Deterrent Effect of Death Penalty - Essay Example

The fact that the death penalty can play the role of an effective deterrent to the crime rate in a country has engendered fierce debates among scholars. So far, scholars have depended on theoretical views and theorization of capital punishment as one of a number of deterrents used in human civilization. But currently, there is a growing tendency among researchers to depend more on empirical studies such as analysis of data as well as the statistics of executions and crime rate in a particular area. In such a study, Dezhbakhsh claims that capital punishment has “a strong deterrent effect; each execution results, on average, in 18 fewer murders with a margin of error of plus or minus 10” (5). The theorization of capital punishment has shown great favor to its status as a deterrent to crime. Scholars like Emile Durkheim and Foucault have put emphasis on punishment as well as capital punishment as a deterrent to crime. Some recent empirical studies also show evidence of the deterrent effects of capital punishment on the crime rate in a country.

But opponents of capital punishment argue that though the death-penalty has deterrent effects they are negligible, as it is claimed in a report, “The death penalty in the U.S. is an enormously expensive and wasteful program with no clear benefits” (Death Penalty Information Center). Meanwhile, opponents of capital punishment often refer to the high crime rate in the United States as evidence of the ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent. Indeed this high rate of capital-punishment deserving crimes does not necessarily require that it should be abolished. If it is supposed that it should be abolished because of the high rate, other forms of punishment also should be abolished. Indeed such arguments are some sort of blubbery. Even from an ethical perspective, one who destroys another’s right to live should not have the right to his or her life, as one of the mothers of Nathaniel White’s victims reacts to the court’s decision as follows: “I have to go to the cemetery to see my daughter. Nathaniel White's mother goes to jail to see him and I don't think it's fair” (Pataki, 3). Taking an ethical decision becomes more difficult when it is revealed that a number of the death deserving crimes are committed driven by anger, or by other emotional convulsions.

The opponents often claim that the death penalty is not the least effective, since most murderers think that they will be able to evade this punishment, as the Police Chief of Los Angels, Willie L. Williams says, “I am not convinced that capital punishment, in and of itself, is a deterrent to crime because most people do not think about the death penalty before they commit a violent or capital crime” (“Fact Sheet”). Indeed such a claim does not necessarily prove that the death penalty is not a deterrent, rather it indicates the glaring faults of law enforcement agencies that convince a would-be murderer to believe that they are evadable. Indeed the high rate of crimes and murders in the United States has its root not in the ineffectiveness of capital punishment, but rather in its faults of enforcement. Comparative statistics on executions and the incidences of murders show that “only about 110 death sentences are handed out for the more than 17000 reported murders that occur every year” (Class Text). In fact, such statistic shows that the vast majority of unpunished murderers will be examples for those who want to commit murder.

Even though the death penalty has a deterrent effect on the majority of the common people, it is only the face value of the scheme and policy of keeping people away from committing murder. While materializing the death penalty effectively, any policy against crimes like homicides and murders should include other socio-cultural, religious, and even economic deterrents. According to Foucault, social disciplinary institutions can play a significant role in lessening the crime rate in a country, since they ensure panoptic supervision for its members. Foucault argues that modern social disciplinary institutions are the ultimate realization of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, whereas prison is the most fundamental reflection of the Panopticon that appears to be at work at the core of those social disciplinary institutions. For this same reason, the youths should not be punished capitally. They should not be punished since they have not been properly socialized through social disciplinary institutions. It is, to a great extent, a failure on the part of the state and other guardians.

In fact, the “process of observing the members of a social institution without being observed” contributes to the internalization of the social disciplines as well as the organizational and institutional authority as a punisher in case of the violation of the disciplines (Foucault 25). The state without the power to punish its convicts capitally cannot establish itself as the highest panoptic organization. So a state must continue this system of capital punishment in order to use it as a deterrent.