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by vernillat on May 1st, 2006

vernillat

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Does capital punishment really deter serious crimes?

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  • by Alatea on May 2nd, 2006

    Alatea

    No, I don't believe it does. A civilised country does not execute human beings. Murdering the murderer can't be justified. They have to be removed from society so as not to inflict more pain and death but when we as human beings become the same and justify it then we are no better than the criminal. Thank God Canada does not have the death penalty and doesn't rely on the skill of the lawyers to determine who lives and who dies.
    -------------
    And there is this grim statistic
    "Of the 598 executions carried out in the whole of the USA from 1977 to the end of 1999, Texas accounts for 199 or 33%."

    "Among the major nations of the Western world, the United States is singular in still having the death penalty. After a five–year moratorium, from 1972 to 1977, capital punishment was reinstated in the United States courts.

    The death penalty is the bluntest of "blunt instruments," it removes the individual's humanity and with it any chance of rehabilitation and their giving something back to society.

    Can these scenarios ever be seen as justice?
    Should we only execute people for the most awful multiple murders as a form of compulsory euthanasia rather than as a punishment or should we execute all murderers irrespective of the degree of guilt purely as a retributive punishment for taking another person's life and in the hope of deterring others?

    What about crimes such as violent rape, terrorism and drug trafficking - are these as bad as murder? How should we punish such offences?
    Should executions be carried out in such a way as to punish the criminal and have maximum deterrent effect on the rest of us, (e.g. televised hangings). Would this be a deterrent or merely become a morbid show for the voyeuristic?

    Or should they be little more than a form of euthanasia carried out in such a way as to remove from the criminal all physical and as much emotional suffering as possible?

    Does it make any sense to imprison someone for the rest of their life or is it really more cruel than executing them?

    If we do not keep them in prison for life, will they come out only to commit other dreadful crimes? A small but significant number do.

    What is the cost to society of keeping people in prison? (600.00 pounds per week at present for an ordinary prisoner which is around 468,000 pounds for a typical 15 years of a life sentence).

    In 2004, lethal injection replaced hanging and shooting as the two most common methods of execution followed by beheading. Lethal injection, which is almost universal in America, is also used extensively now in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Guatemala. Electrocution and the gas chamber are used only in America and seem to be disappearing slowly – the inmate has to elect to die by these methods. Stoning for sexual offences, including adultery, may still occur in some Islamic countries. China, with a quarter of the world's population, carries out the most executions for a wide variety of offences.

    Arguments for the death penalty.
    Incapacitation of the criminal.
    Capital punishment permanently removes the worst criminals from society and should prove much cheaper and safer for the rest of us than long term or permanent incarceration. It is self evident that dead criminals cannot commit any further crimes, either within prison or after escaping or being released from it.

    Arguments against the death penalty.
    There are a number of incontrovertible arguments against the death penalty.

    The most important one is the virtual certainty that genuinely innocent people will be executed and that there is no possible way of compensating them for this miscarriage of justice. There is also another significant danger here. The person convicted of the murder may have actually killed the victim and may even admit having done so but does not agree that the killing was murder. Often the only people who know what really happened are the accused and the deceased. It then comes down to the skill of the prosecution and defence lawyers as to whether there will be a conviction for murder or for manslaughter. It is thus highly probable that people are convicted of murder when they should really have only been convicted of manslaughter.

    A second reason, that is often overlooked, is the hell the innocent family and friends of criminals must also go through in the time leading up to and during the execution and which will often cause them serious trauma for years afterwards. It is often very difficult for people to come to terms with the fact that their loved one could be guilty of a serious crime and no doubt even more difficult to come to terms with their death in this form. However strongly you may support capital punishment, two wrongs do not make one right. One cannot and should not deny the suffering of the victim's family in a murder case but the suffering of the murderer's family is surely equally valid.

    There must always be the concern that the state can administer the death penalty justly, most countries have a very poor record on this. In America, a prisoner can be on death row for many years (on average 11 years {2004 figure}) awaiting the outcome of numerous appeals and their chances of escaping execution are better if they are wealthy and/or white rather than poor and/or black irrespective of the actual crimes they have committed which may have been largely forgotten by the time the final decision is taken. Although racism is claimed in the administration of the death penalty in America, statistics show that white prisoners are more liable to be sentenced to death on conviction for first degree murder and are also less likely to have their sentences commuted than black defendants.

    There is no such thing as a humane method of putting a person to death irrespective of what the State may claim (see later). Every form of execution causes the prisoner suffering, some methods perhaps cause less than others, but be in no doubt that being executed is a terrifying and gruesome ordeal for the criminal. What is also often overlooked is the extreme mental torture that the criminal suffers in the time leading up to the execution. How would you feel knowing that you were going to die tomorrow morning at 8.00 a.m.?

    There may be a brutalising effect upon society by carrying out executions - this was apparent in this country during the 17th and 18th centuries when people turned out to enjoy the spectacle. They still do today in those countries where executions are carried out in public. It is hard to prove this one way or the other - people stop and look at car crashes but it doesn't make them go and have an accident to see what it is like. I think there is a natural voyeurism in most people."

    Two of the methods which are disgusting in my opinion

    "Lethal injection may appear to be more humane than other methods, to the witnesses, but is a very slow process. If the short acting barbiturate functions properly, it usually causes unconsciousness in under a minute but this does not always happen. There is considerable debate and litigation going on at present as to whether the first chemical causes full unconsciousness. If it doesn’t, then the prisoner may suffer a great deal of pain but will be unable to communicate this due to the paralysing effects of the second drug. The biggest single objection to lethal injection is the length of time required to prepare the prisoner, which can take from 20 to 45 minutes depending on the ease of finding a vein to inject into, which is vital for a painless death.

    The gas chamber seems to possess no obvious advantage as the equipment is expensive to buy and maintain, the preparations are lengthy, adding to the prisoner's agonies, and it always causes a slow and cruel death. It is also dangerous to the staff involved."

    Taken from this link and a more complete read of all aspects.
    http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/thoughts.html

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  • by Sam Bickles on January 22nd, 2008

    Sam Bickles

    Many studies have shown that capital punishment is not a deterrent.

    Vengeance is not about prevention or justice.

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  • by Sam Bickles on January 22nd, 2008

    Sam Bickles

    Many studies have shown that capital punishment is not a deterrent.

    Vengeance is not about prevention or justice.

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  • by RedJohn on May 2nd, 2006

    RedJohn

    It certainly deters the individual who is executed, but I remain unconvinced of its effectiveness in most circumstances. Yes, I am anti-capital punishment. I haven't written this to win any brownie points, either.

    I believe that if the death penalty was an effective deterrent, it would no longer be needed. People have been executed for all sorts of crimes and non-crimes for as long as records have been kept. It is not a deterrent in the historical sense: new generations of humans are not learning from past experience that their actions could lead to their execution.

    There are some people who will always operate outside the bounds of society. Their numbers are reinforced continuously by those who wish to reinvent the wheel for their own gratification. These people are not likely to be deterred, since they so obviously consider themselves invulnerable. These folks are those who are liable to spend the remainder of their days in prison or who are executed.

    There are those who are prone to violence because of something inherent in there nature, for whatever reason. These people are disconnected from the influences that motivate the rest of society. Capital punishment lessens their numbers, but does not prevent their birth or creation (during their formative years). Some people are simply defective.

    And finally, we have those who commit capital offences in the heat of the moment - far and away the largest group. These are also unlikely to be deterred, because their actions are the result of a failure of reason. This is a transient phenomenon, which is unlikely to be reproduced, except through a similar combination of stress and anxiety. It does not excuse their actions, but it explains why most of them don't reoffend.

    So, we are left with a few reasons for executing individuals: economy, convenience, power, and revenge. I don't consider any of these to be sufficient reason to terminate someone's life.
    - Given the resources of the state - the collective which we, as individuals, create and maintain - I fail to see the need for killing people on the basis of economy.
    - Execution is certainly convenient, because it means that the individual and his or her actions can be quickly shunted aside and forgotten. It gets them out of our hair, but do we learn anything from them?
    - Collectively, we reject the use of the death penalty where it allows an individual or group the opportunity to maintain a hold on power, except where it may support international strategies. This is an immoral act if there ever was one.
    - Revenge should not be considered acceptable, but it is. It's not a rational choice, though.

    Although I am not a member of any of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths, I do believe that some of their traditions are morally right, as are those of many religions. Religions are a way in which societies codify their moral beliefs and create a framework for their societies. The statement: "Thou shalt not kill" just about sums it up for me. I don't see any difference between my killing an individual or the state killing an individual, in terms of the morality of the issue. The reasons may be different, but, to me, the same morality should apply.

    The sole exception to this is killing in self-defence. I might kill someone to defend myself or others during an attack. As a collective, a state might defend themselves against agressors committing attacks. However, these actions are not usually considered capital crimes.

    (And for those who say this exposes a flaw in my reasoning, I see an enormous difference between killing someone who is physically attacking me/us now and someone who committed a crime and is now in state custody, where the decision to execute is made at a later date and is supported by the rationale of law. Self-defence is heat of the moment, while an execution two or three years later is cold reason.)

    Foornote...
    One item that I failed to discuss is the risk of executing the innocent. There have been enough cases in recent Canadian history of serious miscarriages of justice, one is forced to wonder how many innocents are sitting in jail, convicted of heinous crimes. The reversals of the convictions of Morin (rape and murder of a 9-year-old child), Truscott (rape and murder of 12-year-old child), and Marshall (robbery and murder) all demonstrate the risk of falsely convicting the innocent. All of these men were convicted of crimes they did not commit, aided by tainted evidence from overzealous or racist police departments.

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  • by Anonymous on May 2nd, 2006

    Anonymous

    Not particularly.

    A major argument against the theory would be that the Retentionist USA has the highest murder rate in the industrialised world, and rates are highest in Southern States where most executions occur.

    According to human rights organisation Amnesty International:

    "Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show that abolition has harmful effects. In Canada, for example, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before the abolition of the death penalty for murder, to 2.41 in 1980, and since then it has declined further. In 2003, 27 years after abolition, the homicide rate was 1.73 per 100,000 population, 44 per cent lower than in 1975 and the lowest rate in three decades."

    See www.amnesty.org for plenty of resources on this (Admittedly they have been collected with a view to supporting an abolitionist point of view, but most come from independent sources).

    However, it is interesting to note that the murder rate has increased in the UK since the death penalty was abolished in 1965, (which possibly accounts for the fact that 66% of the population would like to see it re-introduced) although other factors, such as the increase in availability and circulation of lethal weapons are possibly more to blame than the abolition of capital punishment
    (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4457402.stm)

    I thought this report was also interesting:
    http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=74059&col=75

    (My personal view is that government sanctioned murder, violence and brutality serves only to brutalise society, portraying the message to the population at large that violence is an acceptable solution to problems. (I'd also question whether a universal definition of "Serious crime" is possible- in many countries the death penalty is still applicable for crimes such as adultery, homosexuality, fraud and petty theft- but perhaps I'm just complicating the question there.))

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  • by Anonymous on May 2nd, 2006

    Anonymous

      You can be certain that the person who has been put to death will not commit any more crimes.

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  • by Lennyboy on May 5th, 2006

    Lennyboy

    Our judicial system is broke. It should not take 20 years to finally execute someone on Death Row. It seems that more rights are granted the murderer than the victoms. I think that 3 years maximum should be granted and all efforts should be given them by the courts to review their cases and evidence. The bogged down court system is another reason that it takes 20 years to bring them to execution. Death penalty cases should take the highest priority and be put ahead of all others for review. I also feel that they should be put into the general population areas of our prisons. You will say that their lives could be threatened by other inmates looking for notariety. Perhaps this could be an additional deterant. Cases of such notables as Charles Manson would not have time for books, songs, and movies made about their horrible exploits. Within the criminal element, this carries a morbid sort of pride. If someone knew from the beginning that the clock was ticking on a maximum of 3 years and they would have to survive that period would possibly think twice about the crime. However, if they do the crime anyway, the sentence will be carried out without fail. Give me the statistics on crime after this policy is implemented after a 10 to 20 year period and I think we would find it a better deterent.

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  • by Anonymous on May 2nd, 2006

    Anonymous

    No. if capital punishment was a deterent, there would be no inmates in prison serving life sentences for capital crimes.

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  • by Will on July 15th, 2007

    Will

    Who cares. That person won't kill again.

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  • by branciforte3241 on November 18th, 2006

    branciforte3241

    In punishment theory there are two basic reasons for punishment: retribution and deterrence. As for retribution, capital punishment pays an eye for an eye. If we assume that the criminal actually is guilty, then he is ethically removed from society. As for deterrence, there are two kinds: specific and general. Specific deterrence involves the individual comitting more crimes. He will not, once he is dead. General deterrence involved preventing others from comitting similar crimes. Most studies indicate that the death penelty does not work as a general deterrent. Criminals who commit those sorts of crimes generally do not look very far ahead in terms of repercusions.

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  • by Anonymous on May 6th, 2006

    Anonymous

    No it's not about revenge. It's about justice...the punishment fitting the crime. Petty theft, vandalism, armed robbery, etc. would be punished with jail time appropriate to the crime. However, the planned, calculated taking of an innocent life deserves the ultimate punishment. And no, state sanctioned execution is not the taking of an innocent life.

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  • by Anonymous on May 6th, 2006

    Anonymous

    Good question but capital punishment is not about being a deterrent. It's about being a just punishment for a heinous crime. More specifically, 1st degree murder. When someone commits a capital crime, they don't care whether it's a deterrent or not. They don't plan on being caught. If someone plans and proceeds with the murder of someone in my family, I would volunteer to push the plunger.

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  • by inov8tiv on May 4th, 2006

    inov8tiv

    While I have forgotten the details from a high school debate on capital punishment that I was in 50 years ago, I will always remember the lesson learned. In England, way back when, pocket picking was punishable by public hanging. The highest rate of pocket picking occurred in the crowds gathered to observe those hangings.

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  • by Max Power on May 2nd, 2006

    Max Power

    Since most of the answerer's are anti capital punishment (with good reason) I thought it would only be fair to argue for the pro side. I personally don't have an opinion. I agree with points on either side. The following is information from: http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html

    THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT:
    One argument states that the death penalty does not deter murder. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be any more effective in the deterrence of crime.

    Others say that states which do have the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that don't, that a more severe punishment only inspires more severe crimes. I must point out that every state in the union is different. These differences include the populations, number of cities, and yes, the crime rates. Strongly urbanized states are more likely to have higher crime rates than states that are more rural, such as those that lack capital punishment. The states that have capital punishment are compelled to have it due to their higher crime rates, not the other way around.

    Abolitionists also hold the notion that criminals do not fear death because they do not take time to think about the concequences of their acts. If that were true, then I wonder how police officers manage to arrest criminals without killing them. When a policeman holds a criminal at gunpoint and tells him to get on the ground, the criminal will comply fully in the vast majority of of these cases. Why would they do that unless they were afraid of the lethal power of the gun? It is because regardless of what abolitionists claim, criminals are not immune to fear! It is a common misconception to believe that fear is a thought process that has to be worked out with a piece of paper. It's not! It is an instinct that automatically kicks in when one is faced with lethal force! The examples below should confirm that point.

    During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972-1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. In 1960, there were 56 executions in the USA and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976. In summary, between 1965 and 1980, the number of annual murders in the United States skyrocketed from 9,960 to 23,040, a 131 percent increase. The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said:

    "While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

    Notes Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All:
    "From 1995 to 2000," "executions averaged 71 per year, a 21,000 percent increase over the 1966-1980 period. The murder rate dropped from a high of 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1980 to 5.7 in 1999 -- a 44 percent reduction. The murder rate is now at its lowest level since 1966. "
    There is a graph on the website drawn by the Bureau of Criminal Justice that gives a general overview of the murder rate compared to the number of executions that had taken place in the US up to the year 2000:

    The most striking protection of innocent life has been seen in Texas, which executes more murderers than any other state. According to JFA (Justice for All), the Texas murder rate in 1991 was 15.3 per 100,000. By 1999, it had fallen to 6.1 -- a drop of 60 percent. Within Texas, the most aggressive death penalty prosecutions are in Harris County (the Houston area). Since the resumption of executions in 1982, the annual number of Harris County murders has plummeted from 701 to 241 -- a 72 percent decrease.

    In 1997, in the Atlantic, reporter Robert Kaplan remarked that "Democratic South Africa has become one of the most violent places on earth that are no war zones. The murder rate is six times that in the United States, five times that in Russia. There are private security guards for every policeman." Yet, South African officials still insist that the death penalty won't do a thing to reduce the murder rate. The New York Times magazine carried a story on the epidemic of rapes of children in the country:

    South Africa may have the highest incidence of reported rape in the world-120.6 rapes for every 100,000 women in 1997, compared with 71 in the US in 1996.

    One reason for the increase in attacks on young children is that the rapists think they are less likely to have AIDS since they know that AIDS itself has skyrocketed in Nelson Mandela's "earthly paradise." Think about that. Those rapists are less likely to attack grown women because they fear the lethal consequences of AIDS. This demonstrates that violent criminals are indeed capable of being deterred by lethal consequences for their actions because they are not immune to fear. If the death penalty were just as consistent, lethal, and as unstoppable as the AIDS virus, criminals would actually have reason to back down. Given the evidence, there is no logical reason to believe otherwise.
    Edward Koch, former mayor of New York City, said:

    "Had the death penalty been a real possibility in the minds of...murderers, they might well have stayed their hand. They might have shown moral awareness before their victims died...Consider the tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man named Luis Vera burglarized her apartment in Brooklyn. "Yeah, I shot her," Vera admitted. "...and I knew I wouldn't go to the chair."

    Abolitionists will claim that most studies show that the death penalty has no effect on the murder rate at all. But that's only because those studies have been focused on inconsistent executions. Capital punishment, like all other applications, must be used consistently in order to be effective. However, the death penalty hasn't been used consistently in the USA for decades, so abolitionists have been able to establish the delusion that it doesn't deter at all to rationalize their fallacious arguments. But the evidence shows that whenever capital punishment is applied consistently or against a small murder rate it has always been followed by a decrease in murder. I have yet to see an example on how the death penalty has failed to reduce the murder rate under those conditions.

    So capital punishment is very capable of deterring murder if we allow it to , but our legal system is so slow and inefficient, criminals are able to stay several steps ahead of us and gain leeway through our lenience. Several reforms must be made in our justice system so the death penalty can cause a positive effect.

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  • by hemiman on November 18th, 2006

    hemiman

    To me, capital punishment isnt about detering serioius crimes, or it would be called capital determent. It is about punishment. If some one kills or in any manner takes the life of another individual in a premeditated circumstance, then that person should die. Now you understand this is just my opinion. But I dont have a problem with government executions when another life is taken in cold blood, and especially if it is a police officer or a child.

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  • by TheWiseMan on November 18th, 2006

    TheWiseMan

    What's with all the long answers, are there still convicted felons in jail as we speak, there's your answer.

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  • by Scifisuz on May 18th, 2007

    Scifisuz

    The THREAT of capital punishment doesn't. But the punishmt itself definitely stops all further crime by that criminal because that criminal is dead. No recidivism at all.

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  • by Smart2 is back! Did you miss me? on January 22nd, 2008

    Smart2 is back! Did you miss me?

    Capital punishment is not a deterrent to serious crime. Not once, do I believe, has a murderer ever stopped mid-murder to think to himself "hmmm, I better not do this, I might get the death penalty".
    However, having said that, I would simply note that the death penalty has a 0% recidivism rate.

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  • by Dave Westlund on May 4th, 2006

    Dave Westlund

    In regard to the question, "Does capital punishment really deter serious crimes?" Just one more statistic to pass on.

    A person convicted and sentenced in a capital crime will NEVER commit that or any other crime again.

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  • by Jade on July 15th, 2007

    Jade

    I think that the threat of capital punishment does deter SOME people from committing more serious crimes. Capital punihment itself assures that a person will not commit any more crimes, serious or otherwise.

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  • by Cowboy-Matter of Fact on July 15th, 2007

    Cowboy-Matter of Fact

    Yes.

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