Imagine that Zoe’s brother had been sentenced to the death penalty. She knows her brother is innocent and visits him before the execution. The prison smells of dead rodents and faintly of the toxic injection that will eventually find its way into each nail-biting prisoner. The brother cries and laces his cold fingers with Zoe through the cell bars. Zoe cries salty tears and listens to the clatter and moans of prisoners. The dirty halls go silent when the guards wearing slate-blue uniforms walk in. They pull Zoe away from the cell and take her brother into the execution chamber. Zoe is outraged by the process and wants revenge on the people who killed her innocent brother. People think that her thirst for revenge is immoral. “How is revenge on the criminals sought by the …show more content…
Rather than being sentenced to the death penalty, more criminals should be sent to reformatories because reformatories build criminals up instead of tearing them down, capital punishment is strongly opposed by the religion and values of many people, and the process of applying the death penalty is often racist and contains several fatal mistakes. First, more criminals should be sent to reformatories instead of being executed because reformatories help criminals become better people. Reformatories can keep criminals from doing more crimes when their sentence is over and can turn their life around by keeping them positive. For example, Dwayne Betts’s description of Austin Reed, the author of a book comparing prison and slavery, explains how powerful prison is and how it can affect the rest of a prisoner’s life. Austin Reed was held in the first juvenile reformatory in the United States, the House of Refuge, wrote a book after being released from prison (Dwayne Betts, 2016). Reed was held in a reformatory and that experience allowed him to write a powerful book while most people commit even more crimes after their experience in prison.