Should capital punishment be reintroduced in the uk essay

These apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death. The most recent FBI data confirms this.

Arguments in favour of capital punishment

For people without a conscience, fear of being caught is the best deterrent. Capital punishment is no more effective in deterring others than life sentences.

Capital punishment magnifies social and economic inequalities. Capital punishment was effectively abolished inone year before the trial period was set to end. The last execution in Britain was a simultaneous hanging of two men on 13 August Middle Adam Whybro It must be remembered that criminals are still people who have human emotions like pain, fear and loss like everyone else, but people who are for the death penalty say that some of the most awful mass murderers should not have their feelings taken into account.

This maybe true, but it is a different matter when you are talking about an eighteen year old girl shot in China for drugs trafficking in Another important essay electricity shortage against capital punishment is that no form of execution is a humane way to kill a criminal, despite what some people say.

Every form of execution causes the prisoner suffering; it's just that some cause less suffering than others.

The use of capital punishment greatly deters citizens from committing crimes such as murder. Ernest van den Haag, a professor at Fordham University, wrote about the issue of deterrence: They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts….

Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred.

And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. This was due to other possible murderers being deterred from committing murder after realizing thatother criminals are executed for their crimes.

Capital punishment also acts as a deterrent for recidivism the rate at which previously convicted criminals return to committing crimes after being released ; if the criminal is executed he has no opportunity to commit crimes again. Some may argue that there is not enough concrete evidence to use deterrence as an argument for the death penalty.

The reason some evidence may be inconclusive is that the death penalty often takes a while to be carried out; some prisoners sit on death row for years before being executed.

This can influence the effectiveness of deterrence because punishments that are carried out swiftly are better examples to others.

Although the death penalty is already effective at deterring possible criminals, it would be even more effective if the legal process were carried out more quickly instead of having inmates on death row for years.

The death penalty also carries out retribution justly. When someone commits a crime it disturbs the order of society; these crimes take away lives, peace, and liberties from society.

Giving the death penalty as a punishment simply restores order to society and adequately punishes the criminal for his wrongdoing. Retribution also serves justice for murder victims and their families. This lack of malice is proven in the simple definition of retribution: The death penalty puts the scales of justice back in balance after they were unfairly tipped towards the criminal.

Surveys conducted ever since have shown that a majority of people in the UK are in favour of the death penalty for the most serious of crimes, although this number is decreasing each year.

That in itself is no surprise. To anyone under 60, the concept of someone facing their own execution at the end of a trial is alien.

Our experience of capital punishment comes either from horror stories abroad a stoning to death for adultery, a botched process in a US prison or from school history lessons.

The most recent survey conducted for the anniversary by YouGov showed that 45 per cent of the public are in favour of capital punishmentwith 39 per cent against. The numbers of those in favour are higher amongst the older voters.