Death Penalty Issues - Essay Example

Death Penalty Death Penalty At all cost, death penalty should never be permitted as it acts against not only all religious believes but also cultural ones. It is in every human’s conscious mind that killing is wrong and guilt befalls anyone who does it regardless of the reasoning behind it. The state therefore is no different. The best way to punish for crimes is not capital punishment. Killing someone who has killed is just making an addition to the number of deaths. After all, it would not mean the end of crime. For a fact therefore, death punishment only makes the situation worse while there are optional punishments that can be incorporated and that are worse. The turmoil experienced in prison makes the place a hellhole and is good enough to serve as punishment for the law breakers. The only life giver-and-taker is believed to be God in terms of religion. Anyone who takes away life therefore, including the owner, serves as a sinner as per the Decalogue. Involving death as a form of punishment therefore is not even close to the right way of correcting. Across all states, there ought to be revisions in case any has adopted capital punishment for criminals. They need to revisit how valuable life is, how irreplaceable it is, and how holy it is believed to be. Never can one be rectified by killing them. It is of no good to them when they are already dead (Should Death Penalty allowed, n.d). My view is in contradiction with the death penalty as it offers governments rights to kill. One of the human rights is the right to enjoy the gift of life. Under no circumstances therefore should an individual be denied the privilege to live. If it is correction for moral uprightness, it cannot be done by subjecting the individual to death. A dead person does not suffer any consequences. It does not make sense when the state tries to do away with a problem by acting more of the same problem. It would be more logical if these murderers and other law breakers are allowed to live as changed souls that will influence change in other citizens with the same intentions. Let the state induce a better way of rectifying the character then allow them to influence change to society. Cases have been witnessed of the worst law breakers turning a new leaf only to become the best preachers. Their testimonies end up to be the best weapons in reaching out to the unnoticed criminals and drawing them towards becoming best vessels of honor. Even the government itself cannot make the impact towards change of character that one redeemed criminal could make if given the chance. In fact, instead of taking away lives of these criminals, as funny as it may look, the government needs to embrace them as a powerful weapon towards reaching out to the society as far as morality is concerned. Let the states therefore get back to the drawing board and draft better punishments that will be more helpful than harmful (Death Penalty Arguments, n.d). In addition, capital punishment should be avoided, as not everyone judged for murder happens to be practically guilty. This means the government itself will have caused murder in reality. This will totally be shabbiness in the efforts to find justice. One may not want to imagine the pain and agony that would prevail in the victim’s close friends and relatives. This dims off the fact that the purpose of the courts is to enforce justice and fairness to all citizens. Anyone that experiences such a case would not interpret this. Instead they may have a picture of an unfair government and may neither believe nor trust the government works as far as law enforcement is concerned. With several such cases, it changes the attitude of a large percentage of citizens in the involved nation. With this kind of situation, the government will have failed as far as law and order is concerned. This kind of cruel and unusual punishment should therefore be done away with for the sake of the peace in the nation. For unity to prevail among citizens, the government in power needs to have full public support especially in terms of security and enforcement of the law. Criminals are also humans, only that they happen to have been misled at one point or another. Let the government be of help to them just like any other citizen instead of mistreating them with such an action of finality. Building the nation can never be in form of taking away lives (Death Penalty Pros Cons, 2014). Placed in support for death penalty, is the argument that capital punishments will deter crimes. It is suggested that no punishment will threaten and scare away criminals more than death penalty. However, there is no credible evidence that death penalty has greater impact in deterring murder than long term imprisonment. At some point, the capital punishment may only stimulate murder. A giant murderer, on realizing that their fate is death may not prefer to stop killing but end up in killing more so as to undertake punishment that they are worthwhile. The act of killing people as a punishment does not help solve the problem. After all, this does not make them suffer enough for their actions against the law. They only suffer pain once and it all ends there, yet many friends and families to those they have killed suffer long periods of pain. If a criminal is found to be much against the law, it would make more sense if they are subjected to stern suffering for the rest of their lives in prison which is currently said to resemble hell. They need to learn their lesson before they die. Long suffering periods, research has shown, would be a better way to threaten and scare away murderers from their intentions as compared to capital punishment. Cases have been heard of people killing others then instantly killing themselves too. This is because they already know that their fate is death and so they do it to themselves before it is done unto them. This practically shows how ineffective death penalty is in reducing cases of murder in the country. If these kinds of people are promised a life in prison with due suffering and agony, the solution would be staying away from committing the crime. This would be a better step in nation building in terms of law and order. Execution therefore, does not protect citizens from murder but increases the rate of murder in a nation instead. Further statistics show that no significant improvements have been made in terms of murder cases for nations that have allowed the implication of capital punishments. Governments therefore ought to learn the best way of handling law breakers which just is better than killing people (Top 10 Pros Cons, 2009). In conclusion therefore, death penalty should not map anywhere near effective punishments for law breakers. These citizens are brought forward to be assisted not to be harm, to assist the society not to cause pain to their loved ones and enhance acting in favor of the law not to eliminate those that act contrary. A government that is ready to enforce these statements will therefore consider out ruling the capital punishment as part of consequences for law breakers. If only the political leaders do cooperate with the religious leaders across the nation as they claim, they should not be in a position to accommodate capital punishment any longer. It is against all facts, be it human rights, cultural believes or even the religious believes. It therefore ought to be eliminated from the system (Death Penalty arguments, n.d). References Death Penalty Arguments. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/ornellaspaper.htm Death Penalty Pros and Cons. (2014). Retrieved from http://apecsec.org/death-penalty-pros-and-cons/ Should the Death Penalty Be Allowed? (n.d). Retrieved from http://deathpenalty.procon.org/ Top 10 Pros and Cons. (2009). Retrieved from http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002000 Read More