Revenge is not sweet when it comes too late. Neither is justice. Whether the death penalty provides revenge or justice, it is ineffective and expensive.
Capital punishment, popularly know as the "death penalty", is built on two premises. The first premise is societal. The death penalty is supposed to protect society by deterring potential criminals from committing heinous crimes. The second premise is justice-mostly for the aggrieved family and friends of the victim(s). In death penalty case, the victim is usually dead.
Reality fails theory on both counts! On the face of it, the premise of deterrence seems to make sense; the more severe the potential punishment, the more likely that a potential offender will be deterred. However, that logic only applies if the crime is premeditated and the punishment is certain.
In third grade I knew the consequences of stealing gum at Wunrow's General Store in Potter, Wisconsin, a tiny village just a mile from our farm. The consequences would be corporeal punishment--a spanking from my father. If Mr. Wunrow caught me, he would have told my parents and I would have taken "a trip to the woodshed" with my father. Actually, my father didn't bother with the trip to the woodshed. He used his belt-a culturally acceptable alternative to a willow whip.
The consequences of actually getting caught at home by my mother were even worse than the probable consequence of getting caught in the store by the grocer. My mother noticed that I was chewing a lot of gum and got me to admit that I had stolen it. She was the hardest person on earth to lie to. She didn't use the woodshed, she took me back to Wunrow's General Store. I had to walk into the store during business hours and tell Mr. Wunrow what I had done, apologize and ask what I could do to atone for my sins.
Had the potential punishment been more severe-like chopping off one of my hands, I would probably not have taken the chance for a couple of packs of gum. In some societies, the consequences of even minor crimes are that severe. If the punishment does not fit the crime, deterrence works. Western societies place a high value on the individual and are generally not willing to inflict so severe a punishment on some individuals to teach the rest of the population a lesson about consequences..
Consider political protest in the United States. Over the years protestors have often stretched the limits of peaceful gatherings and free speech. They understood that they might be arrested, spend a few hours in jail, and motivate the FBI start a file on them. The consequences of their actions, a few hours in jail and a FBI file, had limited deterrence value.
I participated in the biggest peace rally in the history of the country-the anti-Vietnam War March on the Pentagon in Washington D.C in 1967. At the end of the rally, some protesters proceeded all the way to the building where the Vietnam war was being planned. I chose not to help break down the wire fence around the Pentagon because I saw no need to spend a night in jail. The other four guys, who I traveled with from Nashville, Tennessee, intended to make a statement against the War by getting arrested. They helped tear down the fence and rushed into the Pentagon grounds. They were arrested, charged with a minor crime and released before dawn the next day.
If I had been a potential protestor in Tibet I would not have made the trip to Lhasa--the Provincial Capital of Tibet, or Beijing, National Capital city of China.-I would have been deterred because I know that the Chinese army might execute me. The first time I traveled to China my friends were worried about my safety. When I got home I told them China was the safest place I had visited. Because the punishment for crime was so severe, deterrence worked. (Corruption is a different matter in China and many countries-it is socially sanctioned.)
As the crime gets more serious, deterrence loses its power for two reasons. First, society runs out of punishments with consequences that are well know to potential criminals because of their severity. Wunrow's General Store would not have lost any more gum to young thieves, if just one kid was walking around Potter with a hand, or even a finger, missing. Drunk driving would much less of an issue if drivers with more than 0.80 blood alcohol involved in a car or boating accident were drown in a sealed casket of beer. Fewer CEOs would "cook the books" if the punishment was a lifetime of working the midnight shift as a janitor in the office building where he had previously had an office in the top floor. Deterrence only works if the punishment is well know, strictly enforced and disproportionately high compared to the crime.
Second, the most heinous crimes are not committed by rational people, thoughtfully considering the possible consequences of their acts. Deterrence depends on reason outrunning emotion-not the case for most potential death penalty offenses. The expectation of long prison sentences for armed robbery, assault and rape probably have some deterrence value. However by the time crimes get serious enough in our society to merit consideration of the death penalty, the perpetrators are so far beyond rational judgment that deterrence is unlikely.
Some societies are willing to be pre-emptive. To incarcerate for life or put an individual in front of firing squads, based simply on the suspicion that they will commit crimes-especially treason or other political "crimes". Since our democracy puts great value on individual freedom, we maintain that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Surely, we believe, no one can be guilty of a crime they have not yet committed. In other societies (past and present), the legal system is frequently used to get rid of the criminally inclined and the political active.
So if the death penalty has little if any deterrence value, doesn't it serve a justice function? Do the public in general, and friends and relatives of victims in particular, feel better if the monster is put to death? Perhaps. However, that feeling would be no less salient and satisfying if the death penalty was not an option. If some other form of punishment, rather than putting the criminal to death, was the expected and most severe form of justice available, trials and publicity would revolve around those options available to the judge.
Is capital punishment more severe punishment than life in prison? At least in terms of deterrence, potential criminals might view life behind bars as worse than death. A good number of inmates commit suicide. Perhaps both criminals and law-abiding citizens view life behind bars as delivering more justice than the electric chair or lethal injection.
Then, there is the money argument. It is extremely costly to sentence someone to death, put them on death row, proceed through the appeals and court injunctions to eventually (years later) execute them. While life sentences are also very expensive, capital punishment cases are much more so. Those states that allow capital punishment pay dearly for every criminal they execute. Maryland taxpayers dish out dish out about $3M for each execution while "life in prison" costs them $1.1m per inmate. California with ~ 700 inmates on death row spends $184M more per year than it would if those prisoners life sentences. Kansa does capital punishment on the cheap:$1.26m per execution and $740,000 for lifetime guests. Texas splurges with 300 people on death ultimately costing $2.3M a pop. In contrast, Michigan and Wisconsin outlawed capital punishment soon after gaining statehood (160 years ago). In every year since 1990, murder rates have been substantially higher in states with the death penalty than in states without capital punishment.
Finally, there is the stark reality that the wrong person might have been convicted of the heinous crime.
The death penalty is usually debated as a moral issue. Ministers, politicians and high school debate teams have argued the morality of society committing legalized murder. There is no need for debate. The morality question does not need to be raised.
Even if capital punishment were considered morally acceptable, as it is in most western and southern states, it is impossible to defend the death penalty on any rational grounds. The death penalty has not been shown to effectively deter the heinous crimes to which it might be applied. In a democratic society, it takes years for death sentences to wind their way through the appeals process. Holding someone on death row for years and finally executing him is very expensive. In the end, justice delayed Is justice denied. Most families and friends of victims would prefer closure with a life prison sentence to years of public reminders of the crime and yet another traumatic date set for execution of the perpetrator.
The death penalty is ineffective, irrational and fiscally irresponsible. A relic of the Dark Ages and dark minds.
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