Death Penalty
Throughout history, governments have struggled with the concept of preventing crime. One of the most obvious ways to prevent crime is by eliminating the criminals through capital punishment. In our society, capital punishment (the death penalty) has been legal since 1976. Since then, it has been proven not effective. It has been shown not to decrease murder rates, there are too many innocent people both falsely placed on death row as well as executed, and an alternative through education is easily applicable. For these reasons, the death penalty is not necessary, and can be eliminated through understanding it's weak points, and modifying this civilization's approach to crime. Since it's reinstatement in 1976, numerous studies have been conducted to measure the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent. The results are unanimous. One study uses a graph to show that even though executions in 1995 were at an all time peak, the murder rates were not altered. Another s
Another of the death penalty's purposes is to protect the safety of the innocent. Georgia it was said that "No matter how careful courts are, the possibility of perjured testimony, mistaken honest testimony, and human error remain all too real. " The problem is not that humans make mistakes; this happens all the time. 1 The evidence is clear; the death penalty has not had it's desired affect on American crime. This is applicable to the problem of capital punishment in that evidence shows that many of the criminals committing violent crimes are of a lesser intelligence (especially verbally) than most educated people. Based on the numbers, it is obvious that this society's system of dealing with violent crime needs reform. Educating people would give future criminals a less destructive mode of expressing their feelings and ideas. Applying the teachings of Confucius regarding the prevention of crime will lower crime, and in the end, prove that there is no need for capital punishment. Still another shocking poll revealed that many of the states in support of the death penalty actually have higher murder rates than their neighboring states that do not support it. Leo Jones was one of these people who was wrongfully executed. Protecting the safety of the innocent is a supportable cause, but the current system of determining the guilty is so flawed that many people determined guilty, and sentenced to death have been later found innocent. It is obvious that not all violent crime will be immediately cured by this system, but instead of punishing what is in the past we should take this left over crime as an indication that further improvement to the positive teachings is required. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can be certain that there were some.
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Acceptance Essays
