Death_Penalty

Death Penalty with certain types of violent crimes. There are criminals who had there not been capital punishment may have killed all the witness's , thankfully because of the death penalty there has been more lives saved. As for the overall crime rate the death penalty has not deterred crimes from being committed. Truthfully I think that the prison system is the biggest deterrent to crime in America. For states that don't have the death penalty that's the biggest deterrent, I can't think of anyone who wants to spend the rest of their lives in jail. For some people, jail is where they change the paths of their lives, some have used jail as a means rehabilitate themselves and some have even found religion while in jail and have turned their lives around. I believe that the death penalty has helped the types of crimes that are committed, people who commit crimes are less likely to commit lethal crimes. According the Bureau of Justice Statistics there are 1,610,446 inmates in all the jails in the USA and out of all those there are only 3,279 people on death row, so if you do the math, the death penalty has been very useful in cutting down lethal crimes in America. There might not be a decline in overall crime in America, but there has been a decline in the amount of lethal crimes in America, which then gives a convict a chance to be rehabilitated and a chance to re-enter society. However there has been a big push overseas to abolish the death penalty. On the 18th of December 2007 the United Nation General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the global moratorium on the use of the death penalty. They have even adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: which gives those countries still using the death penalty a kind of bill of rights for the use of the death penalty, in article 6 it list some of the stipulations like: death should only be imposed for the 'most serious crimes', there must be a process of appeal and clemency, pregnant women may not be executed, juveniles (under 18 years old) may not be executed. There are many countries still using the death penalty, and here is a list of just a few of the more known countries: Afghanistan, Cuba, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, and North Korea to name a few of them. In ref to my position on the death penalty, I'm totally for the death penalty. My belief goes back to the bible and instituted by God himself although today we don't condemn people for all the violations that are given the death penalty in the bible, today we have tried to get away from the eye for an eye generation. And moved to a society where the punishment has to fit the crime. I use to feel that a person facing the death penalty should die the same way they killed someone, but I have changed my mind some, I'm more likely to agree that everyone will be judged by God when they die, and that their manner of death doesn't matter, that God will judge him when it's his time. But that just me and my view of the death penalty. Last, I'm going to discuss my view on the youth in relationship to the death penalty. It has long been my view that if your old enough to do the crime you can do the time. So in relationship to kids like those of the Columbine School shoot out I think they should get the death penalty, in my view if you're giving the death penalty you had done something that was premeditated and you should have considered the consequences of the action you were going to do. So if you plan to walk in to McDonalds and shoot it up, kill a bunch of people, you are grown enough to suffer the consequences of your actions. References: Schaefer, R. (2009). Sociology. McGraw Hill http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm'ty=pbdetail&iid=1763 http://www.nswccl.org.au/issues/death_penalty/overseas.php http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/2009YearEndReport.pdf