Capital punishment

Capital punishment

The acceptance of capital punishment, or the death penalty, as a sentence for heinous criminal acts has been hotly debated across the nation over the last few decades. Thirty-eight states currently have death penalty statutes on the books. In a few states, the statute remains on the books though it has been declared unconstitutional. In some of these cases, the state legislature can either revise or rewrite the death penalty statute if it chooses to make it the law. Impose the death penalty or not is a very serious issue, let's look at arguments for and against.

Arguments for the death penalty:

1. Capital punishment permanently removes the worst criminals from society and should prove much safer for the rest of us than long term or permanent incarceration.
2. Money is limited resource and the government may very well better spend our resources on the old, the young and the sick etc., rather than on the long term imprisonment of murderers, rapists, etc.
3. Capital punishment is a kind of retribution, something like “an eye for an eye”. The murderers attains the same fate as their victims.
4. Such type of punishment should affect on the other criminals and should make them think about what awaits them, if they will commit crimes. The death penalty is much more likely to be a deterrent where the crime requires planning and the potential criminal has time to think about the possible consequences. But if the crime is committed in the heat of the moment there is no likelihood that any punishment will act as a deterrent.

Arguments against the death penalty:

There are a number of incontrovertible arguments against the death penalty.

The most important one is that fact that genuinely innocent people could be executed and that there is no possible way of compensating them for this miscarriage of justice. Especially this applies to Russia, I mean corruption. People's lives will be even more dependent on money and connections

The second argument is humanity. It must be remembered that criminals are real people too who have life and with it the capacity to feel pain, fear and the loss of their loved ones, and all the other emotions that the rest of us are capable of feeling. Some of the crimes may be unconscious due to age or other factors. Perhaps, after spending time in prison, criminals will be able to change themselves.

Also, I think that death is easy punishment for murder, much worse is to spend all your life in prison, than to die and not feel guilt for the committed.

As for me, I can't definitely say that I'm for or against the death penalty. I think, I'm more inclined to the second one, because we all have to be human. In any case, In any case, don't lead everything to the extreme and think before committing a crime.