Imprisonment Death Penalty

Then two decades later, in 1993, the capital punishment statutes had been reinstated and performing executions, once again striking the thing criminals fear most, death (Tucker). During the 1990s as more states began to reinstate capital punishment statutes, murder rates began to plummet. They went from 9.6 people per 100,000 in 1993 dropping to 7.7 in 1996 and as low as 6.4 in 1999, which was the lowest rate since 1966. In other words, as the author observed during his study of the forty year period, homicide rates have risen when the rate of execution went down and as the execution rates had risen, the rate of homicides had decreased (Tucker). Not only does the death penalty engender an aversion amongst criminals and people who are considering performing heinous actions, it additionally promotes a positive influence towards themselves and others around. The mandate of capital punishment establishes the attitude of abhorrence toward criminals, and causes people to think about what they are doing because of the possible consequences. With people believing that living the criminal life is not the best of decisions, they are deterred away from making the decision of performing the crime (Caldwell 598).

It is irrational to think that the death penalty – a remote threat at best – will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers” (Bedau). This shows that the death penalty is not stopping murders from occurring. The introduction to the death penalty conducted a survey were top criminologists stated that the death penalty does not deter homicide rates (Introduction). “For 2009, the average Murder Rate of Death Penalty States was 4.9 [Murder rates by the 100,000], while the average Murder Rate of States without the Death Penalty was 2.8” (Introduction).

“A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation’s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. The study, Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists, published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, concluded, “There is overwhelming consensus among America’s top criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question fails to support the threat or use of the death penalty.” A previous study in 1996 had come to similar conclusions.”

A review was conducted from the Law and society Association, American society of criminology and the Criminal Justice sciences Academy and it revealed that a big majority concluded that capital punishment was not a deterrent to homicide. More than 80 percent of those interrogated believe that the survey doesn’t hold up the effect of deterrence for the death penalty. Other criminologists suggest that more homicides are caused due to the fact that there is death penalty. The outcome of brutalization argues that the rates of homicides will increase because of the example served by state executions.

Shichor warns against ideologies that create a subclass of citizens and alleges that the new penology is responsible for creating the perception of a dangerous class (Hickey 2013). New Penology is the term used to describe methods in penal management that rely heavily on compiling and analyzing statistics. This paper utilizes research, observation, and statistics to outline that mandatory sentencing has not provided a solution to crime. Moreover, nonviolent offenders are being given mandatory sentences that are not commensurate with the offense. Mostly in the delivery of mandatory life sentences the aspect of hidden discretion exists thereby arrest and especially prosecution allowed the opportunity for the unequal distribution of justice (Hickey 2013). Current penal policies ensure that sentencing is incalculable when the three strikes law was first enacted in Los Angeles County after six months, they found that black offenders were charged with mandatory sentencing seventeen times more than white offenders, indicating racial bias (Hickey 2013). After comparing the essays of Shichor and Methvin, little agreement exists, and few parallels are

This paper will discuss the Death Penalty. It analyzes the effectiveness of the death penalty. It covers the history of the death penalty as our nation shifts through various eras in its history, as well as the historical background of the death penalty in New York. It considers all factors such as crime rates, deterrence, the rights of the people, and consequences of the death penalty. Analogies were made of areas all over the country as to what degree the death penalty effects crime all around. It concludes this paper by reflecting on the information provided of the death penalty and provide an alternative to it.

The death penalty is arguably one of the most controversial issues of our time. Currently, only eighteen states and Washington D.C. have abolished the death penalty. However, the question remains: what does research say for or against the death penalty? In 2009, a study was done that found the statistic that 88% of criminologists believed that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder (Radelet and Lacock, 2009). The majority of research also points to the conclusion that the journey from arrest, to trial, to execution is extremely expensive, even more so than that of a life sentence. Finally, who considers the people tasked with performing the execution? What about their mental health? Through examining the death penalty’s facts, deterrence,

Aristotle once said “the generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.” Capital punishment has been intertwined in United States history for centuries with a number of crimes that could lead to the death penalty if convicted, many of them are some form of murder. Since 1977, three thousand and ninety-five defendants have been on death row and of that, only one thousand thirty eight defendants have actually been executed. But the perilous question is whether or not the defendants were sentenced based on solely the facts and nature of the crime or crimes, or were there other contributing factors that influenced the severity of the verdict. There are several social controversies that surround the people who are sent to death row, predominately bias and discrimination issues which are based on ethnicity, gender, and mental health.

Malcolm B. Benson, a cold blooded killer was released in January, 2015, police say it only took 9 months to kill again. The death penalty can and will save lives and keep terrible killers just like Benson off the streets. All Malcolm received in the years between 1995 and 2015 was a free life just so he could go and kill another innocent person. The death penalty is needed now more than ever considering that Chicago abolished the death penalty in 2011 and homicides have been steadily increasing ever since.

When you are a juvenile would you want to spend life in prison because of something you did while you were young, and still learning what is right and what is wrong in life? Life without parole is a big deal for minors because they still have their whole life ahead of them to learn and grow as a human being. Juveniles do not fully understand what they do sometimes because they are so young. I agree with the majority of the supreme court justices who believe that mandatory life sentences are unconstitutional, unfair, and inhumane because kids don’t have a chance to grow up, they aren’t getting a fair punishment, and some juveniles do not deserve life with parole.

The Death Penalty Center released a study titled The Death Penalty in Black and White in the year 1998. The work analyzed the rulings of 667 murder convictions which took place between the years of 1983 and 1993 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The data embedded in the investigative piece includes

Do you know where over 1.26 Million dollars of tax payer’s money go every year? The prison industrial system spends millions of dollars each and every year on inmates being sent to death row or given the death penalty. According to Equal Injustice Initiative (2015) “20 percent of the people on Alabama's death row received a life verdict that was over ridden by a trial judge.” Through research I've discovered the cost of the death penalty is higher than the cost of life in prison without parole. According to the "Test/evaluation of Costs" by Judge Arthur Alarcon and Prof. Paula Mitchell (2014). The authors decided that the cost of the death penalty in California has totaled over $4 billion. About $2 Billion in which are in Court Cost. If the Governor would alter the legal punishments/times spent of those still remaining on death

Teens should not be able to receive a sentence to life imprisonment without chance of parole. “In many states, 13 and 14-year-olds are subjected to the harshest possible prison sentence despite widespread acknowledgement by experts, parents, teachers, doctors, and courts that children tend to be incapable of making mature choices, that they are vulnerable to negative influences and peer pressure, and that they are powerless to protect themselves from dysfunctional and dangerous home environments” (Cohen). Most teens are not fully matured until they are adults, so they will sometimes commit crimes that they wouldn’t commit later in their life. If they are sentenced to a life without parole when they are a teen, they will never get a chance to

Orange Is The New Black is a new hit tv series presented by Netflix. The show is about a young woman named Piper Chapmann, who has been sentenced to jail for fifteen months for being an accessory to a drug cartel with her former girlfriend, Alex Vause, who is an international drug smuggler. Ten years later, after committing the crime, Chapmann lives a normal life with her soon to be husband, Larry Smith. The series conveys Chapmann’s life in the first season, and in the second season, the show reveals the characters’ background and why they were sent to prison. The show frequently features flashbacks to demonstrate some of the bad decisions that caused the diverse group of women to be sentenced to a New York prison,

In his paper, “The Minimal Invasion Argument Against the Death Penalty”, Hugo Adam Bedau argues against the death penalty. Bedau’s purpose is to convince people to favor the lifetime imprisonment over the death penalty with an argument that had been previously used by other authors called “The minimal Invasion Argument”, which he considers to be “the best argument against the death penalty”(Bedau, 4). In this paper I will describe Bedau’s argument and show how he has some weaknesses addressing the concept of the minimal invasion argument by ignoring what in my opinion is the main reason why the death penalty has not been abolished; this reason being our incapacity as humans to “define” our environment. When