Should capital punishment be reinstated?

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

Aimee Williams

Society: Should Capital Punishment Be Reinstated?

Background

Capital punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment and since ancient times it has been used for a wide variety of offences. The Bible prescribes death for murder and many other crimes including kidnapping and witchcraft. By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried the death penalty - treason, murder, theft, burglary, rape, and arson. From 1723, under the “Waltham Black Acts”, Parliament enacted many new capital offences and this led to an increase in the number of people being put to death each year.

Reform of the death penalty began in Europe by the 1750’s and was championed by academics. They argued that the death penalty was needlessly cruel, over-rated as a deterrent and occasionally imposed in fatal error. By the 1850’s, these reform efforts began to take place. Venezuela banished it in 1853 and Portugal in 1867, they were the first nations to abolish the death penalty altogether. In the United States, Michigan was the first state to abolish it for murder in 1847. Britain effectively abolished capital punishment in 1965. The USA, together with China, Japan and many Asian and Middle Eastern countries, plus some African states still retain the death penalty for certain crimes.

Arguments For Capital Punishment

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. It is self-evident that dead criminals cannot commit any further crimes, either within prison or after escaping or after being released from it.

As well as this, it is a lot cheaper that having to keep criminals in prison who need food, sanitation and clothing. Money is not an inexhaustible product and the government would be able to spend it on more important thing like improving the economy, schools and heath care rather than on the long term imprisonment of murderers and rapists. Anti-capital punishment campaigners in the U.S. believe that it costs more to execute someone rather than having someone in prison for life, but this, whilst true for America, has to do with the endless appeals and delays in carrying ...

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Does the death penalty deter? It is hard to prove one way or the other because in most countries, that still use capital punishment, the number of people actually executed per year is usually a very small proportion. It would, however, seem that in those countries which almost always carry out death sentences, there is far less serious crime. This tends to indicate that the death penalty is a deterrent. 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. There is a strong argument here for making murder committed in these circumstances not punishable by death or for having degrees of murder as in the USA.

The rates for unlawful killings in Britain have more than doubled since abolition of capital punishment. Home Office figures show around unlawful killings 300 in 1964, which rose to 565 in 1994 and 833 in 2004. The figure for homicides in 2007 was 734. The principal causes of homicide are fights involving fists and feet, stabbing and cutting by glass or a broken bottle, shooting and strangling. 72% of the victims were male with younger men being most at risk. Figures released in 2009 show that since 1997, 65 prisoners who were released after serving life were convicted of a further crime. These included two murders, one suspected murder, one attempted murder, three rapes and two instances of grievous bodily harm. The same document also noted that 304 people given life sentences since January 1997 served less than 10 years of them, actually in prison.

Arguments Against Capital Punishment

According to many religions life is sacred and precious. God is the only person that can create or take away life. Penalising someone through capital punishment goes against this belief, even if they have killed someone themselves. Everyone also has the right to live, even those who have committed murder; sentencing someone to death goes against this right. It is hypocritical for the law to be able to kill someone who had done the same.

The most common and most convincing argument against capital punishment is that innocent people will get killed because of mistakes or flaws in the justice system. Witnesses, prosecutors and jurors can all make mistakes. When this is couples with flaws in the system it is inevitable that innocent people will be convicted of crimes. Where capital punishment is used such mistakes cannot be put right. There is ample evidence that such mistakes are possible – in the USA, 116 people who were sentenced to death have been found innocent since 1973 and released from death row. The average time on death row before these pardons was 9 years. It is also hypocritical for the government to say that one person cannot kill another but they can legally.

Life imprisonment, to a certain extent, is better as it prevents the person from escaping the reality of what they have down and, therefore, is caused to suffer. If a criminal was to be killed they would not have to live with what they have done. It has also been proved that capital punishment does not deter crime but increases them. Some believe that it is because people will not have to live with the memories of the crime.

Another reason, that is often overlooked, is the distress the innocent family and friends of criminals must also go through in the time leading up to and during the execution. It is often very difficult for people to come to terms with the fact that their loved one could be guilty of a serious crime and no doubt even more difficult to come to terms with their death in this form. One cannot and should not deny the suffering of the victim's family in a murder case but the suffering of the murderer's family is surely valid too.

There must always be the concern that the state can administer the death penalty justly, most countries have a very poor record on this. In America, a prisoner can be on death row for many years awaiting the outcome of numerous appeals, some of which are pointless and filed at the last minute in order to obtain a stay of execution.

There may be a brutalising effect upon society by carrying out executions - this was apparent in the UK during the 17th and 18th centuries when people turned out to enjoy the spectacle of public hanging. They still do today in those countries where executions are carried out in public. It is hard to prove this one way or the other - people stop and look at car crashes but it does not make them go and have an accident to see what it is like.

The death penalty is the bluntest of all punishments, it removes the individual's humanity and with it any chance of rehabilitation and their giving something back to society. In the case of the worst criminals, this may be acceptable but is more questionable in the case of less awful crimes.

Overall, I think that not having capital punishment is superior as it has a lot more pros than it does cons. For starters, innocent people will not be getting killed for something they have not done, which I feel is the main reason. Secondly, criminal will have to live with what they have done for the rest of their lives, which in its self is a punishment, as well as the disappointment from their friends and family. Lastly, as stated, having capital punishment does not help prevent crime. It has been proven that whilst capital punishment takes place crime levels rise. They only reason why capital punishment would be a good thing is that criminals would not have the opportunity to reoffend which means that it should help keep crime levels lower or at least prevent them from increasing.