The Pros And Cons Of Short-Term Deterrence

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Short-term deterrence works in the here and now, moments such as a murderer just had the death sentence carried out deterring that criminal from acting again and spreading a fresh fear through other criminal minds of the risk that is in play with committing certain criminal acts against society. The short-term deterrence acts more like a word of caution, causing offenders and citizens alike to think or re-evaluate before doing due to the fear of death. Long-term deterrence, also known as general prevention, is more of a concept that must be true in order for the concept of deterrence to work within individuals and work in society and criminals alike. That concept is “that the existence of the death penalty for a crime has a ‘moralizing’ influence on people’s perceptions of the gravity of the crime, …show more content…

Based on public opinion and facts of this side, “the death penalty process consumes tremendous amounts of money and resources and fails to deter criminal activity” (Ballaro and Cushman, 2016). The people do not want to see tax money squandered on such a fruitless endeavor, instead send the person to jail for life and be done with it. The people believe this view even more so, because of the belief that putting a murderer to death is, in fact, a hypocritical act and makes a murder out of the system and all who played a role in doing so, making the prosecutors no better than the convicted. While the death penalty prevents one murderer from killing again, it created countless more proving that the capital punishment is a useless deterrent all in all. This point of view and belief is the opposing side’s view to capital punishment’s acting as a

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