Should the death penalty/ capital punishment be a thing? The death penalty should not be legal, because it has no place in today 's society. The death penalty has been around since at least the eighteenth century B.C. Now the U.S. still has the death penalty in 31 out of the 50 states. While some may say it seems barbaric to still have a death penalty, the U.S. says it 's used as a crime deterrent. While the thought of death may be a deterrent, it 's typically not thought about during the forbidden actions, meaning that its actually not barbaric enough.
The death penalty is ineffective, because its main purposes are to give some consolation to the victim 's family, and to be a crime deterrent. The main problem with this is that it doesn 't work at all as a crime deterrent. According to “Study: 88% of criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent” in 2008 88.2% of criminologists surveyed did not believe that the death penalty is effective. This is technically proven since states with a death penalty have a higher murder rate then ones without one. Executions might have worked as a deterrent when people were hung publicly, had their heads removed, shot down by firing squad, and even when done using the electric chair. The big problem with all of these is also what made them genuinely effective, the brutality. Now we administer a humane drug cocktail. Nobody cares, sure most people don 't want to die, but most people on death row actually do, because