Should the Death Penalty Be Allowed?

[Jazzy]

Proponents of the death penalty say it is an important tool for preserving law and order, deters crime, and costs less than life imprisonment. They argue that retribution or "an eye for an eye" honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

Opponents of capital punishment say it has no deterrent effect on crime, wrongly gives governments the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices by disproportionately targeting people of color (racist) and people who cannot afford good attorneys (classist). They say lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive punishment than death.

Source

Do you agree with the Proponents or Opponents and why?

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

We should be using the death penalty often. The only problem is a find myself not trusting our federal government for anything. I dont believe they have any good intentions for the people anymore. So I dont trust them with life and death situations. My state is another matter. I have a bit more confidence in the state government and having good intentions for the people.

The study examined the relationship between the number of executions and the number of murders in the U.S. for the 26-year period from 1979 to 2004, using data from publicly available FBI sources. The chart nearby shows the number of executions and murders by year. There seems to be an obvious negative correlation in that when executions increase, murders decrease, and when executions decrease, murders increase.

In the early 1980s, the return of the death penalty was associated with a drop in the number of murders. In the mid-to-late 1980s, when the number of executions stabilized at about 20 per year, the number of murders increased. Throughout the 1990s, our society increased the number of executions, and the number of murders plummeted. Since 2001, there has been a decline in executions and an increase in murders.

It is possible that this correlated relationship could be mere coincidence, so we did a regression analysis on the 26-year relationship. The association was significant at the .00005 level, which meant the odds against the pattern being simply a random happening are about 18,000 to one. Further analysis revealed that each execution seems to be associated with 71 fewer murders in the year the execution took place.

While it is clear that the number of murders is inversely correlated to the number of executions, it is dangerous to infer causal relationships through correlative data. Causation can be a two-way street, but not in the case of capital punishment. It may be logical that more executions could lead to fewer murders, but it is not at all logical that fewer murders could cause more executions.

A second difficulty with strong correlative data is that of timing. Causes should come before effects, so we correlated each year's executions to the following year's murders and found the results to be even more dramatic. The association was significant at the .00003 level, which meant the odds against the random happening are longer than 34,000 to one. Each execution was associated with 74 fewer murders the following year.



http://online.wsj.co...397079767680173

 

[DrLeftover]

As having stood in the same hallway with James Allen Reddog on more than one occasion I will say this:

If you are going to have the law on the books, use it, at least once in awhile and in selected cases.

If you are not going to use it....

Get rid of it so everybody knows going in that if they do the crime, they'll do the time, and the rest of us will pay for their life of relative luxury for the next thirty years.


Also of note, the statement that 'it costs more to kill them' is simply a fallacy told by criminal coddling liberals who enjoy paying said living expenses for those who don't see themselves living amongst law abiding citizens without the proverbial 'rape pillage and murder'.

 

[Sinon]

I'd like to see valid proof of it being cheaper to keep criminals alive, because I'm not really sure that's true at all.

I think it should be used, but only when there is zero doubt that the person in question committed the crime.