Death
Sentence to Furthermore Crimes
Proposition for the Death Penalty
Submitted to: Mr. Garrioch
By: Lee Jun Suk (Seok)
Student ID: 111111
For: English Composition
On: Monday, June 11th, 2012
We may feel the sense of horror and cruelty as the
first impression towards the word ‘death penalty’. The action, killing a
person, involved in this word gives us the sense that such proposition is
barbaric and unethical. However, more rational approach beyond our emotional
impression is required to see the real nature of this problem. Considering the effects
that the death penalty towards the first-degree murderers will bring to our
society, such as bringing upright order of the society, deterring the future
crimes, and reducing the burden of the society for keeping a prisoner,
proposition is reasonable and thus should be adapted to our society.
First of all, the death penalty benefits the society
in the aspect that it brings upright order of the society. J. Budziszewki,
Professor of Government and Philosophy at the Univerisity of Texas, speaks
clearly about this point:
"Society
is justly ordered when each person receives what is due to him. Crime disturbs
this just order, for the criminal takes from people their lives, peace,
liberties, and worldly goods in order to give himself undeserved benefits.
Deserved punishment protects society morally by restoring this just order,
making the wrongdoer pay a price equivalent to the harm he has done. This is
retribution, not to be confused with revenge, which is guided by a different
motive. In retribution the spur is the virtue of indignation, which answers
injury with injury for public good.”(Budziszewki)
The purpose of punishment in some perspective is to
give the suspected one the fair price for his action. If one does not get
adequate penalty, it would harm the just order of the society. Some
counter-argument for this statement will be provided in the manner that the
death penalty will just play as a revenging tool, but the death penalty, which
is retribution of the crime, is different from revenge in the aspect that
retribution is acted until punishment is fair while revenge is acted until
grievance is vanished. Also the aspect that the goal of retribution is to
achieve just order of the society while goal of revenge is to achieve one’s
pleasure makes the difference. Thus, the death penalty should be done in the
manner of retribution of the crime in order to bring just order within the society.
Second, the death penalty fulfills a responsibility
to protect the lives of innocent citizens, and enacting the death penalty may
save lives by reducing the rate of violent crime. In recent years, there were
some cases where the imprisoned first-degree murderers came back to the society
and committed revenge to the family of victims for putting him in jail. The
victims of the crime will live in fear of meeting again the criminal if the
criminal has a chance of coming back to the society. The opposition, the
advocates of the murderers’ rights, has to think about threatened human rights
and endangered lives of victims before claiming human rights of murderers. In
addition, the death penalty benefits the society by contributing in reducing the crime rate. For the case of
Kansas, the murder rates per 100,000 inhabitants slowly reduced from 6.7 in
1994 to 3.5 in 2010 as they started the execution of the death penalty in 1994.
The case of New York clearly shows the effect of death penalty as it is the
state where it adopted death penalty in 1995 and ended the death penalty in
2007. The murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants in New York was increasing from
9.5 in 1985 to 13.3 in 1993. As it adopted the death penalty at 1995, it
experienced gradual decrease from 8.5 in 1995 to 4.5 in 2010. The opposition
for death penalty claims that it will have no impact in eliminating the further
crimes, since one does not really think of death sentence he will get in the
moment he commits a crime, but the result clearly shows the success of death
penalty. The reason for this success can be found out in the social atmosphere
it creates. Once the death penalty is announced within the society, the social
atmosphere towards crimes will become very cold thus awakening collective
intelligence for the murders. Not only statistics show the evidence of
effectiveness of death penalty, but also the researches show the evidence. “I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said
H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a
study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a
deterrent effect.”(Liptak)
Last but not least, the death penalty lessens
the burdens of the society that occurs from keeping more prisoners. If death
penalty is not on its place, more funding should be made for keeping murderers
at prisons. "We particularly need the
support and cooperation of the legislature with the immediate funding and
implementation of AB 109," California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matthew Cate said in a
statement (Martinez). Also, the director of Shrewsbury prison, Juliet
Lyon, said: "Simply building
more prisons is an expensive dead end. The only way to reserve prison for
serious and violent offenders is to cut out all unnecessary use of breach and
remand and tackle sentence inflation and the growth of indeterminate
punishments (The Guardian). As more people commit crimes and therefore the demand
for rooms for prisoners at instant moment is increasing at a great slope, some
policy should be done about this problem. Not only spaces are the problems, but
also the financial support for prisoners’ food is a considerable problem. We
have to give them sufficient amount of food each day, and the financial burden
of the society occurs at this moment. This money is based on the taxes gathered
from innocent citizens, so the increase in the burden of society means the
increase in the burden of innocent citizens right away. Death policy can solve
out this two problems right away.
Opposition of the death penalty always argues
that death policy is harming the basic human rights of the people by getting
away their lives without their free wills. Yes, the death policy may indeed be
killing a person. However, we have to think about the preventative role it will
play for the society. People including victims don’t have to live in fear for
meeting previous murderers, enjoy better lives with less murder rates, can
spend less money for making the living for murderers. Considering the death
penalty in those senses, I
think the death penalty should be adapted in our society for less crime, for
better future.
References
Martinez, Michael. “California
officials: We'll fix prison crowding, won't free 33,000.” CNN, 24 May 2011.
The Guardian. “Two-thirds of prisons
overcrowded.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2009.
Budziszewski. “Capital Punishment: The Case for Justice," OrthodoxyToday.org,
Aug. 2004.
Liptak, Adam. “Does Death Penalty Save
Lives? A New Debate.” The New York Times, 18 Nov. 2007.
