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Capital Punishment Deterrence

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Capital punishment or better known as the death penalty is an ancient common practice that used to be implemented by many nations to punish people from the crimes they had committed by taking away their lives. As the years progress, the UN adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights In 1948, it stated “the Declaration proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life. It states that no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death penalty violates both of these fundamental rights.”(Amnesty
International). According to Carsten Anckar in his article “why countries choose the death penalty?” the abolitionist movement did not have much force until many international treaties were drafted in …show more content…

Out of the 58, China, Iran, Iraq, and
United States have the highest execution rates. Does death penalty serve as an effective deterrence tool for crime? Why so many nations prefer to abolished it? Is it better for death penalty to be completely abolished? The positive and negative aspects of death penalty will be discuss to estimate the effectiveness of the practice.
Many nations in favor of death penalty would argue that death penalty is an effective deterrence tool. Deterrence uses punishment to stop an offender from committing crime again.
Deterrence can be divided into two categories: general and specific. General deterrence refers to punish a person to serve as an example to inflict fear to others and stop them from committing a future transgression, while specific is to stop one individual from reoffending. Death penalty would fit under general and specific deterrence. Those in favor believe that death penalty is the best way to protect society of the most dangerous criminals, “Imposing a severe punishment allows society to express moral outrage at the offender’s breach and simultaneously helps reinforce a shared sense of commitment to the violated norm.” (Acker, 2003, pg. 173). How …show more content…

It was found that the United States prison population increases for the 6 crimes and the drug offenses had the most increase from 1980-2001. (2011, pg. 85).
Also incarceration data recorded worldwide from years 1992 to 2009 of 8 countries including the
U.S except for two had demonstrated to have an increase in prison population, “U.S and Russia , far exceeded all the other nations with rates of 723 per hundred thousand for the U.S…”(2011, pg. 87). The United States has the highest number of prison population worldwide, having more than China, which has the largest population in the world. The prison populations in the united stated had drastically increase in a short period of time. It may have to do with the broken windows policy put in place around that time that targeted minorities. Anyways the prison population should had lower by now. Is the death penalty doing an effective job deterring people from committing crime? Also there have been some studies to find out if death penalty really deters people from committing crime. In the article “Deterrence and the death penalty. Why the statistics should be ignored”, Daniel Nagin discusses how many statistics showing that death penalty works as a deterrence disregard many important aspects in how to calculate

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The death penalty on the other hand would have been effective if the overall public minded to consider it a system for ending criminal acts. While a monstrous number would ensure the nonattendance of the death penalty in their real system, the wrongdoing rate continues going higher for countries that still practice the death penalty. Regardless, there is lacking accurate data to exhibit that death penalty has been convincing similarly as maintaining a strategic distance from criminal acts. It infers

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While many opponents argue the economics of the issue, they fail to acknowledge that the main goals of punishment are to correct behavior that is deviant from the law and to prevent similar incidences from occurring. Without capital punishment, the culprits would not have to confront the potential of death, meaning that the marginal cost of violent crime would be diminished. Therefore, capital punishment is an effective method to deter

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I believe sentencing individuals to prison is only good for punishing and taking away their freedom. In my opinion, prison does not rehabilitate individuals, but makes offenders more likely to reoffend. In addition, the deterrence purpose of sentencing only works in theory with little use in reality. In theory, deterrence works in preventing rational from committing crime because they understand there will be punishments when they are caught. A rational person would think about the possible punishments before they commit any crime, however, individuals that commit crime in the real world are irrational.

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Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, and the debate about its abolition is the largest point of the essay written by Steve Earle, titled "A Death in Texas”. This form of punishment should be abolished for 3 reasons; First, It does not seem to have a direct effect on deterring murder rates, It has negative effects on society, and is inconsistent with American ideals. To begin, the death penalty is unnecessary since it is ineffective at deterring rates of murder. In fact, 88% of the country's top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. In opposition, supporters may argue that it may indeed help to deter murder rates as they have

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These theories as discussed in Danielle Rudes’ lecture on Correctional Theories (2016) includes Retribution, Deterrence, Incapacitation, restorative justice, rehabilitation, and early intervention. The death sentence is known to use a couple of these theories, mainly retribution, deterrence, or incapacitation. When executing a criminal, the goal is to serve justice for the people the criminal wronged which would be considered as retribution. The criminal justice system would also execute criminals to deter others from committing similar acts but from what was learned in Rudes’ Punishment and corrections lectures it is hardly effective. The death sentence can be considered incapacitation of the offender as discussed in Rudes’ lecture as they would be stopped from committing another crime and would be no longer a threat to and will be out of society, albeit permanently as he or she would be executed rather than spend time locked up in prison.

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Deterrence is future oriented to prevent crimes. Deterrence has two types general and specific. General is an individual punishment to dissuade others from committing crimes and specific is an individual being punished for additional

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Sentencing is the act of imposing lawfully-approved sanctions against a person or persons convicted of a criminal act. The are several goals to sentencing but this paper will focus on the goal of deterrence. Deterrence is used to discourage or prevent crimes from being committed. This discouragement comes in two forms: specific deterrence and general deterrence. Specific deterrence is aimed strictly at an individual already convicted of a crime and is used to deter that individual from committing future criminal acts.

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9. Punishment is the foundation of the deterrence theory (Smith, 2009: Lucker and Osti, 2001: Smith & Travis,

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The death penalty as the book calls it, is a “socialization process” where individuals grow up learning the consequences and remain inherently good, rather than, having to weigh the pros and cons of a situation. Statistics show that there is no measurable correlation between murder and the death penalty. Statistics can always be skewed In that other factors

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Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 87(1), 1. doi:10.2307/1143970 This article was written by Michael L. Radelet and Ronald L. Akers. They both consulted experts on criminology and criminal behaviour to evaluate the effectiveness of the Death Penalty.

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From the beginning of the foundation of America, men have tried to figure out the correct way to deal with law-opposing criminals. From crucifixion and slavery, to death by firing squad and life sentences, the world has utilized different forms of discipline. The death penalty has formed into the most questionable form of punishment, drawing the most attention from the public eye. This sanction is used to punish criminals for committing the most heinous crimes and offenses. The crimes that obtain the death penalty mostly consist of murder which include murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire, drug-related drive by shooting, and genocide.

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The death penalty is a punishment of execution, given to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. The death penalty laws were established in the 18th century B.C when king Hammaurabi of Babylon instituted the law for 25 different crimes. In Jewish history the death penalty could only be given after trail by the Sanhedrin, which was composed of twenty-three judges. There were four different ways the death penalty was imposed on an individual, these were burning, stoning, strangling and slaying (Talmud). In today’s society most countries have abolished the death penalty due to various reasons such as unfair justice, but others still have it in place, for example some states in The United States of America.

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General and Specific deterrence have good and bad effects on citizens. It prevents crime and some cases and fuels the rage in some. General deterrence focuses on preventing the crime before it happens. The thought of spending life in prison for committing a murder is very scary to me. You would think that could deter criminals from committing that crime.

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First, I will write about the violation of the human rights. Death penalty is a violation on the most basic human right. It violates that every human being has the right to freedom and life, article 3 in the united nation declaration of the human rights. Humanity

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There is a worldwide trend in the use of penal imprisonment for serious offenses as capital punishment has been renounced by an increasing number of countries. Harsh punishments include capital punishment, life imprisonment and long-term incarceration. These forms of punishments are usually used against serious crimes that are seen as unethical, such as murder, assault and robbery. Many people believe that harsher punishments are more effective as they deter would-be criminals and ensure justice is served. Opposition towards harsh punishments have argued that harsher punishments does not necessarily increase effectiveness because they do not have a deterrent effect, do not decrease recidivism rates and do not provide rehabilitation.

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