes.
It will make society more outraged of the law, motivating them to do more crimes. Riots will occur in protest. The community will be in chaos. In addition, some people believe that the individual criminal is not to blame entirely for the crime he commits. Society, which has not provided the right type of environment and education to cultivate him, should also be one to blame. From recent polls, most of the hard-core criminals come from backgrounds and has a tendency to come from broken families, which naturally reflects negatively on the criminals.
Therefore, society has a duty to try to reform these criminals rather than eliminating them. Society should try to accept the difference nature of certain people. Not everyone is a model citizen. Everyone has his own difficulties. To use capital punishment as deterrence in society is irrelevant here.
We should try to indulge ourselves to forgive the mistakes people make. Death sentence is not needed here as deterrence. There is also the argument whereby capital punishment is here as an answer to the overcrowded prisons problem. Capital punishment exist not as a deterrence but a measure to control overcrowding in prisons, to save cost in lodging the hardcore criminals. Is not this the same as a cold-blooded murder? Whether or not capital punishment is necessary deterrence in society is an issue that will continue to haunt us.
God has given life to humans. We should cherish the wonders given to us and in no way we should abuse our authority. Using capital punishment to deter society from doing committing crimes is unquestionable. Capital punishment should be abolished and in no way it should be accepted unless due to religious circumstances. There are other ways. What are the chances of an innocent person being executed?
It is better to prevent something discreet from happening before it happens. The fate of humankind lies at the hand of God. There are four major issues that cause the debate over the death penalty. The first one is deterrence, which primary purpose is to avoid in the future criminal conduct. The deterrence theory proposes that a normal and rational person would try to avoid criminal behavior due to the reason that the benefits of such a behavior will be not as important as the opportunity to caught and sentenced to a death penalty. It is believed that fear of death prevents people from illegal conduct.
Most criminals would think twice before murdering somebody if they knew that they are risking with their own lives. The second issue is retribution. It is the need for society to express sufficient disapproval for murderers. For many -- death penalty is the single way to express their grief and sufficiently punish criminals.
People who support capital punishment claim that the only proper response to the vilest murders should be the most sever punishment possible. It is also suggested that the use of the capital punishment in the way it is intended by law makes possible to reduce the number of brutal murders by eliminating some of the repeat offenders, which makes death penalty being used as a system of justice, not just a method of prevention. Modern supporters of death penalty no longer view this type of punishment as a deterrent, but just as a punishment for the crime, it was noted that in recent years the appeal of deterrence has been supplanted by a frank desire for what large majorities see as just vengeance. (Bailey, 1987). The third debate is arbitrariness, which is determined by arising primarily from impulse rather than from judgment or reason. The fourth issue is the risk of mistake. In the past, there have been already cases when innocent people were executed for the crimes they never committed.
This problem had increased the debate this form of punishment is suitable to use, because when the person is killed it will be not possible to change something, even if later it had been proved that this person was actually innocent. The thing about the death penalty is that it is a final and irreversible punishment. Here is the view of the person, who deals with this issue almost everyday: The system is not working. Innocent people are being sentenced to death. If these men dodged the executioner, it was only because of luck and the dedication of the attorneys, reporters, family members, and volunteers who labored to win their release. They survived despite the criminal justice system, not because of it (Moses Harrison II, Illinois Supreme Court Justice, Chicago Tribune series, Nov. 14, 1999).
One of the most principle questions of the whole legislation system of the recent days is whether death penalty is socially accepted practice, and should it not be abolished. Capital punishment is an example of one of our governments behaviors worthy of patriotic criticism. The concept of the death penalty may seem sensible and just to some, but in reality it is more comparable to an ejecting seat on a helicopter - theory and practice are gravely different. The practice of corporal punishment in the U.
S. has been so horrendously corrupted and perverted from the original theory that it has come to the point that one might wonder whether it is ever possible to instate corporal punishment without the same flaws which the rest of society suffers. In an examination of moral beliefs regarding capital punishment, the cruelty and pain endured during executions, the personal bias and unfairness in capital cases, the execution of youth and the execution of mentally ill and incompetent, it will be demonstrated that capital punishment is imposed in violation of the equal protection clause of the U. S. Constitution and undermines the fundamental fairness which is the foundation of the United States. Capital punishment is an example of one of our governments behaviors worthy of this patriotic criticism.
The concept of the death penalty may seem sensible and just to some, but in reality it is more comparable to an ejecting seat on a helicopter -- theory and practice are gravely different. The practice of corporal punishment in the U. S. has been so horrendously corrupted and perverted from the original theory that it has come to the point that one might wonder whether it is ever possible to instate corporal punishment without the same flaws which the rest of society suffers. People should always remember that the death penalty is used only in extreme cases, where other options cannot be applied. Besides, the reason rules of a person are created n the first place.
Individuals conscience is simply internal self-policing system punishing this individual for not following the laws of the land. When that internal system fails, external rules and threats of punishment are needed. However, in some cases they do not help too. Some children simply have no fear for laws, even though they definitely know what is right and what is wrong. These are lessons that are taught as we grow up. Some learn these lessons better than others.
The development of such an attitude towards the law start in small tests and the child checks whether it is possible to get away with something wrong that is about to be done. This is actually a normal process in the child development and part of learning the life. Usually, the problem starts when such a test will not be punished, but later the punishment will not be a sufficient reason to persuade the child in doing same thing again in the future. In the future, they start to operate on different level with more complex actions. This situation can be described: Who cares what I do?
I can get away with it. And if they will catch me then so what? I know what the penalty is and it does not deter me at all. This pattern of thought becomes a road to major problems. In some cases criminals know exactly that they are doing a wrong thing and they even assume that they will be caught, but they know that they will not be punished, because they are not 18 yet, the worst that can happen is spending time in jail. That is what that many think.
Unfortunately, it is children (especially at the teenage years) that are most prone to start this type of mentality. By the time most people become adults their major outlook on laws and rules has already been created and tend to stay that way barring any traumatic occurrence that forces them to reevaluate their views. The fear of death has always been a strong deterrent from doing highly immoral actions. This may be viewed as a bad example, however even organized criminals agree on this fact. In crime families the occasional murder of someone, who did not follow the rules serves as a reminder to other members of that family to obey the rules under the risk of death. In all fairness, even crime families do not use the death penalty too often.
The punishment for breaking the rules usually involved some form of physical pain or banishment in a way that would truly stick with the criminal for years to come and teach them to never double cross anyone again. For this reason having a real threat, which the death penalty is, for the crimes committed for juveniles is a beneficial thing. It is also a deterrent. It punishment options will be taken away, no matter how harsh; the peoples hands will be tied. For this reason, a lot of people believe that the death penalty should be an option for juvenile criminals, because if it is used correctly and in cooperation with other types of punishments it will be effective against deterring crime, which has been proved. Today, would-be defenders of the death penalty no longer rely, as they once did, mainly on the claim of superior deterrence.
And that is just as well. Quite apart from the difficulties just discussed in defending the death penalty on grounds of deterrence, those who rely on the principle that severe punishments are justified by their superior deterrent and incapacitate effects are implicitly invited to go further. If death deters more than imprisonment, then death preceded by torture presumably deters more than death alone. If so, on what ground is the defender of the death penalty able to resist embracing torture as well as death?
Surely, all sides agree that morality and politics require that there be some upper bound to the permissible severity of punishments no matter what their deterrent effect might be. In my opinion, it is not a humanistic way to sentence people to the death row. I think if a person had committed a number of murders, still it is not fair to take away this persons life, for the reason that life was given to a person by God and should be taken away by God only. Besides, it is much better not to execute 100 criminals and sentence them to prison for a life term than to execute single innocent person. I think that by age of 16 juveniles should understand at least what can happen with their lives (spending the rest of life in jail is not a good option) if there even was no death penalty. If one of many supporters of the death penalty would imagine being sentenced to death penalty, while being innocent, I think this would change this persons view on this issue.
The increasing effectiveness of the system and the development of criminal science give new and more complete evidences on whether a person is guilty or not, however, I think that we still are far from perfection. Nevertheless, I agree on the point that dead murderer will never commit a crime again, but I think it is more important to improve the system of justice in such a way that there would be no need for the death penalty in the future. The issues of capital punishment discussed include morality, cruelty, high financial cost, execution of youth and incompetent, inadequacy as a deterrent, classism and racism in trials, and execution of innocent... Any penalty imposed will never be perfect.
Ours is a system run by the human race, and indisputably, to be human is to make a mistake. Knowing this full well then, there is no reason to impose this ultimately flawed penalty. Out of all punishments, death is the most extensive, irreversible, and unforgivable. Bibliography: Bailey William C. and Ruth D. Peterson. 1987.
Police killings and capital punishment: The post-Furman period, 1987. Column, Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 2002 Moses Harrison II, Illinois Supreme Court Justice, writing regarding a 1998 appeal of a Death Row inmate, as quoted in Chicago Tribune series, Nov. 14, 1999
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Research essay sample on The Death Penalty And Deterrence As Public Policy
