Since ancient times the legal thought regarded the concept of death penalty as a measure necessary to protect fundamental values of the society. Along with the development of a state, state judicial system and regulations were developed as well, creating a two-fold purpose of the criminal law: punishment of a criminal and intimidation of population in order to prevent further possible crime commitment. These two initial positions are still present in the criminal law today and constitute the eternal debate around the topic of “for and against death penalty”. In this essay, I would like to briefly describe the two current positions along with the arguments and afterwards express my own opinion in that matter.
By the modern times, two main theories were formed in relation to death penalty, the first one being the Deterrence Theory (Utilitarian justification) and the second one being the Retribution Theory (Kantian
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The proponents of the Deterrence theory tend to think that death penalty is a lot more humane than life imprisonment. In my view, death penalty can be regarded as less severe when compared to life sentence, because the isolation of the offender is much stronger punishment for him or her than death, since prison in itself can be considered as hell.
Furthermore, there is always a possibility of a miscarriage of justice. Alongside with that, the fact of execution of an innocent person by the state has such a grand-scale negative impact on the society, and that in my opinion, means even more than the fact of the crime itself
Besides, the economic reasons can be argued having in mind, the words of Voltaire “Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson” (Voltaire,