Is the Death Penalty Effective Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Is the Death Penalty Effective - Research Paper Example Rather, it is an economic drain for most of the states in our country that continue to use it as their severest form of criminal punishment. It also provides an emotional and psychological release for the criminal who suffers the most in death row. We all have a right to life. We all have the right to change the way of life that we chose to lead in the past. Nobody ever wants to willingly live a life of crime. Some people, or most hardened criminals like Charles Manson, prove to have psychological shortcomings that have driven them into such a horrific lifestyle. With that kind of information on hand for anyone to see and read about, one can only come to the conclusion that the death penalty is a punishment that is outmoded and irrelevant when dealing with criminals. Rather than killing these people, prisons should make more effective use of their criminal rehabilitation programs instead. Opting to keep the most dangerous criminals under lock and key for the rest of their lives witho ut a chance of getting a parole rather than trying to right a crime with another crime. Let's call a spade a spade in this case. The death penalty has never been an effective crime deterrent. The states that implement them such as Florida, California, and Texas still have high crime rates with murder rates still on the rise. These aforementioned states have seen a reduction in their police force and a trimming down of their prison budgets all because the state budget cannot afford to keep the law enforcement team on the payroll the way they need to be. But, and this is what boggles the minds of most thinking people who live in these states, the fact remains that these very same states manage to spend millions of dollars of the state budget in implementing death penalty actions. Case in point: Before the Los Angeles riots, for example, California had little money for innovations like community policing, but was managing to spend an extra $90 million per year on capital punishment. Te xas, with over 300 people on death row, is spending an estimated $2.3 million per case, but its murder rate remains one of the highest in the country. (Dieter, Richard â€Å"What Politicians Don't Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty†) Keeping the above costing in mind, it is sufficient enough to say that Capital Punishment as we know it is actually making America a dangerous place to live in. When a country, or a state for that matter, pours out so much of its budget on the death penalty while their crime prevention measures and law enforcers suffer with meager budgets or a slash of employed police officers, one can only deduce that something is very wrong with the way people of the state view their safety concerns and strategies. Why do some states continue to enforce the death penalty when it has a f cheaper alternative? By placing a criminal in prison for life, without parole. we prevent the clogging of our judicial system with motion after motion for reconsidera tion on behalf of the sentenced death row convict. Capital punishment trials are one of the most costly trials that can be had by any accused most specially since there is a huge