Another reason against capital punishment which is often overlooked is the trauma that families and friends of criminals must go through in the time leading up to, and during their execution, which can leave people traumatised for many years afterwards. People who are for capital punishment say that it provides retribution to a victim’s family, and that the criminal is made to suffer in proportion to the offence they have committed, but however strongly people support capital punishment, two wrongs don’t make a right. People cannot deny the suffering of the victim’s family in a murder case, but the suffering of the murderer’s family should be equally taken into account.
Adam Whybro
It must be remembered that criminals are still people who have human emotions like pain, fear and loss like everyone else, but people who are for the death penalty say that some of the most awful mass murderers should not have their feelings taken into account. This maybe true, but it is a different matter when you are talking about an eighteen year old girl shot in China for drugs trafficking in 1998.
Another important reason against capital punishment is that no form of execution is a humane way to kill a criminal, despite what some people say. Every form of execution causes the prisoner suffering; it’s just that some cause less suffering than others. There is no doubt that the execution is a terrifying ordeal for the prisoner, what is often overlooked is the “extreme mental torture” that the criminal suffers in the time leading up to the execution. For example, how would you feel if you knew you were going to die tomorrow at 8:00 am?
The death penalty removes an individual’s humanity and any chance of rehabilitation. People who are for capital punishment say that the money spent on providing for criminals in prison with long term sentences, could be better spent on more appropriate things like pensions and extra policing. However, execution removes the criminal’s life and with it any chance of them giving back to society through rehabilitation. Also the average waiting time on death row in America is eleven years, which is as much a drain on money as someone who has been sentenced to life, because of all the appeals and court appearances that criminals on death row make.
Executions, especially if carried out publicly, can have a “brutalising” and negative effect on a society, because of the natural voyeurism in people that make them want to watch an execution. When a criminal is executed he can no longer commit any further crimes, within the prison or when released into society. This is known as the incapacitation of the criminal, but Home Office statistics show that between 1965 and 1998, a period of 33 years, 71 murders have been committed by people released after serving life sentences in Britain. This equals 2.15 people a year, which people who are for capital punishment say is 2.15 people too many, but compared to the lives saved by not executing the majority of criminals and their contribution to society once rehabilitated, in my view, far outweighs the loss of two people each year by released criminals.
People who support the death penalty say it is a highly effective deterrence, which puts off people from committing serious crimes. However this is not necessarily true. Texas in America, for example carries out far more executions than any other American state. Between 1982 and 2000 Texas executed 254 men and two women, but still FBI homicide figures show that between 1980 and 2000 there were 41,783 murders in Texas, higher than any other American state. These statistics prove that even though Texas has a high execution rate, this does not seem to deter murderers from committing crimes at all.
Adam Whybro
Another problem the death penalty faces in Britain is that if it was reinstated, it is believed by many officials that the number of life sentence convictions would reduce. This is because nowadays a public jury are unlikely to sentence a fellow human being to death, even if they have committed the worst crimes.
Surveys show that about 2/3 of people in Britain would like to see capital punishment reinstated. In the short term there is no realistic chance of reinstatement, despite majority public support for such a move. Politically it would be impossible at present, because of our membership in the EU and our commitment to the convention of human rights, both of which are totally against capital punishment. All Britain’s political parties except the Conservatives, who are split on the issue, are firmly against it. This would stop capital punishment from getting past both the House of Commons and House of Lords. In the future as far as I can see there is no chance that we will see capital punishment reinstated into British society.
