I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, Albert Pierrepoint, former executioner. What are your views on capital punishment?

There are a lot of different views on capital punishment and I will be looking at some of them.

Is capital punishment the answer?

Statistics show that On 28 November 2003 the prison population in England and Wales stood at 74,182. In the last two years the prison population has increased by nearly 6,000. And it is still increasing.

Due to this there have been cases that prisoners are released early. In my opinion this is crazy. If someone who killed another human being in my family was released early because there are just TOO many prisoners I would be very terrified. In these cases capital punishment is surely the answer. Ofcourse if the crime was small, insignificant it is a different story.

As the number of prisoners sentecning a long time grow the amount of money used also becomes larger. I have not found the exact amount of keeping prisoners for a lifetime, but I would expect that it was very high. Food, clothes medicine these are only the few things we have to pay for the murderers and rapists. It is a known fact that a bullet costs a lot less than any of the other things we need to pay for. So why not kill the shameless people?

Nevertheless the prisoners are on Death Row for many years anyway. Time and resources are still taken up in the lengthy process. In the Testimony of Richard C. Dieter (Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center) he states that an execution in North Carolina actually comes to cost around $2.16 million dollars.

People would also state that in some countries where Capital punishment is still used, it acts like a deterrance. In Latvia couple of years ago the President abolished the capital punishment, because she thought it was inhumane. After exactly a week of this new rule working a man ran into a nursery killed 6 children and the nursery teacher. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Quite obviously people were shocked. They (and I was one of them) wanted the man to die. People figured that the capital punishment scared the man to do this crime. But when it was abolished he thought he will be able to get away with this.

However ofcourse there is no evidence that death penalty really does work as deterrence. We do not know if this particular person premeditated the murder. He might have acted in the heat of the moment.

There can be no doubt that if death penalty occurred the perpetrator would be never able to re-offend. The rapist of the young girl would never be able to rape her again. The killer of the six children would never be able to kill another innocent child.

Furthermore in many cases capital punishment could be more humane than life imprisonment. There have been cases where the prisoners have actually tried to commit suicide because the life in prison is awful.

However there is no humane way of killing another human being. The five most used methods in North America are as follows; Electric Chair which is when a person is strapped down to a chair and when an electrode is applied to the scalp and another one to the calf of one leg. The electrodes are moistened with a sodium carbonate solution to ensure adequate contact. Hanging is when a rope is placed around the neck of the person. When it's time for the person to be executed, the platform is released and the person is left dangling with the rope still attached to their neck. Lethal Injection is when a lethal drug is injected into the persons blood stream. The Firing Squad is when a person is standing tied up against the wall blind folded and a couple of men with shot guns aim fire directly to the persons heart. The Gas Chamber is where a person is put in a room with a deadly gas called Hydrogen Cyanide and it spreads all across the room. How does these ways of killing people make us better? If we kill someone because he has murdered their enemy how does this makes us look, if do the same thing?!

Even though this is true the capital punishment satisfies the need of revenge for the family of the victim. If someone hurt my little sister or brother I would definitely want him/her to die. I think that this would be true for 95% of the family members of the victim.

A very big problem with death penalty is that there have been cases off miscarriages of justice. Derek William bentley was hanged at the age of 19 for a murder committed by a friend. After 45 years he received posthumous pardon. Even though it doesn't help that much to him, as he is dead.

After looking at these points I can surely say that although they have done miscarriages in the past it is not that common these days. However rapists, killers escaping prison is common, so I definatly disagree with Albert Pierrepoint's words. Excecutions do solve soo many problems.

Kate Riekstina