Capital punishment intro Essay

Submitted By Volleyballsoccer14
Words: 372
Pages: 2

The death penalty is an essential form of punishment in a government, in place of life in prison without parole. First of all, the death penalty has been shown to deter murders. In other words, when the death penalty is applied to murderers in a certain state, the homicide rate in that area decreases. Attorney Richard Gernstein said, ". . . Certainly one of the factors which restrains some people from murder is fear of punishment and surely, since people fear death more than anything else, the death penalty is the most effective deterrent." In a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University, they stated, "Our results suggest that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect; each execution results, on average, in 18 fewer murders…." Also, in a study conducted by Naci Mocan (economics professor at the University of Colorado), Mocan found that each execution of a prisoner results in five less murders.The death penalty has proven to be a crime deterrent even though its use is rare and inconsistent. If the death penalty was used more frequently in murder cases and applied in every state, the number of homicides in the U.S. would drop significantly.In addition, when prisoners are convicted to death rather than life imprisonment, they are guaranteed to never kill again. Judge Paul Cassel states, ". . . that of roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following