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Capital Punishment Without Parole Essay

1937 Words8 Pages

Capital Punishment:
Abolition and Implementation of Life Imprisonment without Parole as Alternative

Introduction As a means of punishment, we denounce the assault of those who have assaulted their compatriots. We condemn the torture of those who have tortured their fellow beings. We completely disavow the rape of those who have raped individuals weaker than them. Then, why is it that we condone the murder of those who have murdered? Capital punishment, also known as death penalty, is the court-ordered execution of a criminal offender who committed a capital crime such as murder. “The infliction of death for the purpose of retribution has been a facet of human existence since earliest times,” according to Henderson (2006, p. 5). It has even …show more content…

What exactly does it mean to deter a crime? Deterrence refers to how individuals of a community may be dissuaded by the punishment strategies of a particular society for delinquent and harmful actions (Henderson, 2006, p.14). Most proponents of capital punishment cite deterrence as the main reason against eradicating the penalty. They might even mention econometrician research dating back to the 1970s, conducted by Isaac Ehrlich and one of his students, Stephen Layson, which somehow show that capital punishment has a conspicuously deterrent effect on crime rates. As mentioned by Bedau and Cassell (2004), the research pioneered by Ehrlich and continued by Layson has often been discredited and publicly criticized in print media (p. 38). Therefore, barring this invalid study, no research, to date, has managed to yield findings of the death penalty having more of a deterrent effect than life imprisonment. This fact has also been corroborated by Amnesty International in their report Death Sentences and Executions 2014, where they claim that, “there is no evidence that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect on crime than terms of imprisonment” (Lancet, 2015, p. 1262). This is due to the fact that many variables out of our control may as well be responsible for the fluctuations in crime rates. However, as many abolitionists emphasize, deterrence is best achieved by the assurance of retribution rather than the harshness of the penalty (Henderson, 2006, p. 15). Fear incited by the capital punishment is reduced by the time lag between conviction and administration of punishment, in addition to the fact that most executions take place behind closed doors, as mentioned in Henderson (2006, p. 15). Furthermore, as per the views of Borg and Radelet (2000), those who commit crimes do

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