The Death Penalty Critique Essay

The Death Penalty “If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call. " (McAdams) The death penalty should be legalized in all fifty states, to avert from crime, keep repeat offenders off of the streets, and to reduce taxpayers the cost of keeping those found guilty of heinous crimes in prison low.

The death penalty can in fact deter heinous crimes from being committed when it is lawful in a state. Social scientists have stated that the act of general deterrence, which is when the punishment deters potential criminals from committing crimes, keeps criminals from going through with crimes. However, it is more shown that premeditated crimes are usually the ones stopped by general deterrence, not crimes under passion. Heinous crimes have been reduced highly in the states that have a capital punishment law.

The death penalty keeps repeat offenders off of the streets. In Michigan a case that represents this happened; "A man who was hired by Honeywell Inc. , after serving four years in prison for strangling a co-worker has been charged with killing another co-worker and a woman he allegedly stalked and threatened for weeks" (Sullum personal file). Had the death penalty been allowed in Michigan the woman’s life could have been sparred, for the male who murdered her would have been executed long before and never had the chance to murder her.

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The death penalty may be a long process, but it does not give those on death row a hope of parole. By having the heinous criminals in prisons on death row keeps them from repeating crimes. In five out of seven cases it is said that criminals will once again commit crimes once released from prison of jail. The death penalty keeps the criminals in jail and executes them. This protects the general public from murderous crimes from repeat offenders.

The death penalty also keeps taxpayers costs low, because the prison looses members in which the state taxes would have to pay for. The citizens of the state pay for the prisoners, and my eliminating the criminals jailed for heinous crimes reduces cost by a high percent. The average cost per year per prison is about $1 billion. By enforcing the death penalty and making it lawful can reduce that cost by almost half. Half does not sound like much in such large terms, but in reality it is an immense amount of money that the taxpayers can be using somewhere else.

Struggling families still have to pay for imprisoned criminals and the death penalty can in turn have more money in that home, because it would not be put towards the prison. There is another side to the death penalty, however. Most people believe the death penalty is immoral and unjust. Some say that the idea of “an eye for an eye” should not apply to the death penalty. Capital punishment is still an act of murder, which is punishable by law. This is a major argument of those against capital punishment. There are also religious views that keep many opposed of the death penalty.

Christians view the death penalty as wrong because of the fact that killing a killer is still killing, which is a sin that breaks one of the Ten Commandments. The large population of Christians in the United States keeps the vote against capital punishment high, because this nation was built on that faith and it is also the highest religion in the nation. The death penalty keeps taxpayers cost low, keeps repeat offenders off of the street, and deters heinous crime, and therefore should be made lawful in all fifty states of the United States of America.

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