Fighting Against The Death Penalty

10 Pages 2452 Words

e threat of executions deters capital crimes more effectively than imprisonment. This claim is believable, but the facts do not support it. The death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons. 1. Any punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions. 2. People who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence either premeditate them or they kill on an emotional jolt of adrenaline. If the crime is premeditated, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not deter those who expect to escape detection and arrest. If the crime is not premeditated, then it is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent it. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been impaired. 3. If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then long term imprisonment is severe enough to cause any rational person not to commit violent crimes. The vast abundance of evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in preventing murder, and that it may even be an encouragement to criminal violence in certain case. It must, of course, be accepted that inflicting the death penalty guarantees that the condemned person will commit no further crimes. This is an incapacitate, not a deterrent, effect of executions. Furthermore, it is too high a price to pay when studies show that very few convicted murderers ever commit another crime of violence (“Death Penalty in America” p. 4). A recent study examined the prison and post-release records of 533 prisoners on death row in 1972 whose sentences were reduced to life by the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman. The research showed that 6 had committed another murder. B...