Utilitarianist View On Capital Punishment

The use of capital is acceptable only in the most severe cases, but should still have a place within our society nonetheless. This in comparison to the opinion stated by my group in class, that capital punishment should be entirely abolished due to the mistakes that can be made. This referring to the incidental killing of an innocent person wrongly convicted. Members of my group used a utilitarianist point of view to argue their cases, which contained flaws. This paper will approach the topic of capital punishment looking at the society as a whole. Then looking at the views of Kant and …… to determine the appropriateness of the death penalty in society.

Although mistakes can be made, capital punishment is still a needed (be it sparingly)

While in class may groups discussed abolishing the death penalty entirely due to the recurring mistakes that are made during convention process. These groups classified the value being put in jeopardy as an individual's right to life, which goes against a utilitarianist view. A common argument relied on a utilitarianist view, with the thought that a life in prison instead of the death penalty would increase the overall happiness of society. I tend to disagree with the totality of this argument. Instead of doing away with this punishment altogether, society needs to practice it less frequently and give more resources to the judicial system. My justification for this argument is that in keeping the death penalty minimally intact, society will function better due to its trust in the government. This is clearly seen by Fyodor Dostoevsky on Justice and Forgiveness. In the story Ivan touches on the subject of justice in pertaining to a murdered child's case. At one point Ivan, utterly distraught exclaims “I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself.”(Dostoevsky) A word that is heavily relied on within Dostoevsky’s piece is justice, something