Punishment or Rehabilitation? (Capital punishment)

Member Name: R_Easton

Product:	Capital punishment
Date:	13/10/01 (850 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Detterence of other criminals, 'revenge for victims'

Disadvantages: killing, criminal may be able to change

I don’t agree with Capital punishment but I am going to try to make a balanced argument in this op. I have split it into the different reasons for punishment.

‘Revenge’
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. The victims and/or their relatives will want retribution for the crimes committed and so Capital punishment will be a good solution of this problem. The ultimate for of revenge is probably death (maybe immense torture) but many victims wouldn’t want this (the ones who don’t believe in capital punishment)

Rehabilitation + Discouragement of re-offence
Capital punishment obviously wouldn’t help at all with these two, but many would claim that a murderer will always be a murderer. I think if there is any hope of changing the offender’s outlook then it should be tried. Rehabilitation involves training the offender in extra skills so they can get a proper job and not turn to crime. This is probably rarely useful for murderers and would be more useful for thieves.

Getting criminals out of the streets
If you send an offender to prison, or kill them, then they are out of the streets and can’t commit any more crimes. If you just fine them then they can be committing more crimes straight away. Capital punishment can be easier than a prison sentence as it isn’t as expensive

Discouragement for other potentials
Capital punishment is definitely a good way of deterring other potential criminals. You are a lot less likely to commit a crime if you know the punishment is severe.

Capital Punishment was the normal thing not such a long time ago, and is still inflicted in many countries today. I don’t believe there is a need for capital punishment, as I don’t believe there is such a thing as an ‘evil’ person. I think all supposedly ‘evil’ people are either stupid or ‘mad’. Stupidity crimes are
due to misunderstanding, and not realising the consequences of the crime. This is often due to selfishness and small-mindedness of people that can’t consider the feelings of others. This isn’t because they don’t want to consider others feelings, they just don’t. ‘Madness’ in some of its many forms can cause people to not realise what they are doing. Both of these require the person to change their outlook, and the way they see things, before they can return to society. I believe this can be done with most people and so capital punishment is not needed.

One last bit, this is another reason for killing, this is revenge. This would usually be something like ‘you killed my brother so I’ll kill you’ this is really under the stupidity or misunderstanding catorgory.

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