Is death penalty vengeance or humane?
Not necessarily vengeance or humane. However, keep in mind that you don’t have to sympathize with criminals or want them to avoid terrible punishments for terrible crimes to ask if the death penalty prevents or even reduces crime, to look at alternatives and to think about the risks of executing innocent people. Your question deserves facts with credible sources. 126 people on death rows released with proof that they were wrongfully convicted. DNA, available in less than 10% of all homicides, can’t guarantee we won’t execute innocent people. The death penalty doesn’t prevent others from committing murder. No reliable study shows the death penalty deters others. To deter others a punishment must be sure and swift. The death penalty is neither. Homicide rates are higher in states and regions that have it than in those that don’t. We have a good alternative, life without parole, on the books in 48 states. It means what it says. It is sure, swift and rarely appealed. Life without parole co
The death penalty is revenge. And it is wrong. There have been numerous studies of the death penalty’s value as a deterrent to crime. The conclusion is that it is not. The idea that executing criminals for a range of crimes is “justice” is similarly flawed. Despite the truly horrible things that some terrible people do, social reprisal by the death penalty does not amend the crimes, but does continue to brutalize our society. The death penalty is barbaric and should be abolished. EDIT; Some responders have the impression American prisons are “country clubs.” While a few prisons for low-threat offenders are less draconian than the maximum-security lockups to which violent offenders and many other criminals are sent, there are NO “country clubs” in fact. Ask Martha Stewart. Prisons like Pelican Bay in California are the modern equivalent of the medieval oubliette, strk, miserable bitter holes that acknowledge the reason for the prison is the complete isolation of evildoers from society e
I used to believe in the death penalty. Then I spent a year in prison (minor drug conviction). After going thru the judicial process I’ve seen how it really works and how some innocent person could get death. I’d rather get death than live the rest of my life under the conditions in prison I now believe that life in prison is worse than death.
