Capital Punishment
...ll viewed as violent and should be punished with the highest degree of discipline available to achieve justice. After much public pressure, capital punishment was suspended on a trial run in 1967. This proved to be ineffective, because even though the law stipulated that crimes such as treason or the murder of law enforcement agents, were still to be subjected to the death penalty, the federal cabinet continued to commute those criminals from death to life sentences, hence the law was not being followed and justice was not being served. This soon was followed with capital punishment's abolishment in 1976, as a formal declaration of what was already happening or rather what was not happening. It is felt that because of this and the fact that there has not been an execution since 1967, that today's current form of punishments are no longer a sufficient deterrent for such serious crimes and have contributed to a ever rising crime rate. So, this is where the real issue of whether or not capital punishment should exist begins and such a controversial issue could be best understood if we looked at capital punishment in a perspective of how it fulfils or does not fulfil society's ideas of punishment : Is not one of the four fundamental objectives behind punishment retribution? The sentencing objective based on the principle of "an-eye-for-an-eye", which means that what one person has done to another should also be done to that person in return. Is that not justified, especially in cases of premeditated murder of another human begin, another life? Does capital punishment not act as a deterrent? Does it not threaten with an imposition of a penalty for the commission of an act considered wrong by society? What about segregation? Does capital punishment remove criminals from society so that they cannot repeat their offence or commit other offences against society? Doesn't capital punishment follow the above three objectives well?? Most people would say it does. But then, of course, people who support the abolishment of capital punishment would ask about rehabilitation, the re-training of prisoners with an employable skill for use when they are released. Not only is it expensive to re-train and house criminals, but with some, it is just not possible, because they are hardened criminals and will not change. For those people, it is just not worth the effort and the taxpayers' money to even attempt to reform them. Also, another point to consider is that today pris...