Capital Punishment
...a matter of the family’s need for reprisal, but also society’s administering of justice. Imposing the death penalty forces the murderer to take responsibility for his actions. Punishment should equal harm done. How would the victim’s families feel, after the trial of Amrozi, the sentence, and the release, when the terrorist is loose, on the streets, ready, willing, and able to wreak havoc once more? What would the victim’s families say? Many people present shallow arguments against the death penalty. “We are no better if we kill them” they argue. “Life in prison is just as effective and far less cruel.” This is very true. True that is, if one fails to take into account all the murders committed within a prison and upon escape. Imagine how many people each year would be murdered by terrorists and other criminals who were released and paroled. Also, keeping them in prison costs the government millions of dollars more than imposing the death penalty. Punishing people by incarceration is ineffective and usually results in criminals being released back into society. Imagine a man who commits murder once, is given a fifteen-year jail sentence and is returned to the streets where he kills again. He is imprisoned again only to be released. This could very well happen since almost one in ten death row inmates has been convicted of murder at least once. That means that some death row inmates have been given more than one chance to rehabilitate in prison and continue to commit violent crimes. Should the Australian justice system continue to let violent criminals back on the streets where they are likely to commit murder again? Capital punishment is one of the oldest forms of punishment in the world. Most societies have thought it to be a fair punishment for severe crimes, and it is even mentioned as an appropriate punishment in the Bible. “And what if we convict an innocent person?” they cry. Yes, what then? We make sure to be as safe as possible. The risk of executing an innocent person is very low. People die from car accidents everyday. The people who killed them didn’t mean to do so. Why impose a standard of perfection only on our justice system? “Violence doesn’t solve anything” the naïve point out. If only it were true. Historically, violence has solved more conflict and forced more resolution than anything else. “So we murd...