The Pros And Cons Of Capital Punishment

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Through capital punishment, we as a society bring the criminals that commit heinous crimes to what the government deems as justice. However, the individuals who contemplate and commit heinous crimes are no longer deterred by the threat of capital punishment. Accordingly, we may reach the conclusion that Lempert asserts in his Michigan Law review, “Desert and Deterrence”: “The threat of death can only deter potential criminals who [at least] loosely calculate the cost and rewards of their behavior” (Lempert). In what follows, I will argue that the individuals of our society that are criminals or potential criminals are no longer deterred by capital punishment due to the further harsher punishment of life-imprisonment and the literal decline of the societies which use the death penalty as a punishment. Does capital punishment, the forfeit of death for a wrongdoing, still work as a deterrence, to hinder or prevent, criminal wrong doings? Through surveys and research, eighty-eight percent of the leading criminologist have found that the common belief of capital punishment being a deterrent has lost support among society (Radelet and Lacock). If society in a mass consensus no longer supports the death penalty in its true nature, then society in a minimum consensus, the criminals, will also no longer view it as a deterrent. This poses a natural …show more content…

Furthermore, as a reason-capable race, we are morally obligated to search for and apply alternatives in which create the same ending to the initial problem without scarifying our moral integrity. Because of the Humanitarian theory, we can differ between the moral standpoints and then apply the selected moral standpoint to the alternative options. The Humanitarian theory states that if we exact a punishment on man for revenge, it is ill-moral, however, if it is to deter the rest of man from making the same mistake, it is acceptable

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