The death penalty is an effective punishment for the worst crimes and should be reintroduced in the United Kingdom. Discuss

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“The death penalty is an effective punishment for the worst crimes and should be reintroduced in the United Kingdom”.

Discuss.

The death penalty is the ‘sentence of execution for murder and some other capital crimes’, with certain countries such as Sudan going a step further and employing the death penalty upon people convicted of homosexuality’. This paper will argue for the death penalty to be reinstated in the United Kingdom (UK). The methods of execution are widespread and include beheading, the electric chair, gas chambers, hanging, the lethal injection and shooting, with the ‘lethal injection proving to be the most popular’. 

It is a topic that sparks a wide array of emotions in many people. Many are vociferously opposed to such a concept, citing moral and practical reasons, whilst many feel although it is appropriate and effective for adult perpetrators of the worst crimes. ‘67% of Americans supported the death penalty for convicted murderers in 2001’, increasing to ‘71% in 2002 before dropping back to 67% in 2003,' implying a stable acceptance of the utilization of the death penalty. Similarly in the UK, 59% of the populous agree that the death penalty is sometimes appropriate. 

Since 1965, the position of the UK is that ‘no person shall suffer death for murder’. The death penalty was officially abolished in 1969 for murder in Great Britain with Northern Ireland following soon after in 1973. More recently in 1998 the death penalty was abolished for all crimes, treason included. This paper will be split into three sections; the first will address the morality of using the death penalty, the second will explore the effectiveness of the death penalty as a punishment for heinous crimes, whilst the third will examine to what extent it is feasible to reinstate the death penalty. There are several arguments that could be employed in order to illustrate why practically the death penalty should be reinstated, however this paper will be confined to the three most important: retribution; cost and deterrence.  

Critics of the death penalty will argue that no matter how heinous a crime committed, everyone has the right to life and that the state has no right to dictate who lives and who dies. This paper disagrees, and supports that the right to life is prima facie or a conditional right, which can be overridden. Proof that the right to life is not absolute lies with the notion that one can kill in self-defense if the defender had reason to believe he was going to be killed. Similarly, it is the reason behind allowing the police force to bear arms; the state accepts that sometimes people will be killed by the state, by the directive of the state.  Immanuel Kant uses positive law to suggest that the evil that a wrongdoer inflicts is the measure of how severely s/he should be punished. If it is deserved, then ‘execution actually affirms the criminals’ humanity by accepting responsibility for his actions.’ Therefore without the introduction of the death penalty, such severity of punishment is impossible to satisfy. The death penalty is thus the legal right of the sovereign to protect its citizens. 

Punishment serves various purposes. One of its main purposes is rehabilitation; to enable to prisoner to experience remorse and to emerge from prison lacking the criminal tendencies possessed beforehand. Surprisingly perhaps, this is not usually the outcome as ‘around half of adult offenders re-offend within a year of being released from prison, despite a 50% increase in the budget for prisons in the last ten years’. Such an individual is Andrew Dawson, who was given a second life sentence after committing murder again after his release. This shows how certain criminals feel no remorse for the crimes committed, and continue to wreak havoc in society once their sentence is over. Some people kill so viciously, with such a callous or cruel attitude, that execution is justified.  Such an individual is Kang Kew Iek, aka ‘Comrade Duch’. He was responsible for Cambodia’s Prison S-21 in which there were 7 known survivors out of 15,000 inmates. He pleaded and was found guilty of mass murder, sentencing him to a meager 35 years in prison, of which only 19 years are to be served. Considering the sheer number of people murdered, this man stands to serve merely a few hours of prison time per human slaughtered, which is less time per victim than one could spend in jail for driving without a valid driving license. This provoked an outburst of fury and disbelief at the laxity of the punishment. Even life imprisonment would not be a suitable sentence for such a terrible crime, as the time served per victim would still be laughable; a harsher punishment is needed for such individuals as will be examined in the next paragraphs of this paper, and the death penalty is the only suitable option.

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Reinstating the death penalty in the UK would save innocent lives, due to the profound deterrent effect that it has. Abolitionists will claim that the death penalty does not deter criminals. Even if this were the case, the death penalty would still be appropriate. ‘If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of ... innocent victims.’ Thus sparing the lives of ‘even a few prospective victims’ due to the deterrence of ...

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