Capital Punishment Essay: The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty
Offenders given mandatory life in prison on charges of murder, on average only serve 16 years before being released back into society. One in three of these killers carries out a second murder even under the supervision of the probation officer.1 If we allow murderers to spend life in prison we run the chance of them getting out and killing again. Capital punishment can also deter future perpetrators from committing such a heinous crime, and it will end the prisoner’s suffering by giving them a humane death and give closure to the victim’s family. Without a concrete meaning of “life in prison” we need the death penalty to put an end to the most evil of people.
“Life should mean life.” This is what the family of the victim

If an action would run a high risk of getting yourself killed, you might think twice before committing such an act. If taking one guilty life can save even one innocent life, it’s doing its job. In 1973, Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis that produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, seven lives were spared due to deterrence.3 Deterring a future killer from taking a life does not only save that victim's life, but it might also save the would be killer’s life. They might see how committing this one act would literally end their own life, and because the fear of death looms over everyone, they may refrain from doing

Using capital punishment would put an end to the killer’s suffering, and let him leave the world peacefully. With the death penalty in place, the victim’s family can finally get closure. Families that have been through the intense experience of losing a loved one might call for lex talionis, or eye for an eye. They could believe that the killer took their loved one from them and the only acceptable recourse would be to take the murderer’s life. This retaliation for the family might be the most important reason to instill the death penalty in today’s