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Putting to death people who have been judge to commit certain extremely
heinous crimes is a practice of ancient standing. But in the United States, in
the latter half of the twentieth century, it has become a very controversial
issue. Changing views on this difficult issue led the Supreme Court to abolish
capital punishment in 1972 but later turned to uphold it again in 1977, with
certain conditions. Indeed, restoring capital punishment is the will of the
people, yet many voices have been raised against it. Heated public debate has
centered on questions of deterrence, public safety, sentencing equality, and the
execution of innocents, among others. One argument states that the death penalty
does not deter murder. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis would require
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 have the
death penalty, have higher crime rates than those that do not. And that a more
sever punishment only inspires more sever crimes. But every state in the union
is different. These differences include population, the number of cities, and
the crime rate. Urbanized states are more likely to have higher crime rates than
states that are more rural. The states that have capital punishment have it
because of their high crime rate, not the other way around. In 1985, a study was
published by economist Stephen K. Layson, at the University of North Carolina,
that showed that every execution of a murderer deters, on average of 18 murders.
The study also showed that raising the number of death sentences by only one
percent would prevent 105 murders.
However, only 38 percent of all murder cases
result in a death sentence, and of those, only 0.1 percent are actually
executed. During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972 -
1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. Researcher Karl
Spence of Texas A&M University came up with these statistics, in 1960, there
were 56 executions in the United States 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 years without
executions, 20,510 murders occurred. So the number of murders grew as the number
of executions shrank. Spence 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 been 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. And in Texas, the highest murder rate in Houston (Harris
County) occurred in 1981 with 701 murders. Since Texas reinstated the death
penalty in 1982, Harris County has executed more murderers than any other city
or state in the union and has seen the greatest reduction in murder from 701 in
1981 down to 261 in 1996 - a 63% reduction, representing a 270% differential.
Also, in the 1920s and 30s, death penalty advocates were known to refer to
England as a means of proving capital punishment's deterrent effect. Back then,
at least 120 murderers were executed every year in the United States and
sometimes the number reached 200.
Even then, England used the death penalty far
more consistently than we did and their overall murder rate was smaller than any
one of our major cities at the time. Now, since England abolished capital
punishment about released killers have murdered thirty years ago, the murder
rate has subsequently doubled there and 75 English citizens. 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 the United States for decades, so abolitionists have
been able to establish the delusion that it does not 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. There is not 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.
Abolitionists claim that there are alternatives to the death penalty. They say
that life in prison without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore
all the murders criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and
other inmates, and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape. According to
the United States Department of Justice, the average prison sentence served for
murder is five years and eleven months. But just putting a murderer away for
life is not good enough. Laws change, so do parole boards, and people forget the
past. Those are things that cause life imprisonment to weather away. As long as
the murderer lives, there is always a chance, no matter how small, that he will
strike again. This is why for people who truly value public safety; there is no
substitute for the best in its defense, which is capital punishment.
It not only
forever bars the murderer from killing again, it also prevents parole boards and
criminal rights activists from giving him the chance to repeat his crime. There
are those that state that capital punishment is unfair to people of other races,
classes, or mental abilities. I say that these aspects are not an issue. Murder
has no color, class, or IQ. A murderer is a murderer. When a loved one is
killed, I doubt anyone could take comfort in the fact that the perpetrator had a
low IQ, was black instead of white, or poor instead of rich. 1991 Rand
Corporation studies by Stephen Klein found that white murderers received the
death penalty slightly more often (32%) than non-white murderers (27%). And
while the study found murderers of white victims received the death penalty more
often (32%) than murderers of non-white victims (23%), when controlled for
variables such as severity and number of crimes committed, there is no disparity
between those sentenced to death for killing white or black victims. Also,
doesn't the fact that the death penalty is optional make it seem more prone to
racial discrimination? It has been called racist since a prosecutor can seek a
death sentence against an African-American for capital crime but not a white
person for the same offense.
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