Death Penalty Is Not Effective

 Death Penalty Is Not Effective
Background information
The death penalty has been a tool that has been used for centuries to punish those that commit heinous crimes. The death penalty has been a debatable issue for years with its concepts of deterrence, just punishment, and retribution being disagreed upon. For it to be performed, there should be a legal trial. Capital crimes fall into this category like murderers, adultery, rape and some types of frauds. This form of punishment was introduced in the 18th century B.C. in the reign of King Hammurabi of Babylon (Good, 1967).  He codified the punishment for 25 different crimes.in the 7th century B.C. the draconian code of Athens made death penalty the only form of punishment for all crimes. In the 5th B.C., the Romans were carrying out this form (from the 12 tablets) of punishment through crucifixions, drowning, burning alive as well as impalement (Smith, 2012). In the 10th century A.D, Britain was carrying out death penalty through hanging. William Conqueror was however against death penalty during his reign. However, Henry VII reign had approximately 7200 people executed through quartering, beheadings, hanging, boiling and burning at stake (Block & Hostettler, 1997).
Thesis statement
The death penalty is not effective and should be dropped as a form of punishment.
Body
The assumption can be considered as the only fact that rings in peoples’ mind when they make the statement that death penalty is an effective deterrence. However, it should be noted that assumption is far from facts. There lacks sufficient evidence to prove that such a capital punishment can work as a form of deterrence. It is greatly assumed that the great fear of receiving such punishment or justice can deter murder or other crimes that deserve this form of punishment. If this were true, then people would not do drugs, speed on highways because of the fear of being prosecuted.
Human behavior and history have shown that the rational human instincts do not prevent people from committing crimes. If it did, then we would never use the death penalty. Would just inform the population of the law and it would be afraid so much to never commit a crime again. It is unfortunate that there are those who commit crimes out of passion and care less of the possible repercussions. With or without the capital punishment, people will are bound to commit crimes. It is, therefore, worth pointing out that the death penalty option is never a conclusive evidence or justification in the criminal justice system as a means of deterrence in preventing people from committing crimes.
In Canada, the act of carrying out death penalty has proved to be an ineffective form of deterrence. The country decided to abolish this form of punishment in 1976 and sought other means of punishing capital crimes. A year earlier, there were approximately 721 homicide cases committed in the country (Chandlier, 1976). In 2001, Canada had a total of 554 cases of homicide which translated to a 23% decline in homicides committed before the abolition of the death penalty punishment.  If the death penalty was for sure a form of deterrence, then it can be questioned why there were 167 more cases of homicide that were committed when the country had enforced the death penalty. In 1999, 5.7 million homicides in every 100 00 people were recorded, while the rate of homicide in the U.S was almost three times lower with figures standing at 1.8 million in the same population sample (Banner & Banner, 2009).
along with the 110 states that have declared capital punishment as illegal, the European non-death penalty nation’s data reveals that the U.S has more than two times the number of homicides that of Europe (Shin, 2007). This is another apt example of nations that do not have capital punishment with lower rates of homicides than their counterparts that enforces the death penalty. However, it is worth noting that these statistics do not mean that country that carries out the death penalty cause a brutalization effect. They, in the real sense, show the evidence that deterrence is not in any way causing a decline in the number of reported homicide cases per year.
The American society of criminology, The Academy of Criminal of criminal justice and the law and society association carried out a survey concerning thee capital punishment. A large majority of those that were interviewed believed that the punishment is not a proven deterrence method to homicide. More than 80% of those interviewed had a strong belief that present research fails to support a deterrence effect as far as the death penalty is concerned. Some criminologists do suggest that the death penalty causes more homicides annually. The brutalization effect has it that the rates of homicides will tend to go up because of the executions in states.
One might pose the question of how the active and potential murders are influenced by the actions of the state. They are more affected the simpl