Paper Topic:

Capital Punishment

The death penalty

December 13 , 2006

Abstract . The aim of this essay is to provide evidence against the death penalty in the United States . We will review the main arguments used by the supporters of the capital punishment in the US : deterrence and `justice for victims ' relatives . We will see that deterrence is far from being a proven fact and it is also questionable from a moral point of view . And we think that the principle `revenge is justice ' is not acceptable for a modern society

Introduction . Is the death penalty

a right and a duty for a society , in to protect the citizens from violence ? Is it reasonable to punish a murder through another murder ? Positive answers to such questions have been considered obvious until the eighteenth century and the rise of Illuminism . The death penalty is still currently accepted in more that 20 countries , including democratic nations like the United States Japan and India . US is by far the democracy with the largest number of executions (we classify democratic countries according to the organization Freedom House : for example , there have been 60 executions in the United States during 2005 (ref . 3 , only one in Japan and in India

The next table shows the number of executions in the US , between 1977 and 2004 (source : www .deathpenaltyinfo .org

The deterrence . A frequently employed argument in support of the death penalty is the `deterrence . The following is a typical example : If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect , we have killed a bunch of murderers . If we fail to execute murderers , and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders , we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims . I would much rather risk the former . This , to me , is not a tough call (John McAdams - Marquette University /Department of Political Sciences . This reasoning is incorrect for several reasons . The first problem is that it supports a `probabilistic ' approach to the administration of justice , where the punishment is also a function of something that might happen . And if the execution has to serve as an example to the others , to the potential murderers , then the logical consequence would be to adopt the policy of Saudi Arabia (and other nations : executions are public , everybody can (and should ) see how it works , even children

As a matter of fact , it is very difficult , if not impossible , to determine whether the deterrence effect exists , and how significant it is . For example , France has abolished the death penalty in 1981 and the number of murders has actually increased during the decade 1980-1990 with respect to 1970-1980 . However , the same is true for Italy and Germany , where there was no death penalty during the seventies Considering the social , economic and cultural similarities between those countries , it seems that there is no direct and significant relation permitting to prove the deterrence hypothesis . The same kind of comparative statistics gives the same results when applied to the...

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