Abolish The Death Penalty Analysis

In the article “Abolish the Death Penalty” written by Bill Ryan the chairman of the Death Penalty Moratorium Project presents a solution. He thinks of the death penalty as “horribly expensive, ineffective, and inefficient” (Ryan). Ryan first starts off with a cause and effect moment then continuous to state the problem and his solution. He uses certain words, statistics, and questions to entreaty the readers in order to make them be understanding towards his explanation.

Ryan’s structure first uses the cause and effect format, the cause would be having the death penalty and the effect are the results of having one. He starts off by stating a few facts about how expensive (800 million$) it is to send men and women to death row, this is the

The reform people have thought of is to narrow the range of offenses that qualify for a sentence of death. He uses the words “This looks promising at first” already insinuating it will not work because of the changing arbitrary there is when sentencing someone. He makes a comparison of people in death row and the prisoners in the general prison population being equal, only difference is one is placed on death row, spending taxpayer money and the other is waiting to die in prison with no help from taxpayers money, so basically a certain death row but for free. He expresses that the death row is for people who deem it to be necessary in order to promote social vengeance. This can make a reader feel like they are buying into societal norms, and that it is not okay with humans doing such thing since it is not always right. Ryan then explains how the death penalty is not fair to everyone, murderer that some get sentenced to death row and some do not. He questions if this penalty is really meant for closure he states “Some advocate the death penalty as necessary to provide needed closure to surviving family members who have experienced the unspeakable horror of having a loved family member murdered” (Ryan) Closure is something that is to given to every family as he explains, that many murders are not sentenced to death

He brings up how our neighboring states have death penalty and they, “get along quite well without killing their citizens”. This statement persuades us to think like him how we too can achieve such qualities. How we do not have to be hypocrites by limiting instead of advancing in our human rights. His solution is for us, to invest this money in other places. Instead of feeding the money into a killing system, we should give it to families who need effective counseling and support for victims’ families. Ryan is providing different resources that need more funding, and that we the people should help those who need the help because they were only victims instead of spending it on a system that clearly is not function all too