It's Time to Abolish the Death Penalty

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Recommended: The death penalty ethics

The death penalty has been around since the beginning of time as a means of punishing criminals, undisputed until the last century or so in terms of whether or not it is an ethical practice. The proponents for the death penalty offer up its ability to deter crime as their main reason for supporting it, their view supported by a functionalist sociological view in that using the death penalty, enough fear will be generated that people will refrain from committing the types of crime that the death penalty is applicable to (Schaefer, 2009). Another reason for favoring it are of an emotional nature; if a person commits a crime of a particularly horrible nature, many may feel that they deserve the death penalty, feeling that “an eye for an eye” is befitting for such a case (Jillette, Teller, & Price, 2006). It should be asked though, is emotional response and a theory of deterrence enough to justify the use of the death penalty? In this paper, I will answer that question and others.

The answer to the question of whether or not the death penalty deters crime is no, it does not. For one, the fear of possibly being sentenced to death isn’t nearly enough to stop a crime from happening. Philosophy professor and Holocaust survivor Agnes Heller, who appeared on the “Death Penalty” episode of “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” to argue against the death penalty, points out that there are different motives for those types of crimes where the convicted could be sentenced to death: there are crimes of passion, crimes for profit, and crimes for pleasure (such as a serial killer fulfilling their fantasy), and that in all of these circumstances, the desire to go forward with the crime is strong enough that they either don’t care about the consequ...

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...uch of a risk to keep it around. Instead of executing them, if our convicted murderers must die, let them do so in prison, where life is harsh and a living hell. I believe that kind of life is ample punishment alone.

Works Cited

Jillette, P., Teller (Producers), & Price, S. (Director). (2006). Penn & Teller: Bullshit! - The Death Penalty [Television Show]. United States: Showtime.

Johnson, R., & Tabriz, S. (2011). Sentencing Children to Death by Incarceration: A Deadly Denial of Social Responsibility. Prison Journal, 91(2), 198-206. doi: 10.1177/0032885511403591

Schaefer, R.T. (2009) Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill

Thornburgh, N. (2010). Resumed Innocent. Time, 175(21), 26-31. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Use of the Death Penalty Worldwide. (2004). International Debates, 2(2), 34-64. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

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