The Death Penalty Essay: Is It Effective?

 

Statistic shows that a lot of people are sentenced to death every year and sometimes their guilt even not proven. Thereby, naturally the question arises: “Is the death penalty effective?” and that will be considered in that essay on death penalty. At the moment there are a lot of organizations that tries to stop inhumane behavior of the government relative population, but it does not mean that executions will cease soon. In this way there is a really big necessity to compare a harm and benefit of executions and consider their impact on the world crime situation. By all the aforesaid, I present to your attention the death penalty pros and cons essay, in which I am going to analyze the execution statistic, methods and popularity in different countries.

Every day people are perishing by natural disasters, wars, sicknesses, and in that case there is nobody to blame. But all those cases are just a terrible accidents, with which humankind is encountering constantly. But what if the reason of death is not an uncontrolled forces but people? What if a person feels himself entitled to determine the fate of another one? Definitely, a murder deserves a punishment, but to what extent? If you take lives, can yours be taken?  This discussion is lasting long enough and opinions, concerning that, were divided into two camps- those who supports that kind of punishment and those who are thumbs down, thinking that is totally inhumane way of fight against crime.

Supporters of the death penalty believe that radical methods are able to “clean” society from crime. By and large, the death penalty has gained the most popularity in countries, in which executions traditionally was used as a major way for saving the country. There are some retentionist countries such as:

  • Iraq
  • Iran
  • Saudi Arabia
  • India
  • China
  • USA
  • Japan
  • Afghanistan
  • Pakistan
  • The part of Eastern and Central Africa

 But the circumstance that the government accepts the death penalty does not mean that all of death warrants put into action. As statistic shows, a number of death sentences does not always match with number of executions, and pretty often death sentences remain unrealized. And exactly the opposite, there are cases, in which people put to death without legal verdict. The statistic is terrifying sometimes.

 There is a data for 2014 on the number of death penalty:

  • Nigeria: death sentences-659; executions- 0
  • Egypt: death sentences- 509; executions-15
  • United States: death sentences-72; executions-35
  • Iran; death sentences-81; executions-289
  • China: death sentences-?; executions-1000+

In spite of free-for-all information about capital punishment in China, the biggest part of executions is silent. China carries out more executions than other world put together, albeit a number of death sentences is a state secret. What is remarkable, since 1940-s, when the People`s Republic was formed, every layer of society have been executed without any exceptions.

Although the aim of punishment it is an elimination of danger for the benefit of people, it is not always rightly as it should be. A huge number of sentenced to death are innocent or on the strength of severity of crime, do not deserve that kind of punishment. Often people are judged for acts that cannot even be criminalized, for example, infidelity, blasphemy and other violation of morality.  In this way, people, who is condemned to death completely can be a victim of racism, financial manipulations, political struggle, etc.

So how the death penalty could be effective if it kills either innocent people, or those who kill?  Words of Renny Cushing come to mind: “Killing killers won`t bring back victims”. But how was mentioned above, crime does not always contain victims, often it is just a violation of moral foundations. It seems terrifying absurd, does not it? By the large, death penalty is an alternative to life imprisonment, but pretty cheaper because nobody wants another mouths to feed.

But still the crime exists, barbarism and killing have not diminished, so, maybe physical reprisal cannot solve the problems of morality?

Steve Earl has said: “My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then, I'm killing somebody.” So the only way out is to develop morality as the major civilization factor. On the assumption of all mentioned above, we, unfortunately, have rested against politician's utopia. However, let`s try to abstract from the politic and focus on the idea of the effectiveness of the death penalty.  Summing up all that has been said above, we can clearly see, that the number of victims does not justify the level of crime in virtue of unreasonable condemnation of innocent people. Thereby, whether we can affirm that the death penalty is absolutely effective or no?

The most obvious answer is the strict “no”, because depriving a person of the right to choose by means of violence totally goes out of the frame of morality. But on the other hand, we should consider the inability to take softer safety measures in individual cases. The question is still open, but every man of sense comprehends, that cruelty and injustice will never lead to genuine peace but will spread the fear among the people, creating the nation of scared and gutless persons.

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