One of the biggest debates in the United States is whether or not the death penalty should be abolished. The death penalty or capital punishment is the execution of a criminal after being convicted by a court of law.
The death penalty should be abolished due to many reasons that make it inhumane and mistakable.
There are many problems with the death penalty that makes the punishment for crimes more unjust to those convicted. Firstly, there is a huge amount of wrongfully convicted people in jail. Some people can be convicted of crimes that they did not commit and then sentenced to the death penalty. By the rates of people who are wrongfully convicted, there is a chance that many innocent people get sentenced to death for a crime they never committed. This gives the justice system more power over people. Also, the use of the death penalty doesn’t actually stop crimes from being committed. According to Amnesty International, “This claim has been repeatedly discredited, and there is no evidence that the death penalty is any more effective in reducing crime than life imprisonment.” Most people defend the death penalty because it’s supposed to scare criminals to not commit crimes, but for the most part it hasn’t affected crime rates.
Some might say that the death penalty shouldn’t be abolished because the criminals that commit heinous crimes should be punished by death to feel the same way their victims did. Although vicious criminals should be punished for what they do to their victims, some might see that spending the rest of your life in prison suffering is actually more punishable than getting the death penalty. Staying alive and living with what they have done for the rest of their life might be a better punishment than letting criminals get the easy way out of what they have done.
What needs to be done overall is a change within the government policies and the justice system. With the right amount of protesting and conversation, the government could abolish the death penalty. Although this is unlikely to happen, if there is an overall agreement between many people, there is always a chance.
Many people have vastly different opinions on this topic. Overall, the death penalty is a huge risk to freedom. Not only can it risk innocent people being killed, but it also provides no advantages to the United States. Disgusting and disturbing criminals should live with their crimes for the rest of their lives, insteads of getting to escape them easily. Taking away the death penalty creates more justice and better punishment for criminals.
