English - Argumentative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Arguments in Favor of the Death Penalty - Essay Example This paper tells that criminals who have no regard to other people’s personhood must face this definitive penalty in order to maintain the community whose footing is in sheer violation, especially if they deliberately do this in distressing persistence thereby making it a routine. Some of the offenses that should be punished through death include repeated crimes, espionage, murder, rape and other sexual crimes, and treason. The death penalty should also be performed as part of martial justice. Any offender convicted of any of the above crimes should face execution executed as punishment over the offense. This is because as the criminal provisions deem them, such since he/she is a repugnant threat to the society. A key reason for supporting capital punishment rests of the morality of execution – once a human being applies force against an innocent person, in reality, he/she has affirmed the fact that that he/she does not conform to the principle of individual rights. It is a sign that he/she wants to live as a predator, to the disadvantage and obliteration of all the people around him/her – he/she is not prepared to live as a logical individual among other people. Rights stem from man’s nature as a logical being, and if a person decides on living irrationally, he/she has does not have rights. Executing such a harmful being is sensible. It is only just for the society if that individual is treated in line with his/her actions. Just as the reward should match the action, the punishment should also fit the crime. This concept is referred to as proportionality and it states that reaction should fit the action. As proportionality holds, the premeditated murder of a guiltless individual justifies a premeditated death penalty of the criminal by the state. The absence of justice would make people take justice in their own hands (Landauer & Rowlands, 2&3). Secondly, the capital sentence leads to deterrence. Deterrence refers to the notion that the state can mete out fear to potential and existing criminals by punishing criminals. An offender will dread being involved in a crime that is punishable by death (Robinson, 3). Without a doubt, the threat that a criminal will face execution prevents him/her from engaging in capital crimes and this works more effectively compared to imprisonment. Given that the society has the greatest interest in the prevention of such capital crimes as murder; it should make use of the death penalty, the strongest form of punishment, to dissuade criminals from engaging in such crimes. According to Tremoglie, in Britain, ever since the abolition of execution in the year 1964, cases of homicide have mounted from 0.68 for every 100,000 to 1 .42 for every 100,000 of the population. Reports from the Home Office indicate that there was an alarming rise in illegitimate killings from 300 to 565 and 833 in 1964, 1994 and 2004 in that order. As opposed to homicide and other illegal killings, the number o f criminals convicted for actual murder crime has as well been increasing rapidly. Tremoglie further notes that in 1965, the first year of death penalty abolition in Britain, fifty-seven and one hundred and seven cases were registered in ten years’ time. He confidently considers capital sentence as a definite deterrent to crime, seeing that criminals who were serving life sentences and later discharged from prisons committed seventy-one murders from 1965-1998. Another point in favor of the death penalty is the fact that it incapacitates the criminal – it takes his/her freedom away in such a way that he/she is not in a position to commit another crime.