I am against capital punishment, simply because executing people makes some of us feel like we have done something to deter crime. We have not.
Yet it costs more to execute someone than to keep him or her in prison for life. We could spend the money on schools instead if our goal is to deter crime.
The point is not that executing people does not deter crime, but that many people have the illusion that it does. This is simply bad for society
By the way, if executions deter crime... can anyone tell me the names of the last three people executed in the US? No? Then there is no possibility it would change anyone's behaviour, unless you have Ted Bundy's disease and WANT to be executed. Then you would keep killing until you got the injection you wanted.
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Like so many other things, it seems that preventative measures are far more useful than trying to fix the problem after it's happened. Using money to give kids a better start educationally will probably do more to deter crime than frying someone and then saying, "Let that be a lesson to the rest of you!"
ReplyDeleteTo me, it almost seems like a WORSE punishment to keep someone alive and in jail under hellish circumstances...