Costs For Capital Punishment example essay topic
The reason why this issue never been solved is because there is no right answer to the question. It's up to every person to decide what ever they believe is the right or most appropriate penalty for murder. Even the States disagree on this issue. There is an obvious characteristic between the States that favor and disfavor the death penalty. The Southern States tend to favor the penalty compared to the Northern States. There are 37 States that have Capital punishment and 82% of all executions since 1976 have occurred in Southern States.
In New England, only Connecticut still enforces capital punishment. Does it really affect the criminals of the society? Does it really work as a deterrence to commit crimes? Unfortunately the answer is NO.
The States who implemented capital punishments have shown no trends of decreased crime rate. In Florida, the murder rates have increased the last three years even though an increases number of people have been executed over the same time period. So, if it not deters crime, why continue to follow the same path. An answer to that is that it still makes people feel more relaxed and secured when they know their State gives the criminals death penalty. The difference between the costs of executing a person compared to give him / her a life time sentence is incredible.
The State of Kansas made a survey comparing the costs in 2004, which demonstrated that capital punishment is many times more expensive. For example, the investigation costs are 3 times greater, the trial cost is 16 times greater, the appeal cost is 21 times greater and finally it takes an average of 34 days in a capital punishment trial compared to 9 days in a non-death trial (according to DPIC). As we can see the main factor that brings up the costs for capital punishment is not the execution itself, it is the trial process. This is 1 of the 2 main argument people use when trying to argue against it. The second argument is, when the person convicted is innocent and new facts come up after the execution. When person is convicted to life time, he / she can always be let out, if new evidence comes up.
For me this is just an argument that I totally don't believe in, first of all, people convicted to capital punishment are in death row of an average of 7 years. If no new evidence is shown within seven years there is a little chance that the final conviction was wrong. This issue will continue to be argued for ages, without a total satisfaction of all the people on Earth. My personal point of view is that capital punishment is a well deserved penalty, for people who commit murder and other serious crimes. No one deserves the right to live after taking someone else's life, when you reach the point when you are able to kill someone you don't contribute anything to the society anymore. I believe it will help the family and friends of the victim to quicker get through the grieving process.