- 25/02/2013
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Free essays
Many opponents of the death penalty claim it to be inhumane. But can the life sentence be called a humane measure (although most people propose it as an alternative)? Since, as it has been mentioned earlier, the life imprisonment also excludes the element of rehabilitation, then, perhaps, it is more humane to offer the convicted a choice as is done in many U.S. states (Clear, 2010).
The death penalty opponents also state that neither the state nor the man have the right to take away life under any pretext. But it contradicts with some generally accepted principles. Thus, the law allows the killing of a man by another man, for example, in the case of self-defense, or in case a criminal’s resistance to apprehending (i.e., actually, implementation of an informal death penalty), or during the war – there is no penalties for killing an enemy, although the enemy is the also a men and not a criminal. Is it humanely to force to kill? Can a murder in general be humane (unless it is committed with the consent of the person)? But sometimes there seems to be simply no other choice.
On the other hand, evil cannot be changed by the evil committed as an act of revenge. Justice is not realized through the deprivation of human life; and morality is not consolidated through authorized murder. In addition, one of the arguments against the death penalty is that there is always a possibility of judicial errors and the death penalty makes them irreversible. But first of all, the presence of errors is not a reason for the cessation of activity in general. For example, in medicine, errors in diagnosis, errors in the course of operations, etc. do not lead to the refusal of treatment. Secondly, the death penalty cannot probably dehumanize the society more than wars, social conflicts and even political cataclysms.
Surely, countless examples show that crimes also occurred during the death penalty execution. Thus, historians argue that in the Middle Ages, most pick pocketing happened right during the public execution of a thief. It turns out that a frightening element is not working. Some experts marks that probably the death penalty has no greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. The same view is confirmed by the statistics and surveillance conducted by the UNO in the 1980’s. Researches also show that the crime rate does not depend on the presence or absence of the death penalty, which is demonstrated by a comparative analysis of statistics of different U.S. states (Clear, 2010). buy term paper
Thus, it would be correct not to increase the efficiency of the system of penalties, but to try to prevent crime. According to sociologists, people are not born criminals, but become criminals in conditions of environment. It is necessary to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, actual legal inequality and other factors that cause offense. Finally, the society represented by the state bears considerable responsibility for the crimes committed by members of this society.
However, the death penalty should not be totally excluded from the legislation of any country. The state should have the opportunity to use this measure of punishment in extreme situations. Another thing is that the range of offenses should be narrowed, and a compulsory element of recurrence or quantitative factor may be introduced. The state, having this kind of punishment in the arsenal, can use it rarely, replacing it with life imprisonment, but finally, there are cases, when leaving a man in this world is disproportionate with the atrocities he committed (i.e. cases of terrorist who blows up a building; or a maniac bloodthirsty killing people).
Thus, though life imprisonment has much more advantages than the death penalty, no matter how inhumane this act may appear, its complete removal is impractical. In our opinion, the death penalty should be kept for the betrayal of Motherland, act of terrorism, and murder with aggravating circumstances.
References:
Clear, T. R., Cole, G. F., Reisig, M. D. (2010). American Corrections (9th ed.). Wadsworth Publishing.
Latessa, E.J., Holsinger, A.M. (2005). Correctional Contexts: Contemporary and Classical Readings (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
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