Is Death Penalty a Justifiable Approach to Justice?

Is Death Penalty a Justifiable Approach to Justice?

Society is organized so that the amount of good and evil almost balances. To maintain this, the legal system has to ensure that the appropriate rules and regulations come in place to determine the functionality. Crime is one side of society that cannot be ignored due to its impact on different individuals, especially the victims. If there were no laws to control everything and everyone, crime would have consumed society to the extent that the good side is non-existent. Different governments have varying systems to make it possible for the peaceful co-existence of different individuals, and that is where punishments come in to deal with the lawbreakers. Amongst all the methods the government has put in place to bring law and order, some attract much controversy due to the nature of the impacts and mark they leave behind. One of these approaches is the death sentence, which divides people on its effectiveness and justification on the offenders depending on the crimes they commit. The question is whether the death sentence is justifiable and how to ensure society is not going to its doom through its implementation. While some sources defend the need to take strict measures for felony crimes, the capital sentence is not necessarily a justifiable means of passing justice as no proof shows its effectiveness in deterring crime, other approaches achieve the same outcome, and it is also the role of the government to protect the life of its citizens, especially with the already broken system that might result to unfair sentences.

Research shows that there is no visible evidence that the death penalty is the most effective way to deter violent crimes. The biggest reason for its implementation is that it will make it difficult for individuals to commit crimes as they are scared of what might befall them when they get into the hands of the government. Since people fear death, they will stop engaging in criminal activities (Shatz, 2017). Statistics making comparisons, according to Shatz, have indicated that states that practice the death penalty still have more cases, almost double, compared to those that have abolished the practice. To state this clearly, there is no relationship between the rate of murders or other violent crimes and the imposition of the death penalty (Shatz, 2017). Offenders are more violent in such environments than in any other. The states practicing the death penalty clearly communicate that it is okay to resolve problems by taking life when they punish offenders, something that people end up applying in real life (Burney, 2022). More deaths, even in the presence of the death sentence, indicate that more individuals view death as a normal part of life since it is already made legal; hence, crime is still on the higher side. Research has concluded that there is a miscommunication between the occurrence of crime and capital punishment, as there is no valid connection between the two (Shatz, 2017).