Capital Punishment - A Deterrent to Crime?

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

download word file, 1 pages 0.0

Downloaded 30 times

Is capital punishment a deterrent to crime? Some believe it is while others strongly believe other wise. The decision to kill a human being simply has to do with morals. It's a battle between justice and morality. If one opinion is more right than the other is all in the person's mindset. Either way, it's controversial.

There are many people who agree that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. Those who agree say that the death penalty takes one more person off the street so that he or she can't commit such a heinous act again. If the death penalty were instated more heavily then repeat offenders would think twice about what they are doing. By applying the capital punishment sentence to serious criminals, we are keeping them from infesting the nation's penitentiary systems.

Those against the death penalty think killing another human being just because he or she made a mistake is wrong.

We are supposed to be a society that respects human life; deliberately killing human being contradicts what many citizens of other countries envy. Since our judicial system isn't perfect, innocent people have been facing capital punishment for years, even decades. Capital punishment is a waste of resources. It wastes time and energy of courts, judges and money. If these people are given a second chance they can learn from their mistakes.

In 1984, there were 21 executions, the first time since 1964 for execution rates to reach double digits. Eight years late, in 1992, the executions rate more than doubled to 31 from 14 in 1991. By 2002, 71 people in 13 states were executed. Of the people executed, 53 of them white and 18 of them were black. Lethal injection accounted for 70 of the executions. At the end of 2002, 37 state and...