Another issue is that you can nearly never be sure whether the victim is innocent. How could you live with yourself knowing that you had killed an innocent victim? You have then committed the same crime as the one you thought was serious enough to be executed for. In the USA alone 117 people have been released from death row, some only minutes away from execution, in light of new evidence. Once someone is dead you cannot change it. In Texas a death penalty case costs 2.3 million dollars whereas imprisoning someone on their own in a maximum security cell costs three times less, while in Florida it costs 51 million dollars more to execute people.
Even the police don’t believe in the death penalty and they say that it is the most ineffective way of reducing violent crime. Even people for the death penalty acknowledge that there is no deterrent affect of killing murderers but the argument is that if we do not kill the murderers we have effectively allowed the killing of innocent people. If we didn’t spend all tax payers money on killing people then we could use it to help people with drug problems or mental health problems which is much more useful etc. Or we could use it to counsel the victims’ families and help them through what they are going through which is surely more useful than just killing more people.
The death penalty is also very much about luck and race. About 22,000 homicides are committed each year and 150 of these receive the death penalty. It has been proven in a recent study that for the same or similar crime a black person is more likely to be executed and the chance of receiving the death penalty rose by 3.5 times if the victim was white. Capital Punishment also goes against most religions.
On the other hand, can a leopard ever really change its spots? Over 60% of released prisoners re-offend and the police waste time re-sentencing them. A life sentence in the UK rarely means a life sentence and if you behave well in prison they let you out earlier. Surely this is not fair, as however well they may behave when prison officers are around it does not suddenly make their crime any less serious. They committed the crime and they should be prepared to pay. Jails are overflowing and with the death penalty we would decrease the demand for more prisons. The UK is becoming so desperate for prison space that they have even turned to boats in an attempt to create more prison space but they were deemed unfit for murderers.
While people have acknowledged that the death penalty has no deterrent effect if we do not kill the murderers we have effectively allowed the killing of innocent people. If murders, rapist and abusers are killed we are making society a safer place and people can feel safe. Even though the top 13 states with the highest murder rate have the death penalty maybe the reason they had to introduce the death penalty was because murder rates were already high and they felt that the death penalty was the only way they could try and control murder rates.
Another option that should be considered is rehabilitation. There have been many successful cases and if people repent surely they deserve a second chance. Especially if the person involved is a child who has been brought up not knowing what is right and what is wrong, unloved or jealous of someone else. No one is born a bad person and as a society we could try and help them. In England and Wales there are 28 secure units, 13 secure training centres and 13 young offender institutes. People are taught about the impact of their crime on society which in some ways is a greater punishment as they have to live for the rest of their lives knowing what they did was wrong. It is also a lot cheaper than execution.
I believe that in the UK we should not reintroduce the death penalty because I do not think that in this day and age it is acceptable to go back to an almost barbaric form of punishment and I don’t think it will send out a very good message to future generations if a civilized culture such as ourselves deem it acceptable. I think we should look at the alternative options such as rehabilitation and try and help the people instead of condemning them.
