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Death penalty term paper summary |
| 1. | If the death penalty is a unique deterrent to murder, then a declining use of it should be followed by an increase in murder rates. Yet statistics from many countries and particularly from the United States show that murder rates have remained constant or declined despite trends away from the use of the death penalty. | | 2. | The experience of European countries that abolished the death penalty in the 19th or early 20th century shows that abolition was followed by a decrease rather than an increase in criminal homicides. Moreover, countries that recently abolished the death penalty (U.K., Canada) report that abolition has had no discernible influence on the rate at which murder is committed. | | 3. | The reintroduction of the death penalty after it has been abolished for some or many years does not lead to a decline in homicide rates. | | 4. | Comparisons of homicide rates in adjacent, congruent states with or without the death penalty clearly show that the presence or absence of capital punishment has no visible influence on homicide rates. | | 5. | Comparisons of homicide rates in Canadian provinces suggest that such rates are not related to the penalty provided by law but to a total social situation in which a particular punishment can have little or no effect. | | 6. | Comparisons of police killings in abolitionist and retentionist states in the U.S.A. do not lend empirical support to the assumption that law enforcement officers are better protected when the death penalty is retained or that their occupational risks are increased by its abolition. | | 7. | The abolition of the death penalty does not increase the hazards involved in prison life and does not result in an increase in homicidal or | assaultive behaviour in those penal institutions where convicted murderers are detained. | | 8. Capital punishment tends to defeat its own purpose, that is protection of society, by increasing the number of acquittals in capital cases. Its presence, especially when it is made mandatory, reduces the likelihood that indicted offenders will be convicted. | | | 9. Comparisons of execution rates and rates of offenders killed by the police, the intended victim or others, during or immediately after the crime, reveal that this latter risk is much greater than the former. If death is a deterrent, potential killers should be more deterred by the risk of being killed than by the treat of legal execution. | | | 10. In a system of a fair and democratic justice, the application of the death penalty can probably never attain the certainty and expediency levels necessary for it to operate as a deterrent. | | | 11. If the death penalty is used lavishly it loses its horror, people become accustomed to it and are no longer affected or deterred by it. Conversely, if it is rarely applied, then the probability of incurring it sinks to insignificance in the minds of potential offenders. | | | 12. The alleged deterrent effect of the death penalty is based on the assumption of free and rational choice. Yet the crime for which the death penalty is most frequently prescribed, that is criminal homicide, is mostly committed in circumstances that preclude the existence of free will or a rational consideration of the consequences. | | | 13. The death penalty is not likely to be an effective deterrent for those who are unafraid of death, those seeking martyrdom, or those who have a conscious or unconscious wish to die. | | | 14. For certain categories of potential offenders the death penalty may act as an incentive to murder and for certain personalities it has a morbid fascination and a pathological attraction. | | | 15. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is considerably weakened by the remoteness and uncertainty of the threat it presents and by man's inability to conceive of his own death. | |
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