Death Penalty Review

The Death Penalty

            The Death Penalty. Just the name bears connotations of the Spanish Inquisition and the French Guillotine. Yet these early practitioners would be quite surprised, and slightly awed of the modern US death penalty. Nowadays, only perpetrators of intended murder, after an extended trial, are given the death penalty. The penalty itself consists of a couple of painless injections, beginning with a full anesthetic. Even more surprising to them, however, may be the humanitarian reaction that is trying to abolish the age old policy entirely.

            Their objections are respectable, but at the very least, abstract. “In a world of increasing civilization, the death penalty seems misplaced.” Or “Prisoners should never be killed.” Ultimately, innate to the debate over the death penalty is the value of a life, a personal value. I attempt to show the real and plausible benefits of the death penalty and allow you to weigh it against your own beliefs on the value of a life.

            First of all, the death penalty requires less time in prison, the not only the most costly, but also the most cruel aspect of life without parole. Inmates suffer the company of other murderers, and spend long periods of time in confined guarded cells. Lethal injection, on the other hand, is a relatively painless process. It is noted that most prisoners do not prefer the death penalty over life without parole. However, since both punishments lead, ultimately, to death, the administration of a painless drug seems to be much preferable to languishing in state or federal prison.

            The shorter prison time also allows the death penalty to be more financially efficient. Resources that would normally be used for maintaining prisons is used to ensure a more extensive trial, or higher security, worthier causes than maintaining large numbers of people in prisons.

            This is not to say that the death penalty is perfected. Recently, states have been abolishing the death penalty on financial grounds, citing that the death penalty currently costs about three times as much as life without parole. Further investigation shows, however, that a large cost of the death penalty is maintaining inmates in prison! To understand why this is, consider that California has 714 inmates on death row as of 2010, but there were only 46 executions in the USA in the same year. Death row inmates are being kept in higher security to “await” their execution, but they are never executed. This is not a problem innate to the death penalty but with the current system, and with reform, the death penalty could be much more efficient than life without parole.

            It is hard, nonetheless, to compare these quantifiable benefits with the abstract idea of the value of a life. However, let us consider another circumstance when lives are deemed expendable. In the army, the government sends soldiers with the knowledge that some will die. The requisites to justify these deaths are that the soldier is a volunteer with knowledge of the danger, and that he or she only die for some necessary cause. If these rules apply to our army, then why not to our civilians? If a criminal decides to murder, then they are voluntarily giving up their rights. Some say that there is no necessary cause, but I believe there is at least one.

            In the words of Baba from The Kiterunner, “There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft....When you kill a man, you steal a life.” A thief would be expected to give back what he took, or something of equal value. Even though inmates are not thieves, the concept of a life for a life might resonate for the victim’s family and friends. No matter what the murderer does he will never be a productive member of society. If the victim’s family, on the other hand, recuperated faster or if future criminals were dissuaded from murder, would that not have been worth the life taken? There were only 46 executions in 2010. The death penalty is still a largely symbolic punishment, but behind its seeming brutality, it has the potential to save and salvage lives. 

Ways to improve: 

Revise

Perhaps Edit

Re-organize

Don't procrastinate

The ideas (or at least some of them) are there, but they need better explanation. Also, I must edit my speaker tone as to seen neutral when I need to be, and impassioned when it suits me.


Wishes:
More time
More Research
Conception of the other side-A conversation with an anti-DP person
Longer word limit