The Death Penalty

I have prided myself over the years (or at least the more recent years) for being able to see both sides of an argument. I love having healthy debates, and a big advantage for me is that I will never get upset or angry in a debate. Well, I will if they are down-right wrong about something and are unwilling to listen to appropriate counter arguments. Debates should be about expressing your opinion… but you need to know at least the basic facts for it to be successful.

So, the death penalty. Always a good one for a debate. So I will be posting arguments both for and against it, and I welcome your comments or to join in the debate in the comments section. Remember to keep it clean though.

We need the death penalty!

I have been through certain things that make me wish we had the death penalty here in Britain. Why should these people get to carry on with their life as normal, when I am facing a lifetime of difficulties as a result of their actions. Sure, they might get sent to prison. There, they will only need to spend a fraction of their sentence inside, and when they are in prison they get free meals, a free gym, TV’s in their rooms, learning opportunities, free housing and support for when they leave prison (I think this applies to longer sentences only, but I am not sure), they get PAID for working whilst in prison (and no, I don’t care that it is only £1 an hour or so, they are still getting PAID to do it).

They get an easy life! There are people who re-offend just because they find it too hard in the real world. Because of the number of people in the prisons, they are having to let certain crimes go with a ‘suspended sentence’ rather than any real discipline. What a terrible state of affairs. So what is the solution? The death penalty!

When a crime is serious, committed with intent, pre-meditated and the perpetrator is of sound mind, the death penalty should definitely apply. It will free up space n the prisons, act as a major deterrent  to would-be criminals, and the free space in the prisons would ensure that the smaller crimes that the same person repeatedly commits, despite warnings from the judge, will get harsher punishments. Although I believe community service would be better for some of these youngsters. But that is a topic for another day!

How can we ever feel safe when we know there convicted murderers walking around free. And let us not forget that with such a long appeals system, nobody will get exterminated if innocent. That is exactly why the process takes so long. If the perpetrator murdered someone, why should he get to live? Especially supported entirely by the tax payer (essentially the victim’s family will be paying to keep the murderer warm, give them food, pay for their TV, phone-calls, and everything else they get. Where is the justice in that?

Another bonus to the death penalty is that it will stop (to a certain extent) the family/ friends of the victim trying to take revenge for themselves. We want to protect our loved ones, and sometimes (found more often in men than women) we act in the heat of the moment and do something we will regret. And sods law dictates that you will be the one getting in trouble! If the death penalty is in play, they might be more willing to wait for that. An eye for an eye… let us not forget that!

Get rid of the death penalty!!

What gives you the right to dictate whether you have the right to end a life. Are you God? Do you ‘own’ the person in question and therefore have the right to ‘put it down’?  Is teaching society it is okay to commit horrible crimes if the person ‘deserves’ it the right way to go?

Is violence really the answer? And what makes the person doing the injecting any worse than the person who murdered someone? What is the difference? The law allows some murders, but only if you are a doctor that doesn’t mind ignoring your oath to ‘do no harm’. And what sort of crimes deserve the death penalty? Murder? Rape? paedophilia? What if the person murdered had no friends or family to grieve his loss? Bearing in mind he is dead and wont therefore be feeling anything. Not a single tear is shed over his death. Is that crime still worse than when a vulnerable young lady has her home broken into and she killed herself two months later because the fear drover her insane. She leaves a 3-year-old son behind.

At the end of the day, murder is murder. Having a magic bit of paper saying you are allowed to do it changes nothing except culpability. The death penalty doesn’t change anything. It wont bring the victim back, it wont change the hurt the friends and family feel. It wont make things better. And I highly doubt the relatives of the victim will feel much better after the execution. That closure is not real, it is drilled into the relatives that that is what is going help. They have to do that because otherwise there is no point carrying it on.

Here is another problem: The state will have to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds, just to get him to that chair. There is the costs of housing them in the prison, all the food, clothes, toiletries etc. There is the cost of the trial and repeated appeals. The cost of the staff needed to keep the prisoner secure, and all their medical bills.

At the end of that day, are they worth it?