The death penalty has been called barbaric, inhumane, and unwarranted. However, those that speak out against capital punishment do not take into account the lives that it saves and the reasons for its justification. The following passage serves to highlight these reasons and makes a case for the continued use of the death penalty.
One of the principle arguments underlying the United States’ decision to continue using the death penalty is deterrence. Deterrence is defined as the idea that executing criminals who have committed murder will deter other would-be murderers from carrying out their crimes. In his article, “How the Death Penalty Saves Lives”, Dr. David Muhlhausen argues that capital punishment discourages criminal behavior and supports a safer country. He writes, “A 2008 comprehensive review of capital punishment research since 1975” by Yang and Lester “concluded that the majority of studies that track effects over many years and across states or counties find a deterrent effect”. Learn more about deterrence here.
Opponents of capital punishment argue that the death penalty is fundamentally devoid of any morality because the taking of a human being’s life is as evil a crime as there is. However, when it is taken into account that the execution of a murderer prevents the slaying of another innocent by that person's hands, the moral context of the situation is not as black and white as it appears. All human beings have dignity; we are able to think consciously and act rationally with moral forethought. The death penalty honors human dignity by regarding the offender as a person possessing free will who knowingly took the life of another human being. In his article, "The Death Penalty: An American History", James Acker contends that enforcing harsh punishments “allows society to express moral outrage at the offender’s breach and simultaneously helps reinforce a shared sense of commitment to the violated norm”. By taking the life of a guilty man, society can move forward in the wake of the crime. In doing so, they also enforce the principle that the slaying of a human being will not go without retribution. Retribution is not about what people want, but about what is owed between us as human beings. In his book, Debating the Death Penalty, Louis P. Pojman defines retributivism as “the theory that the criminal deserves to be punished and deserves to be punished in proportion to the gravity of his or her crime, whether or not the victim or anyone else desires it”. Pojman argues that if society does not punish people in proportion to the crime they have committed, the public could lose faith in the justice system or even go as far as to take the matter of punishment into their own hands. Again, it is not about what is desired by the people, but about what is owed between them for the public good. Just as any action has an equal and opposite reaction, any crime committed should have a swift and proportionate response of justice. |