Death Penalty Research Paper

Document Type:Research Paper

Subject Area:Criminology

Document 1

Others, however, argue out that it is a violation of the human rights of each person has a right to live in any situation. Different countries have opted to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. As of the year, 2017 fifty-eight countries had the provision of death penalty in their law. The United States of America is one of the countries that have the provisions of the death penalty but under very serious crimes such as if a person is found guilty of committing first-degree murder. The paper describes the capital punishments on its applicability, its prevalence of secondary factors and if it is really necessary. It is for the above reason that these countries have proposed amendments to the death penalty laws and acted on reforming them to evade unnecessary killings.

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It would be better for a person to be life imprisoned and later if found that they were wrongly convicted a reverse ruling can be done to set them free. If a ruling is made that they are killed no reverse can be done even if fresh evidence emerged. To avoid the increased wrongful convictions that lead to death penalties many countries have carried out several reforms. The USA has made major strides in the evading the wrongful convictions, but much has still to be done in the Far East nations such as China. Despite the improvements made in bringing about equal treatment to all, racism has still much effect towards the rulings on the people found to have committed a certain crime.

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Research carried out in Philadelphia, for example, shows that the blacks were at a 3. 9 times risk of being executed than the whites (Miller et al. Just as the prisons in the USA has the higher number of blacks in relation to their population, so it has been with the death penalty. The main purpose of the law is to prevent an increase in crimes and maintain law and order. Brutality is one of the attributes that can be related to capital punishment. Every person has a right to life despite their race, gender or religion. Just as another instance of murder involves brutality, so it is with the death penalty. The urge to reduce crimes may inform the action but the harshness that is behind the actions to human life overshadows it.

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The research done between countries that allow the death penalty and the one that it has been abolished shows that the capital offense does not have much positive effect in reducing the crimes. It should be known that the punishment does not amount to deterring the crimes in a given society. All the nations should adopt a more humane mode of punishment to the offenders. Life punishment has frequently been proposed and adopted as a substitute for the capital punishment. References Beim, D. , & Kastellec, J. An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecticut Death Penalty System Since 1973: Are There Unlawful Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities?.  Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 11(4), 637-696. Jiang N. A comparison of wrongful convictions in death penalty cases between China and the United States.

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