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The effects of capital punishment
Capital punishment deters crime
Effect of death penalty on crime rate
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Capital Punishment is State Sanctioned Murder
Old Sparky and Gruesome Gertie (affectionate names for the electric chair) have taken the lives of many, even the innocent (Finnerty 18). They are prejudiced and lack compassion. However, many Americans believe that they represent justice. Capital punishment does not represent justice, but vengeance and hate. Among the 7,000 people estimated to have been killed in the United States between 1900 and 1985, at least 23 were innocent (Finnerty 18). In at least 8 of 261 executions performed since 1976, something went wrong; for example, the executioner couldn't find a good vein, or the first jolt of electricity failed to do the trick (Finnerty 18). An innocent person, let alone 23 that were wrongfully executed might seem insignificant to one. Just for a moment think if that one person was your brother or father, and they were innocent! Would you then see that the American judicial system is imperfect, and that capital punishment should be abolished? Capital punishment is wrong and should be abolished because of its imperfections, high cost, and immoral existence.
Many people argue that we should keep practicing capital punishment because it would be a waste of money to sentence someone to life in prison. Facts show that it is more expensive to give someone the death sentence than life in prison. The cost of state execution is up to three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment (Dority 37). So many people are convinced that it is cheaper to practice capital punishment, but those people are not aware of the facts to be presented. If someone is interested in saving "tax payer's dollars," it is much cheaper to sentence someone to life in prison. The reason that life imprisonment...
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...dical treatment that they deserve, not death. Capital punishment is an ineffective deterrent that only demonstrates violence for society (Dority 37). We are teaching society that it is acceptable to kill. We are saying that revenge is justifiable. Racism is no stranger to capital punishment. The death penalty wants to save as many white people as it can, and kill as many black people as possible. Violence begets violence, and murder begets murder. The violent crimes that capital punishment attempts to control will only increase if we, the people, do not demand moral alternatives to state sanctioned murder.
Works Cited
Dority, Barbara. "Not in My Name." The Humanist March/April 1993: 36-37.
Finnerty, Amy. "Sunday: Six Facts." The New York Times Magazine 5 February 1995: 18.
Monagle, Katie. "The Death Penalty." Update 4 September 1992: 13-15.
The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an mistake, the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live. Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Moreover, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate (Death Penalty
Many people are led to believe that the death penalty doesn’t occur very often and that very few people are actually killed, but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,359 people have been executed as a result of being on death row since 1977 to 2013. Even though this form of punishment is extremely controversial, due to the fact that someone’s life is at stake, it somehow still stands to this very day as our ultimate form of punishment. Although capital punishment puts murderers to death, it should be abolished because killing someone who murdered another, does not and will not make the situation any better in addition to costing tax payers millions of dollars.
O?Beirne, Kate. ?The State of Welfare: An old and tricky question resurfaces.? National Review 54.2 (February 11, 2002): 1--2. Online. Information Access Expanded
Murder, a common occurrence in American society, is thought of as a horrible, reprehensible atrocity. Why then, is it thought of differently when the state government arranges and executes a human being, the very definition of premeditated murder? Capital punishment has been reviewed and studied for many years, exposing several inequities and weaknesses, showing the need for the death penalty to be abolished.
Ronald Reagan once said, “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.” Welfare began as a relief program in the 1930’s to assist those suffering from The Great Depression. In modern times, this system’s abuse rises every year. Social welfare spending causes people to abuse their free money; our government needs to revise the length of time for the benefits and who can receive this money.
In the years immediately following America’s independence from Great Britain, the United States established their own form of a welfare system – a “government-sponsored form of indentured servitude, whereby poor of unemployed people were auctioned to employers who used them as laborers.” In addition to this program, the new United States also created a financial incentive to well-off families who would sponsor a poorer individual or family (Issitt).
A single divorcee’ mother of two is working a minimum waged job that doesn’t pay life’s cost of survival. Not only does this mother have to take care of herself, she has children that need shelter, nourishment, and stability. In order for that to be possible, help is needed. Most people, majority is fathers, have too much pride to ask for help because of the image. Being on social welfare promotes the ego dropping image that one cannot provide for themselves or their family. But is image more important than the life itself? Children are dying of hunger or dehydration because their parents cannot afford decent meals or purified water. Children are dying from sickness because their parents cannot afford a home that protects them from the cold. Some of these parents are working forty hours a week or more for minimum wage and still cannot afford the necessities to live healthy. Some parents cannot find a job due to lack of qualification. The government has provided resources for people who are disadvantaged; however, there are still problems that need to be addressed. Social welfare isn’t a discouragement, it is a helping hand. There is no reason why lives should be shortened because of the inability to access governmental assistance. Social welfare benefits America as a whole because it serves as a crutch for the financially handicapped and provides motivation to work harder for a better lifestyle.
Being raised in a single-parent lower class home, I realize first-hand the need for welfare and government assistance programs. I also realize that the system is very complex and can become a crutch to people who become dependent and complacent. As a liberal American I do believe that the government should provide services to the less fortunate and resources to find work. However, as able-bodied citizens we should not become complacent with collecting benefits and it is the government’s job to identify people who take advantage of the system and strip benefits from people who are not making efforts to support themselves independently. I will identify errors that exist within the welfare system and several policy recommendations to implement a change that will counteract the negative conditions that currently exist.
While many believe that social welfare in the United States began with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal plan, the first American movement towards welfare came from a different Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt. He stated in his New Nationalism address that “every wise struggle for human betterment” objectives are “to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity... destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and the commonwealth” (Roosevelt). Behind such a speech with charged language about democracy and fundamental equality, Roosevelt was instituting welfare programs such as limiting word days, setting a minimum wage for women, social insurance for the elderly and disabled, unemployed social insurance, and a National Health Service. After his proposal came Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom initiative, FDR’s aforementioned New Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society (Historical Development). While social welfare is steeped in America’s history, there is a very contemporary debate on its effectiveness and ethicality. People argue that the reason welfare has such a long history in America is because it helps people get out of poverty, equalizes opportunities, reduces crime, and helps children; in essence, that welfare works. Many in opposition to welfare disagree, citing that the system creates a culture of dependence, is easily abused, hurts the middle class and costs the government too much on a system that isn’t wholistically addressing the needs of the American people.
The United States Government has pumped more than $3.5 trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars into welfare but, ironically, the poverty rate is higher than when they started (Tanner, Welfare Reform). This outrageous amount of money proves that welfare will lead United States into debt. The original intent of current welfare benefits has failed; therefore the national welfare system must be reformed. To fully understand how to reform the welfare system Americans must know what the history of welfare is, illegitimate births’ obvious connection to crime and welfare, how welfare has failed to keep the poverty rate down, the great problem of dependency, and finally what reforms must be made. Welfare reforms will greatly help this Nation become stronger and have a more secure future.
The welfare system in the United States has had many problems arise in recent years and there has been nothing done to try and fix these issues. Welfare is supposed to be a financial boost for people who are struggling to survive by themselves. However, there are many people trying to take advantage of the system and use the money provided by the government for certain items that are not necessary to live. The other major problem is with the inefficient government that is so divided ideologically that nothing has been done to repair the system because both parties believe that their ideas are more effective than the others. In order to resolve the ongoing dispute of the welfare system, changes to the process of screening recipients and how the government conducts changes to the system have to be made.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
The first reason why death penalty should be allowed and get more active is life sentence is costly. According to “What is the Average Cost to House Inmates in Prison”, the average cost of housing an inmate in the U.S. was $31,286 in 2012 for per year. According to the “Who, what, where and why”, the United States has roughly 2.4 million people in prisons. Therefore, the money which America pays to keep prisoners who are in prisons is about $75120000000 for per year.
Lyndon Johnson was the next president to make significant advances in social welfare. He launched his War on Poverty, aimed at turning America into a Great Society, one without homeless on the streets or hungry children. In order to accomplish these goals he established liberalized requirements for government money. Over the next thirty years, Johnson’s dreams of a society without poverty were not realized. Time showed his programs did more harm than good, raising the nation debt to staggering proportions. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a Welfare Reform bill as passed to by a Republican Congress. Reform in 1996 meant cutbacks in aid to the peopl...
Capital punishment is the punishment of death for a crime given by the state. It is used for a variety of crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and treason. Many countries also have the death penalty for sexual crimes such as rape, incest and adultery. The lethal injection, the electric chair, hanging and stoning are all methods of execution used throughout the world. Capital punishment has been around since ancient times; it was used in ancient Rome, and one of the most famous people to be crucified was Jesus Christ. Capital punishment is now illegal in many countries, like the United Kingdom, France and Germany, but it is also legal in many other countries such as China and the USA. There is a large debate on whether or not capital punishment should be illegal all over the world as everyone has a different opinion on it. In this essay, I will state arguments for and against the death penalty, as well as my own opinion: capital punishment should be illegal everywhere.