Death Penalty Essays (1764 words) - Penology, Capital Punishment

Death Penalty There are four main reasons for punishment: rehabilitation (to return someone to a former status), reformation (to re-form or re-create an individual), deterrence (to deter others or to deter the person punished), and retribution (an eye for an eye). The death penalty is a punishment to a person in which the person is put to death for a very serious crime they have committed, usually when they take another person's life. Our state and federal legislators have created laws that specifically identify which crimes a person commits that can be punishable by the death penalty. The death penalty is seen as a deterrent to increasing and more serious crime. If members of the society know that if they commit serious crimes they could be put to death for it, they are less likely to commit these crimes. However, there is great disagreement in our society about whether it is a true deterrent to crime or not. When I think of the thousands of inhabitants of Death Rows in the prisons in this country...my reaction is: "What's taking us so long? Let's get that electrical current flowing. Drop those pebbles now!" Whenever I argue this with friends who have opposite views, they say that I don't have enough regard for the most marvelous of miracles - human life. Just the opposite: It's because I have so much regard for human life that I favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and society. It says...that we don't value the victim's life enough to punish the killer fully. Many abolition supporters quote, "the death penalty is not a deterrent." Many abolitionist also add there is NO deterrent for a murderer (there will always be a few individuals that are up for a challenge no matter what the consequences are for their crimes in my opinion). Since jail is neither a deterrent in essence, according to those that wish to abolish the death penalty, how long before "jail time" for murderers would be their next punishment to target for removal from our books. One argument states that the death penalty does not deter murder. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be any more effective in the deterrence of crime. Others say that states which do have the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that don't, that a more severe punishment only inspires more severe crimes. I must point out that every state in the union is different. These differences include the populations, number of cities, and yes, the crime rates. Strongly urbanized states are more likely to have higher crime rates than states that are more rural, such as those that lack capital punishment. The states that have capital punishment have it because of their high crime rate, not the other way around. Abolitionists claim that there are alternatives to the death penalty. They say that life in prison without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore all the murders criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and other inmates, and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape, like Dawud Mu'Min who was serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped a road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988 robbery that netted $4.00. Fortunately, there is now no chance of Mu'Min committing murder again. He was executed by the state of Virginia on November 14, 1997. Another flaw is that life imprisonment tends to deteriorate with the passing of time. Take the Moore case in New York State for example. In 1962, James Moore raped and strangled 14-year-old Pamela Moss. Her parents decided to spare Moore the death penalty on the condition that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Later on, thanks to a change in sentencing laws in 1982, James Moore is eligible for parole every two years! If Pamela's parents knew that they couldn't trust the state, Moore could have been executed long ago and they could have put the whole horrible incident behind them forever. Instead they have a nightmare to deal with biannually. I'll bet not a day goes by that they don't kick themselves for being foolish enough to trust the liberal sham that is life imprisonment and rehabilitation. (According to the US Department of Justice, the average prison sentence