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Restorative justice vs the criminal justice system
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Dale Johnston, who is now 82, was sentenced to death in 1984 for shooting his stepdaughter and fiancé. However, the case was built on police and prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence so it fell apart on appeal and Johnston was a free man. The real killer confessed to killing the two teens and was sentenced life in prison. Dale Johnston is suing the state for damages for serving close to seven years on death row for a horrible murder that he did not commit. Since 1773, 144 people on death row have been exonerated. At one time or another most countries have used the death penalty to deal with criminals. It was used to punish people who broke the laws or what was expected of them. The death Penalty goes back a long way. The first established …show more content…
We could then use the all the extra money on services like hiring more law enforcement and helping the victim’s family. Usually life without parole is a horrible experience you grow old and hardly have privileges so that is where I would make a few changes. If the prisoner is on good behavior after at least two years they should have access to certain programs. One of the programs I would recommend is restorative justice if the victim is up for it. Restorative justice is when both the victim and offender come together to discuss the crime, its aftermath and the steps needed to make things right. Not only does it give the victim a great voice in the justice system it also allows them to revive an explanation and meaningful apology from the offender. Other programs could be offered to them like education or learning new skills such as keyboarding, wood working and painting. America needs to abolish Capital Punishment not only is it expensive, but its barbaric, ineffective in lowering crime and it’s taken too many innocent lives. How can we send out the message that killing is wrong and then go and punish the person by taking their lives. Death as punishment for death is not the
Even the worst crimes should not be paid with the simple escape of death. The death penalty costs far more than a life sentence, though it seems like the opposite would be true. With the multiple appeals and trials and relocations, it’s millions down the drain. According to deathpenalty.org it costs taxpayers $90,000 more a year to maintain a death row prisoner versus maintaining a prisoner in general population. Add in the cost of execution depending on the method, $24 million for each electrocution in Florida, at least $86 per lethal injection, around $25,000 for a fire squad execution,(deathpenaltyinfo.org) and it’s even more for a quick end.
Instead of prisoners just sitting in a cell doing nothing, why not put them to work, "Every inmate that works saves taxpayers $5,000 a year"(Smith). There are prisoners that work in greenhouses, that generated $57 million in revenue. As budget cuts rise working prisoners become more and more valuable. Inmates are finding ways to save money by recycling there old mattress, that would of end up in landfills. Some prisons even have their inmates help clean up dirty parks around them. While the prisoners are doing this they are learning skills , that will help them with different jobs. Prisoners that do a good job get rewarded with money bonuses. Prisoners learning how to be more responsible and understand how to become a better person will help them in the up coming future. With the prisoners getting paid for bonuses for good work this will make it feel as if it’s a real job. The experience that the inmates are receiving will help them with jobs once they are released from prison. Prisoners will strive to do better with the bonuses they are receiving, and will understand again what its like work. Now with this happening this will ensure the prisoners will have a better and healthier
There are major problems with our criminal justice system. In the last one hundred years, there have been more than 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. According to a 1987 Stanford University survey, at least 23 Americans have been wrongly executed in the 20th century. For this very reason, the State of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the state?s death penalty in 2000 when it was discovered that 13 inmates on its Death Row were wrongly convicted. Anthony Porter, one of the 13, spent 15 years on Death Row and was within two days of being executed, before a group of Northwestern journalism students uncovered evidence that was used to prove his innocence.
One alternative to the death penalty is rehabilitation. Prisons in Louisiana should not be viewed solely as confinement for inmates, but as a last resort for those looking to make serious life changes, even if they are condemned to life in prison. Since prisons are rapidly reaching maximum capacity, the government should really be looking to reform its current statutes to provide a rehabilitation center for criminals and provide a safer environment for all involved in the prison system. Prisons that have implemented rehabilitation programs such as The Second Chance Program have documented a 10% decrease in criminal recidivism. In turn, fewer prisoners are coming through the judicial system. Prisoners that desire to once again become contributing members of society should be urged to do so, and should be given the necessary materials in order to achieve this. Rehabilitation can also include things like job training and education. Statistics show that well educated criminals are less likely to relapse into a life of crime and are more likely to continue using their learned skills, even if they have been granted life without parole.
We also need to concentrate on programs and treatment facilities that can be utilized instead of sending people to prison. This can and has been done. When Ronald Reagan was governor, he reduced the prison system by 30 percent, mainly through sentencing reforms (Price). We cannot simply look for a quick and easy solution to this problem, such as releasing prisoners early. We need to start at the bottom, figure out how we got to this point, and address the problem there.
The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an mistake, the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live. Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Moreover, 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 (Death Penalty
It is the firm belief and position here that committing such a crime as murder is punishable by death. Americans should take a position for anyone on death row, to be executed sooner rather than later.
Sixty-eight prisoners were executed in the United States in 1998, bring the total for an even five hundred since the death penalty was resumed in 1977. Over 3500 prisoners were under the sentence of death as off April 1, 1999. Thirty-eight of the fifty US states now provide for the death penalty law. The death penalty is also provided under the US military and civilian law.
The death penalty continues to be an issue of controversy and is an issue that will be debated in the United States for many years to come. According to Hugo A. Bedau, the writer of “The Death Penalty in America”, capital punishment is the lawful infliction of the death penalty. The death penalty has been used since ancient times for a variety of offenses. The Bible says that death should be done to anyone who commits murder, larceny, rapes, and burglary. It appears that public debate on the death penalty has changed over the years and is still changing, but there are still some out there who are for the death penalty and will continue to believe that it’s a good punishment. I always hear a lot of people say “an eye for an eye.” Most people feel strongly that if a criminal took the life of another, their’s should be taken away as well, and I don’t see how the death penalty could deter anyone from committing crimes if your going to do the crime then at that moment your not thinking about being on death role. I don’t think they should be put to death they should just sit in a cell for the rest of their life and think about how they destroy other families. A change in views and attitudes about the death penalty are likely attributed to results from social science research. The changes suggest a gradual movement toward the eventual abolition of capital punishment in America (Radelet and Borg, 2000).
The death penalty has been around since the time of Jesus Christ. Executions have been recorded from the 1600s to present times. From about 1620, the executions by year increased in the US. It has been a steady increase up until the 1930s; later the death penalty dropped to zero in the 1970s and then again rose steadily. US citizens said that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was believed that it was "cruel and unusual" punishment (Amnesty International). In the 1970s, the executions by year dropped between zero and one then started to rise again in the 1980s. In the year 2000, there were nearly one hundred executions in the US (News Batch). On June 29, 1972, the death penalty was suspended because the existing laws were no longer convincing. However, four years after this occurred, several cases came about in Georgia, Florida, and Texas where lawyers wanted the death penalty. This set new laws in these states and later the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Amnesty International).
Almost all nations in the world either have the death sentence or have had it at one time. It was used in most cases to punish those who broke the laws or standards that were expected of them. Since the death penalty wastes tax money, is inhumane, and is largely unnecessary it should be abolished in every state across the United States. The use of the death penalty puts the United States in the same category as countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia which are two of the world’s worst human rights violators (Friedman 34). Lauri Friedman quotes, “Executions simply inject more violence into an already hostile American society.”
Capital punishment has long been a topic for heated debate throughout the United States of America and the civilized world. For many politicians, the death penalty has been a key pillar to winning a state or election; and, to some extent, politics have been a key influence in America’s justice system. Many nations have outlawed capital punishment, with the United States included between 1972 and 1976. In the United States, there has been a renewed movement for this “eye for an eye” method, citing such arguments as “deterrence” and “victims’ rights.” This movement begs a single question – is there any economical, legal, or statistical support for the ultimate punishment? This article will strive to answer that question by evaluating several key issues (be they supporting or otherwise) concerning capital punishment – the legitimacy of ‘deterrence,’ the legality of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause, and the cost associated with putting a man to death in relation to the cost associated with life imprisonment.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States, only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. Laws in the United States have changed drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium.
The first reason why death penalty should be allowed and get more active is life sentence is costly. According to “What is the Average Cost to House Inmates in Prison”, the average cost of housing an inmate in the U.S. was $31,286 in 2012 for per year. According to the “Who, what, where and why”, the United States has roughly 2.4 million people in prisons. Therefore, the money which America pays to keep prisoners who are in prisons is about $75120000000 for per year.
If a criminal is sentenced to life in jail, then the cost of their imprisonment would be many times this. In the USA, the average cost per prisoner annually in jail is $29,000. The cost of the drugs used for the lethal injection is believed to be $86.08. This is far less than the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail, and would save the government money that could be used to try and make the community a better and safer place. Secondly, many believe that capital punishment is right because of the justice given to the victim’s family.