Should Capital Punishment Be Reintroduced To Britain?

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Capital punishment is the death penalty for people who have committed terrible crimes, such as murder. Since the abolition of the death penalty in 1964, the murder rate in the U.K. has been steadily increasing. Murder is the ultimate crime; therefore shouldn’t murder demand the ultimate penalty?

America suspended the death penalty in the early sixties, like Britain, but in 1976, they re-instated it again. Statistics have proven that in 1994, in New York, 1200 people had been murdered, but later in 1995, the death penalty was introduced, and in 1998, the murder rate had dropped to just over 500 people.In my opinion, this is enough evidence to reintroduce Capital Punishment.

Capital punishment was abolished in Britain because the courts were making unintentional wrong decisions, therefore to preserve human life, it was decided Capital punishment should be abolished. There were also other reasons for this. People oppose the death penalty chiefly because they consider it cruel, critics also warn against the risk of executing mistakenly convicted people, as I mentioned above. Also, quite ironically, the last woman to be executed in Britain was Ruth Ellis. She was wrongly convicted, as was later discovered. Also is it morally correct to stoop to the level of the murderer?

In my opinion, capital punishment should be reintroduced in Britain, for many reasons, even taking into account the disadvantages. I understand both arguments of capital-punishment, and that they both have their advantages. If capital punishment is not reintroduced, at least we know that lives are not being taken unfairly. However, I feel that to reduce the crime rate in Britain, capital punishment should be introduced, because, not only is it a just punishment, it is also an extremely good deterrent. This is not being said without basis, but actually has been proved to work in some states of the U.S.A., ...

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To reduce the amount of people in Britain’s prisons, and the amount of tax payers’ money going to waste, we need to introduce capital punishment for crimes such as rape and homicide. It will be a consolation for the families of the murdered to know that the person who murdered their loved one is not walking down the street three and a half years later! Also, people will not commit such crimes as thought as less as they now do.

A person committing homicide obviously does not respect that person’s right of living, therefore, if such a crime is committed, it is only right that the courts do the same thing, and put the murderer up for execution.

Even though I personally feel that Capital Punishment should be reintroduced, here are my views why it should not be reintroduced. It would be better to put someone in prison as it will be a lot more painful way to punish them. Being in jail for a long time is a lot harder than a quick death. We know this because there have been such incidents in prisons before where prisoners have tried to kill themselves, and have succeeded. They may have done this by having a weapon, such as a knife, or by hanging themselves. Therefore, if we do put people in prison, they will live a lot harder life than if we give them Capital Punishment.

There are a lot of types of capital punishment, some being, the electric chair and hanging, and in the case of treason, executing. But the most common is the lethal injection, which causes the murderer a quick death. In Britain, if someone is planning to kill the queen, then they have to be executed, now although my argument is for capital punishment to be reintroduced, in all fairness, this seems quite unfair-to have a different rule for treason.

I am now going to recapitulate my findings on why the death penalty should be introduced, and why not.

Being in favour of Capital Punishment, my reasons are as follows-;

Capital Punishment acts as an effective deterrent from murder
It prevents killers from murdering again
A person who takes a life, gives up the right to their own
Capital Punishment is less on rate payers than the cost of imprisonment.

Here are my views on why Capital Punishment should not be reintroduced-;

There have been many high-profile miscarriages of justice
Any taking of life (even by the state) is un-civilised behaviour
The cost of appeals against death penalties makes it just as expensive as imprisonment.

Now that I have taken both my views into account, I am going to conclude with my own personal view. Capital Punishment should be introduced in Britain, because murder is the most terrible crime, and anything less than the death-penalty is an insult to the victim and society.

By Siddique Bapu