Alvin Soo
Death penaltyis the capital punishment that has authorization to kill someone as the crime’s punishment. The first country that started the death penalty is Babylon. It established the death penalty law at eighteenth century. There are many methods of death penalty that develop over the centuries such as shooting, poisoning, hanging, and others. In the modern century, there are many countries are using the death penalty in the law punishment such as Malaysia, China, and others. According to the website, theguardian, China has the most number of people sentenced to death and its most common death penalty method is shooting. The murderers’ eyes are covered and their back is facing the shooter. Then the shooters will start firing until the murderers are dead. Death penalty has been a popular discussion since some countries are taking the lead to abolish death penalty. People are debating whether the death penalty should be abolished. In this era, death penalty need to be abolished from the law because it has negative effects on society, family, and economy.
First of all, death penalty is encouraging the racial discrimination. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, most of the death punishments are sentenced to the minority races such as African-American. It is a norm that the society has racial discrimination because people like to be in a group, which has people of similar race or culture. When there is an outsider that doesn’t have similarity, they will neglect that outsider and may treat him differently. This is not just happening in the society; it also happens in court. When the judge and jury are making decision in front of the justice, they are still having bias when deciding the punishment because everyone has prejudice and discrimination. Based on NAACP Criminal Justice Department (2017), the death penalty will affect the victim’s race especially white. This proves that the death penalty is supporting the racial discrimination.
Secondly, death penalty is not eliminating the devious from the society. In the modern society, everyone is educated to follow the rules to avoid from committing the crime. However, everyone is not educated to be forgiving sin. Although crimes happened, the murderers are deserved to be given another chance to change their bad behavior and thinking. The devious cannot be stopped by killing the murderers. Instead, the murderers needed be educated in prison to gain the forgiveness and decrease the crime rate. Besides that, death penalty also increases the crime rate. Originally, death penalty is used to discourage the people committing crime by making them scare because one of the human’s fears is death. Death penalty also can save other lives by eliminated the people who committed crime but it doesn’t help to decreasing the crime rate. Article by Bonner and Fessenden (2000) supports that the states that have no death penalty are having lower of slaughter rate. This is because the death penalty is replaced by culture and religion.
Thirdly, death penalty is having negative effect on moral ethnicity. Moral ethnicity is teaching about the principle of moral. It lets people know that everyone is equal and they are given the same human right even though they committed crime. However, death penalty is giving the wrong ethnicity to the society and family. It is promoting a concept, which the murderers are deserved to have deaths sentence because they committed crime. When that concept is spread into the society, the people will be influenced and may cause more crime happens. The reason is because people will choose to do the death sentence to the murderer without authorization and legal process. In the other hand, it is not right to take over other people life no matter who they are. Slaughter people are against the law; death sentence is also slaughtering people. The only difference between these two is on is illegal and other one is legal. In the view of morality, both are the same because killing people is an amorality.
Fourthly, death penalty is impacting the family education negatively. Family is an important thing in life because everything is started from that first. If death penalty is not abolished, the children will become more extreme with aggressive family education. As mentioned above, death penalty will affect the society and family. If the perspective of death penalty can regulate the society and family. There will be more aggressive family appears and cause the violent crime arise. For an example, if children are having the aggressive punishment because they did the non-moral things like stealing, fighting, and others. Are the parents going to say that they are deserve to have that punishment? Definitely no, because parents have the responsibility to let the children know that what’s wrong with that attitude and admit it instead of using the extreme and aggressive punishment to make them afraid.
Moreover, death penalty is also affecting the family to be broken. When the murders are sentenced to death, their families are going to be the victim. Death penalty is going to bring the unhappiness to the murderers’ family and cause the family falls apart eventually. When one of the family members is executed, the rest are going to have tough life especially children. If the children don’t have their parents in their childhood, they are more likely to commit crime when they grow up. Based on the news that written by Steve Doughty, the incomplete family’s children more likely to fall into the society devious. This proves that the death penalty can cause negative effect on family.
In addition, death penalty will also affect the country. Death penalty will give the country bad impression. A mentioned in introduction, death penalty is already existed in 18 th century. This law is old and not efficient to control the safety of country. Instead, government should use other law to substitute the death penalty. If the country can abolish the death penalty, it will give a good impression to the international community. That will cause the relationship between the country become better. When there is a country taking the lead to abolish the death penalty, the other countries in the international community will follow it. This will encourage the countries to have globalization within each other. Globalization is the process that the organization develop international influence such as international trade. Country can use the globalization to make its economy become better. It can use international trade to export the produced goods and services. This will increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the country’s economy.
Death penalty is also costly to the government expenses. According to Chammah(2014), cost of capital punishment is increasing because the wage is increasing. The government needs to hire the worker to in charge of the death penalty. This recruitment is not just hire one worker. Instead, government is going to hire a group of people. Therefore, this will cause the government expenses to increase. When the government needs to find more resources to cover the expense. It will either increase the tax or decrease the other expenses. Increasing taxes will increase the burden of taxpayer and decrease the other expanses will decrease the benefit such as unemployment benefit. Both of this method will decrease the economy.
In some people’s perspective, death penalty should be remained because the murderers have no right to decide whether they are sentenced to death. Let’s think this in different view point. If one of the murderers is the family member, the perspective of death penalty will be different. The murderers’ family will appeal to the death penalty because it is too cruel to take away their lives. As the previous paragraph mentioned, everyone should be treated as same and have equal right. Therefore, death penalty should be eliminated from law.
In conclusion, I agree and totally support to abolishment of death penalty because death penalty is negatively affecting the family, society, economy, and country. It is also having the bad influence on morality and culture. In order to make the children and country’s future better, death penalty have to be eliminated.
References
Part I: History of the Death Penalty. (n. d.). Retrieved February 07, 2017, fromhttp://www. deathpenaltyinfo. org/part-i-history-death-penalty
NAACP Death Penalty Fact Sheet. (2017, January 18). Retrieved February 07, 2017, fromhttp://www. naacp. org/latest/naacp-death-penalty-fact-sheet/
Bonner, R., & Fessenden, F. (2000, September 21). ABSENCE OF EXECUTIONS: A special report.; States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates. Retrieved February 07, 2017, fromhttp://www. nytimes. com/2000/09/22/us/absence-executions-special-report-states-with-no-death-penalty-share-lower. html
Doughty, S. (2008, October 21). Broken home children are ‘ five times more likely to suffer mental troubles’ Broken home children are ‘ five times more likely to suffer mental troubles’ . Retrieved February 7, 2017, fromhttp://www. dailymail. co. uk/news/article-1079510/Children-broken-homes-times-likely-suffer-mental-troubles-says-Government-study. html
Dieter, R. C. (1998). The Death of Penalty in America: Current Controversies . H. A. Bedau (Ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.