Do you think that the abolition of the death penalty would increase or decrease murders?
I think it would decrease the number of murders commited because the death penalty sends a very wrong message: that it's OK sometimes to kill people for revenge.
If the death penalty was outlawed, the message would be much better: it is NEVER OK to kill somebody.
Answers:
Abolishing the death penalty would bring the USA into line with the rest of the industrialized, civilized world, as would stiffening our laws concerning the legal use and possession of firearms by the general populace.
Our culture of casual violence and slavish adherence to neo-conservative ideology sustains the environment in which murder flourishes, both criminal and legalized.
They would decrease, since the death penalty is basicly murder.
As far as having a deterrent affect, abolitioning it won't change anything.
Reality shows something completely different. While the US put a hold on death penalties, the murder rate sky rocketed. When the death penalty came back, the murder rate rapidly dropped. There is clearly a major deterrence factor involved.
Further, studies show that EACH death sentance prevents up to SIXTEEN murders.
Since we have some states with the death penalty and some without, there is some supporting data to your theory. The numbers say that states without a death penalty have fewer murders.
Neither. Do the research. There is almost no apprecaible change in crime rates with or without the death penalty.
Do you understand how many people are actually put to death each year? Like a few hundred. That's out of MILLIONS of people going through our legal system.
Well, how about the term Quid-pro-Quo? If the death penalty is abolished, murderers would be sentenced to life and not worry about death themselves.
I see the death penalty as more of a defense than revenge. I don't want that murderer coming after me or my children. If you put them in jail for life there is a chance they could escape or fall through the cracks and be released.
I dont think taking away the death penalty would change anything.
I am am criminal justice major and it has been proven that after a execution the murder rate actually increases.Therefore i believe that the abolition of the death penelty would more then likely decrease murders
Overall, I'm not sure there would be an effect on the murder rate...however, I would feel much safer if we stepped up on executions. Like it or not folks, the only way to remove someone who is detrimental to society from society is to kill them. Incarceration allows for even the smallest possibliity of escape and repeated offenses...and even for the murder of other inmates and prison workers. The death penalty is not cruel...and I'm not sure it's even a deterrent...but it is fair.
It is a proven statistical fact that the murder rate is much higher in those states that do have and use the death penalty, so therefore, it is a forgone conclusion that murder rates would indeed go down.....not only that, but according to the F B I statistics, 9% of those who are executed in the US are innocent.
The pathetic excuse for a death penalty in this country has allowed murder, drug use, and gang violence to flourish in the United States.
What happens when the cops catch a gang member accused of a crime as serious as robbery, mugging, theft, assault, rape, or even murder? Best case, he gets shut up in prison, which is basically Violent Crime University. He gets to spend each day all day with other violent offenders. For reasons that are not mysterious, he doesn't have any reason to change his ways when he gets out. If anything, he pledges allegiance to some prison gang and becomes an even more hardcore criminal by the time he gets out. The prisons are over crowded, so offenders get out early and hit the streets, primed and ready to show the state its punishment was a joke.
Let's wake up. The streets of cities are OWNED by gangs. Those gangs flourish because we're too soft to put coldblooded murderers and rapists in their graves. When we do try to give them the death penalty, our joke that we claim to be a justice system gives them an absurd number of expensive appeals, so it actually cost more to put 'em down than it does to incarcerate them.
If they are an immigrant and we export them after they break our laws, then they go back to their own countries and bring their violent tenancies and gang violence with them.
Do you know what China did to the guy who took bribes to allow food to be contaminated? It executed him almost immediately. That's justice, because the blood of all the people (and pets) that died is on him for his corruption. Do you know what China does to drug traffickers? It kills them, so they will not spread their poison to China's people and its children. China's not a perfect place, but the criminals gotta be afraid of the law there, and that's how it should be.
Criminals need to fear justice or else crime will escalate. You know what I see? More murders every year in the streets in my hometown. It makes me SICK.
THE FINAL WORD: How the HELL are criminals going to fear justice if the worst that's going to happen to them is going to the universities of violent crimes that are our overcrowded jails?
No reputable study has shown the death penatly to act as a deterrent. The key word is reputable. (For more on this, see http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.
Data on executions and homicide rates, available at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org, and at an FBI website, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offenses/s... show that homicide rates are higher in states and regions with the death penalty than in those without it.
At least one of your answerers doesn't know about life without parole. It means exactly what it says, is sure and swift (both necessary for a punishment to act a deterrent) while the death penalty is neither. Spending the rest of one's life locked in a tiny cell in a supermax is not a picnic. Life without parole also costs much less than the death penalty with its complicated legal processes.
I was pro-death penalty for a long time, but I have changed my stance over the years, for several reasons:
1. By far the most compelling is this: Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong. Look at all the people who have been released after years of imprisonment because they were exonerated by DNA evidence. Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not available in most cases. No matter how rare it is, the government should not risk executing one single innocent person.
Really, that should be reason enough for most people. If you need more, read on:
2. Because of the extra expense of prosecuting a DP case and the appeals process (which is necessary - see reason #1), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute prisoners than to imprison them for life.
3. To address your point, the deterrent effect is questionable at best. In the U.S., violent crime rates are actually HIGHER in death penalty states. This may seem counterintuitive, and there are many theories about why this is (Ted Bundy saw it as a challenge, so he chose Florida – the most active execution state at the time – to carry out his final murder spree). Personally, I think it has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against murder…by killing people. The government becomes the bad parent who says, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’
4. There’s also an argument to be made that death is too good for the worst of our criminals. Let them wake up and go to bed every day of their lives in a prison cell, and think about the freedom they DON’T have, until they rot of old age. When Ted Bundy was finally arrested in 1978, he told the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.”
5. The U.S. government is supposed to be secular, but for those who invoke Christian law in this debate, you can find arguments both for AND against the death penalty in the Bible. For example, Matthew 5:38-39 insists that violence shall not beget violence. James 4:12 says that God is the only one who can take a life in the name of justice. Leviticus 19:18 warns against vengeance (which, really, is what the death penalty amounts to). In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
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