Death Penalty example essay topic

489 words
The fear of death has always been a strong deterrent from doing highly immoral actions. This may be viewed as a bad example, however even organized criminals agree on this fact. In crime families the occasional murder of someone, who did not follow the rules serves as a reminder to other members of that family to obey the rules under the risk of death. In all fairness, even crime families do not use the death penalty too often.

The punishment for breaking the rules usually involved some form of physical pain or banishment in a way that would truly stick with the criminal for years to come and teach them to never double cross anyone again. For this reason having a real threat, which the death penalty is, for the crimes committed for juveniles is a beneficial thing. It is also a deterrent. It punishment options will be taken away, no matter how harsh, the peoples hands will be tied.

For this reason, a lot of people believe that the death penalty should be an option for juvenile criminals, because if it is used correctly and in cooperation with other types of punishments it will be effective against deterring crime, which has been proved. In my opinion, it is not a humanistic way to sentence people to the death row. I think if a person had committed a number of murders, still it is not fair to take away this persons life, for the reason that life was given to a person by God and should be taken away by God only. Besides, it is much better not to execute 100 criminals and sentence them to prison for a life term than to execute single innocent person. I think that by age of 16 juveniles should understand at least what can happen with their lives (spending the rest of life in jail is not a good option) if there even was no death penalty. If one of many supporters of the death penalty would imagine being sentenced to death penalty, while being innocent, I think this would change this persons view on this issue.

The increasing effectiveness of the system and the development of criminal science gives new and more complete evidences on whether a person is guilty or not, however, I think that we still are far from perfection. Nevertheless, I agree on the point that dead murderer will never commit a crime again, but I think it is more important to improve the system of justice in such a way that there would be no need for the death penalty in the future. Sources: Column, Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 2002 web Moses Harrison II, Illinois Supreme Court Justice, writing regarding a 1998 appeal of a Death Row inmate, as quoted in Chicago Tribune series, Nov. 14, 1999 web web.