Does The Death Penalty Deter Murder

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Recommended: Essays on what religion says about the death penalty

• Does the death penalty deter murder?
• Does it deter murder more than life without parole?
The debate on whether the death penalty deters murder or not is long-standing. Looking at both views on the death penalty gives insight on why it remains a relevant debate. Deterrence is one of the primary objects of the criminal law. Its primary goal is to discourage members of society from committing criminal acts out of fear of punishment. Capital punishment is a criminal, philosophical, social, and often cultural issue.
From the view of people against the death penalty, scientific studies continuously fail to demonstrate that the death penalty deters people from committing capital crimes any more than prison sentences. States without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate. The death penalty is an arbitrary conviction because a person can be tried for a crime in one place and is given the death penalty, and a person in another state only receives 20 years in prison for the same crime. In 2009, a …show more content…

The death penalty is seen as a deterrent to crime i.e. murder and punishes people for their wrong doing. Pro- death penalty people believe that the conviction scares people from actually committing capital crimes. A theory that criminal laws are passed with well-defined punishments to discourage individual criminal defendants from becoming repeat offenders and to discourage others in society from engaging in similar criminal activity. Taking away the death penalty would not decrease the amount of murders attempted. The link between views on the death penalty and religion is concurrent, as capital punishment deals with great existential questions: life and death, morality and sin, all issues which religion tries to comprehend and explain. Bible phrases are used a lot of time when defending the use of the death

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