sociology 1301 Essay

Submitted By hdzfer
Words: 595
Pages: 3

Oscar Hernandez
9:40 to 10:35
M/W/F
02/27/2015

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a subject that is strongly debated by politicians, Supreme Court Justices, and private citizens. It is basically up to the Supreme Court of America to determine the laws and protocol for carrying out the death penalty, although individual states can approve or disapprove using the death penalty. However, many other countries including Canada, Australia, Japan and some European countries have abolished the use of the death penalty in lieu of what they may consider to be more humane disciplines. In fact, the United States uses the fear of the death penalty to influence people not to resort to committing crimes. America is made up of many different ethnicities and there is a large gap between the wealthy and the poor. Additionally, with so many varied groups of people, the differences in religion and traditions can result in misunderstandings and can lead to violent acts. The United States has to have a way to control the different ethnic groups and the crimes they may commit.
America uses the death penalty to act as a deterrent to criminals and to try to decrease the number of violent crimes that are committed, and countries who do not have the death penalty still experience high rates of crime such as murder and rape. The author Ruppin Ulrike states in his article, “Does the death penalty reduce crime?”, “one way of testing this assumption is to examine how the number of executions carried out relates to the number of homicides committed in a given year. One study found that each additional execution decreases homicides by about five, and each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount. In one study, higher rates of homicide were found in 90% of the states after suspension of the death penalty, the reinstatement of capital punishment legislations was followed by decrease in homicide rates in 70% of states across the U.S.”(1). It is clear that states who did not use the death penalty showed an increase of 90% in homicides and violent crimes, whereas states who did allow the death penalty experienced a decrease in murders and other violent crimes. There is a somewhat great